Statistics back up fans' view that the diminutive midfielder provides a stable platform for his team-mates
Central to Swansea's second-half demolition of Sunderland was Leon Britton. The midfield dynamo was the fulcrum around which our team revolved, and after an outpouring of love for him on Twitter this morning I thought I'd have a look at his stats from yesterday.
Britton has only started three league games this season - against Manchester United, Liverpool and now Sunderland. All at home, and if you disregard an opening day loss to the champions (which I'm sure most fans are fairly willing to do) the other two games have seen very good displays from the Swans. Against Liverpool Leon completed 95.7% of 97 passes, and against Sunderland he completed 94.6% of 92 passes, and it's easy to see how this benefits the team.
By moving the ball around at speed you consistently pull the opposition around the pitch and create space for others. Leon always faces the ball, and offers an outlet at absolutely every opportunity. He glides around the pitch fully aware of how he fits into the dynamic of the match, and seems to have excellent peripheral vision as he's almost always two steps ahead of everyone else.
Compared with Jose Canas' performance against Southampton (82.6% of 69 passes) Leon clearly gets involved more metronoically. Again, as Laudrup stated after the match it's important that certain players retain a deep-lying position otherwise the team gets cluttered. Now that we have Wilfried Bony we have a focal point to hit and we don't necessarily need to tika-taka our way right to him - if there's a cheeky 30 yard pass on in to feet then the option should be there, but if everyone has bombed forward the chances are the opposition will end up with everyone behind the ball - as evidenced in the first half yesterday.
Yesterday Leon won four duels (losing two) and even managed to win the one aerial duel he pluckily got involved in. One stand-out moment for me was when someone else gave possession away (I forget who), Leon got involved in a foot-race with his man back towards the corner of the South and East stands. Not the quickest, Britton showed true grit and determination to get there first and retain possession. He's not the youngest any more, but he still loves it as much as anyone else.
He made two tackles, and managed to go the entire game without giving away a foul - remarkable for a player in his position. The beauty of what he does is by covering space intelligently he often forces the opponent into playing a risky pass, allowing the Swans to regain possession but sadly for those who believe only in numbers not necessarily being reflected in post-match statistics. You don't need figures though - you just need to watch him for ninety minutes to see how much of a classy operator he is.
A good comparison is to have a look at the heatmaps of Leon Britton and his central midfield opponent Lee Cattermole. On top is Britton, followed by Cattermole, and the more "vivid" the colour the more active the player was in that area. If you were interested, Leon Britton had 100 touches to Cattermole's 62, as well as making a surge which saw him claim Swansea's first penalty in fifty-six matches (just about visible on Leon's heatmap):
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| As you can see from Leon's heatmap, he was busy all over the field and didn't restrict himself to one side. |
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| Cattermole, on the other hand, very much operated as one half of a midfield duo which was ultimately overrun in the second half. |
I've been crowing for weeks about how I think a defensive-midfield duo of Leon & Canas would see Swansea return to winning ways, but the truth is that on his own Britton brings balance and stability to the side, and yesterday was a perfect example of that.
Hopefully the calibre of his performance yesterday is enough to convince Laudrup that, for the time being at least, the answer lies in Leon.