Sorry, my bad - I neglected to mention that there was a foul on the edge of the area. The one other tackle he missed was what I counted. So 2/5. But, you don't do stats so nevermind.
No generally speaking i dont rate stats.
People tend to dig out one stat, look at it in isolation and infer too much into it.
The stats you provided show he made a lot of tackles and very little else.
They dont show his success rate with the tackles he made, they dont show how many led to fk's for the opposition.
They dont show how often his tackles led to a booking.
They dont show occasions when he didn't make a tackle when he should have and did make a tackle when he shouldn't have.
They dont show if his succesful tackle actually led to us winning the ball back - maybe his tackle resulted in the ball going out of play making it largely irrelevant,
they dont show when his succesful tackle ended up with the ball going straight to another opposition player.
He made 4 tackles against messi in that game, one after the other.
Im guessing whoscored decided it was one unsuccesful tackle and that was the extent of their conclusion.
It doesn't show that messi was surrounded by 3 (or 2, i dont have a memory for these things) other players,
that he had no passing options and was basically going nowhere. Or was as close as you can get to stopping
messi from going somewhere as you can get.
It doesn't show that it was right on the edge of the belgians box in a great area for a fk against a team
with a great fk taker (messi).
It doesn't show that he very nearly scored from that fk.
It wont include the occasions when messi strolled past him in midfield without him making a tackle.
I dont know if they include a shoulder to shoulder, 50/50 challenge against zabeleta as a tackle
in which he elbowed him in the head and gave away a fk.
Stats have their uses, people just tend to infer too much into them.
If your really determined to put as much stock into that stat as you have been then lets buy jacob or jedinak.
Both are decent footballers and nothing more but lets ignore that because they have good tackling stats.
He already was one. Go back prior to 2012/13 and you can find all the evidence you need. It's in his locker.. albeit maybe it's buried and needs digging out but the charade that he's only use is up the park just doesn't wash for me.
You were the one that suggested Van Gaal could turn him into a good dm, not me.
I dont see the need to go that far back anyway. He played dm for us last season and was terrible.
If you really want me to take everton into consideration, then fine -
We were linked with him shortly after he moved to everton and was playing as a dm,
so i watched him for half a dozen games to see how good he was.
I wasn't impressed, i thought he was poor for the same reasons i thought he was poor for us last season
I stopped paying much attention to him as i dont particularly care how good everton's dm's are.
I've seen him on numerous occasions since and nothing i've seen has changed my mind.
His only use
for us is as an am. He could do a job for a less amibitious team elsewhere
but he'd still be better playing as a target man for them.
Were not going to agree on this. You rate him as a dm, i dont.
You think my opinion is stupid and im not going to convince you otherwise so lets drop it.