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Surprising news: The Tottenham Hotspur trade the most talented player to another weak football team ever.
While two of his Tottenham teammates create threats in other areas of the opponent’s half, Cristian Romero has emerged victorious in the Premier League as a threat creator in one area.
The Tottenham defender has contributed four goals this season, but his build-up play is what has placed him at the top of the Premier League leaderboard. A data scientist on social media named JK Football Analytics has used Opta statistics to design a grid with thirty zones of the pitch and determine the top threat creators in each one.
It only applies to players who have played more than 900 minutes overall; the expected threat (xT) statistics are produced using in-play passes, carries, and dribbles to determine the top threat creator in each zone.
Two of the zones have the more traditional attackers of Spurs winning. At xT of 0.061, James Maddison is the top threat creator in the region that is centrally in front of the opponent penalty area, ahead of Rodri (0.041) and Phil Foden (0.038) of Manchester City.
Above Arsenal’s Bukayo Saka (0.087) and Manchester United’s Antony (0.083), on the right side of that same line on the grid, midway between the halfway line and the byline, is Dejan Kulusevski, with 0.097. With 52 opportunities created thus far this season, Kulusevski is the most creative player at Tottenham, seven more than team captain Son Heung-min.
Romero is one potentially surprising top threat creator; he emerges as the top player in the region just over the halfway line and to the right of the center circle. With an xT of 0.028, he comes in above Liverpool player Trent Alexander-Arnold (0.026) and Manchester City player Kyle Walker (0.026). Spurs fans frequently witness the Argentinean World Cup winner moving with the ball at his feet before trying to play quick through balls.
Romero comes out in second place in another area of the pitch, just to the right of the six-yard box, where he can often be seen playing crossfield balls or passes out to the right wing, with an xT of 0.004, just behind Aston Villa’s Diego Carlos (0.005) and the same as Brighton’s Jan Paul van Hecke.
With the attacking raids of Destiny Udogie down the left, with two goals and three assists to his name this season, you might expect the 21-year-old Italian to turn up among the top three players somewhere down that flank, even if Ange Postecoglou’s system means he spends periods of time in the centre of the pitch.
On two of the charts, though, Ben Davies, his understudy in the part, appears. The seasoned Welshman ranks second in the figures for the zone near to the left corner flag in his own half with an xT of 0.005, the same as West Ham’s Nayef Aguerd and beaten only by Aston Villa’s former Spurs man Clement Lenglet (0.008).
In another zone, to the left of the centre circle in the Tottenham half, Davies (0.028) is behind Lenglet (0.034); Liverpool player Virgil van Dijk is second with 0.029.
