What does Luka Modric do?

  • The Fighting Cock is a forum for fans of Tottenham Hotspur Football Club. Here you can discuss Spurs latest matches, our squad, tactics and any transfer news surrounding the club. Registration gives you access to all our forums (including 'Off Topic' discussion) and removes most of the adverts (you can remove them all via an account upgrade). You're here now, you might as well...

    Get involved!

Latest Spurs videos from Sky Sports

For whats its worth his misses is pretty fit, bumped into him, his misses and their nipper at a kids play center on the north circular. was in the ball pit with him! Random, didn't harass him as gotta respect him when he is with kid, and if I did ask about his future....like he would tell me! he is a top top player, but Levy takes no shit :levystare: :levywtf: :levystare:

Will be another testing transfer window... :harryblow: :harrysmile:
 
I really hope he will bless us with his cute lil rat face next season, key player imo. But the hints about leaving are getting on my nerves, like he could find a better club than Tottenham? There are none. :modric: it.
 
People who criticise Modric just don't get football. As soon as someone starts relying on stats to justify their argument, you my as well stop listening. The only thing that could make Modric better would be more goals. He's amazing. He's the best centre-midfielder in the country, much better than Yaya Toure. He's good enough to play for any team in the World. I'm sure he will leave this summer, and in footballing terms I can't blame him. He's at his peak age and now is the time to move.

As for van der Vaart. He could flourish in the absence of Modric. Not that he hasn't done reasonably well, but he could become our most important player next season, with Sandro and Parker behind him.
 
Mike Hunt said:
People who criticise Modric just don't get football. As soon as someone starts relying on stats to justify their argument, you my as well stop listening. The only thing that could make Modric better would be more goals. He's amazing. He's the best centre-midfielder in the country, much better than Yaya Toure. He's good enough to play for any team in the World. I'm sure he will leave this summer, and in footballing terms I can't blame him. He's at his peak age and now is the time to move.

As for van der Vaart. He could flourish in the absence of Modric. Not that he hasn't done reasonably well, but he could become our most important player next season, with Sandro and Parker behind him.

Hear hear.
 
Modric is a top, top player. Otherwise the likes of Chelski, Man U and Real wouldn't be prepared to pay a small fortune to get his signature.

He's the Xavi of WHL (as someone said) and the glue that keeps Spurs together. He is the player that connects the defense and offense in our team and I am actually quite scared over how we're going to replace him.

That's what Modric do.
 
nssmuckers said:
This is something I posted on another forum I frequent.


If you must have something empirical to judge Modric on, here are some numbers from the Premier League season:

Chances Created (Key Passes):
1: Mata @ 3pg (102 total)
2: Silva @ 2.9pg (104)
3: Modric @ 2.7pg (96)

This is an incredibly impressive position for a deep-lying playmaker. In fact, he is the only deep-lying player in the top 10 for chances created. You have to go down to Danny Murphy and Mikel Arteta at 2.1pg each (11 and 12 best) before you find someone who isn't an advanced playmaker, winger, or striker. Simply put, he is creating almost as many chances from a deep-lying position as Mata and Silva are in free roles. He creates more chances than players like Bale, Valencia, Nani, RVP, Nasri, etc.

Passes Per Game:
1: Arteta @ 76 (90% accuracy)
2: Toure @ 75 (90%)
3: Carrick @ 73 (90%)
4: Modric @ 70 (87%)

This may not be terribly remarkable or unexpected by itself, but let's look at passes of 25+ yards among outfield players.

Long Passes:
1: Ashley Williams @ 8.8pg (70% accuracy)
2: Modric @ 7.6pg (83%)
[...]
7: Carrick @ 6pg (82%)
9: Toure @ 5.5pg (81%)

This begins to tell us that Modric is more ambitious and incisive with his passing than his competitors. We can take it one step further and look at # of long passes as a percentage of total pass attempts:

Modric: 329/2534 (12%)
Carrick: 218/2192 (9%)
Toure: 216/2419 (8%)
Arteta: 172/2229 (7%)

So ultimately, Modric attempts and completes a comparable amount of total passes to his competitors, but creates significantly more chances. This, when combined with his significantly higher volume of long passes per game and ratio of long passes to total passes, suggests that Modric is the most incisive and creative deep-lying passer in the country by a pretty comfortable distance.

Obviously players like Toure and Carrick have other qualities and are different types of players, but they--along with Arteta--are really the only deep-lying players that even come close to holding a candle to Modric's creativity. If I try to compare him to players like Danny Murphy or Joe Allen or w/e it's just not worth the time.

Simply put, he is the best at what he does in the league. I mean shit, I didn't even talk about dribbles per game. He's the only deep-lying midfielder on the first PAGE of that stat.

I actually think he's UNDERRATED by a lot of our fans. He is world class.

You fancy turning this into an article for the front page mate?
 
tehTrunk said:
You fancy turning this into an article for the front page mate?
Sorry I just kind of lurk here and didn't see this :)

I'm not sure how I'd go about doing that but sure, I could probably add a few things as well and write it better.

Thelonious said:
It's not his material....
Well obviously I didn't sit down and count passes for 38 games, but all the writing and analysis and some of the extrapolation on the stats is mine. I used whoscored.com for the numbers.


footballfactman said:
Incisive means penetrative and cutting...

If his passing is such why has he only got 2 assists all year from open play?

Because he's playing too deep. He's being wasted. Let him loose
I would argue that it's much more rare to have a world class #6 than a world class #10. Maybe he'd create more goals if he played in a free advanced role, but then you all but lose his ability to dictate the game and change the point of attack. I think people really underrate those qualities at times.

We don't have a player that possesses a comparable skill set. VDV and Huddlestone more or less have his passing range, but not his combination of mobility and work rate. To me it'd be a waste if we played him as anything BUT a deep-lying playmaker. It's not all about direct assists; he makes a lot of goals with the penultimate pass. Those 40 yarders with the outside of his boot to Bale? Just as good as an assist in my book.

To me if a player can keep up with David Silva and Juan Mata in chance creation from a deep-lying position, there's no need to mess with it. I haven't run the numbers but I really doubt there's another player in the division with his particular combination of statistics.
 
nssmuckers said:
Thelonious said:
It's not his material....
Well obviously I didn't sit down and count passes for 38 games, but all the writing and analysis and some of the extrapolation on the stats is mine. I used whoscored.com for the numbers.
you said you'd read it on a forum :shrug:
 
Back
Top Bottom