Douglas Luiz

[StefanAVFC]

4 minutes ago, Spoony said:

Wtf?

Read any other thread that mentions a DM

[Kiwivillan]

A much needed win after histrionics after last game and I click on a thread to see people bagging a player. Classic VT

[Delphinho123]

11 minutes ago, Kiwivillan said:

A much needed win after histrionics after last game and I click on a thread to see people bagging a player. Classic VT

We could have been 2 down after 30 mins. Was a great win though.

Luiz needs replacing. Of course he does. You know that really. That’s why everyone in the transfer thread is begging for a new defensive midfielder. 

[Kiwivillan]

5 minutes ago, Delphinho123 said:

Luiz needs replacing. Of course he does. You know that really. That’s why everyone in the transfer thread is begging for a new defensive midfielder. 

Pretty sure from my numerous posts on the matter it's clear I don't agree

Edited August 21, 2021 by Kiwivillan

[Made In Aston]

10 minutes ago, Delphinho123 said:

Luiz needs replacing. Of course he does. You know that really. That’s why everyone in the transfer thread is begging for a new defensive midfielder. 

They are begging for a combative midfielder to compliment Luiz. You know we often play Mcginn and Luiz as two 6's so not sure why you are twisting the narrative. 

[rodders0223]

Not like he isn't good enough but was playing in 3rd gear today and it ain't good enough. He's a baller. He can play. He can dictate but when he arses around like he did today playing slow and sluggish and clipping balls to the opposition which he is a shite shite footballing side.

It ain't good enough man. Should he dominating. Should be dictating.  Should be absolutely bossing and running the show picking the ball up off goalkeepers and centre backs.

He ain't .

You're 23.

3rd year in the PL.

What are you waiting for!???

Edited August 21, 2021 by rodders0223

[KentVillan]

Going to be a key player for us this season. I think he’ll rise to that challenge. A lot of horse shit in this thread recently

It’s Nakamba who needs replacing (yes, with a tough, enforcer type who can control a football)… but replace Luiz? Shut up

[tom_avfc]

27 minutes ago, rodders0223 said:

Not like he isn't good enough but was playing in 3rd gear today and it ain't good enough. He's a baller. He can play. He can dictate but when he arses around like he did today playing slow and sluggish and clipping balls to the opposition which he is a shite shite footballing side.

It ain't good enough man. Should he dominating. Should be dictating.  Should be absolutely bossing and running the show picking the ball up off goalkeepers and centre backs.

He ain't .

You're 23.

3rd year in the PL.

What are you waiting for!???

He constantly picked the ball up off the back four and Martinez and completed 91% of his passes.

Against a team like Newcastle if Douglas Luiz is starring in defensive midfield then we’ve done something wrong.

He was solid and is a player whose off the ball work rate goes unnoticed. It doesn’t surprise me that we look far more structured as a team with him back.

[rodders0223]

1 minute ago, tom_avfc said:

He constantly picked the ball up off the back four and Martinez and completed 91% of his passes.

Against a team like Newcastle if Douglas Luiz is starring in defensive midfield then we’ve done something wrong.

He was solid and is a player whose off the ball work rate goes unnoticed. It doesn’t surprise me that we look far more structured as a team with him back.

32 passes in the game which feeds into what I saw live against a rigid dogshit Newcastle team. That ain't good enough.

Newcastle pressed high which I think shocked us bit aside from the 'easy' outballs he made himself available for he wasn't nearly in the game enough. He's up to speed with the pace of the game with the amount of football he has played.

He needs to start running these games else we will leave him behind.

He has the ability. He isn't using it

 

[tom_avfc]

2 minutes ago, rodders0223 said:

32 passes in the game which feeds into what I saw live against a rigid dogshit Newcastle team. That ain't good enough.

Newcastle pressed high which I think shocked us bit aside from the 'easy' outballs he made himself available for he wasn't nearly in the game enough. He's up to speed with the pace of the game with the amount of football he has played.

He needs to start running these games else we will leave him behind.

He has the ability. He isn't using it

 

Fair enough. I thought he was solid. Not at his best admittedly but it’s a new team in a number of positions and he’ll have had limited training time with them post Olympics.

I’m not convinced we’re the sort of team that’s going to rack up huge numbers of passes. We seemed pretty direct today with balls played into the channels and up to Ings pretty quickly. I don’t see that changing when Watkins and Bailey come into the side either. 

You point out the 32 passes without mentioning that only Mings in our first eleven had more than him. Like I say he wasn’t at his best today (I don’t think we were as a team to be honest) but I think you’re being a bit harsh. 

[KentVillan]

10 minutes ago, rodders0223 said:

32 passes in the game which feeds into what I saw live against a rigid dogshit Newcastle team. That ain't good enough.

Newcastle pressed high which I think shocked us bit aside from the 'easy' outballs he made himself available for he wasn't nearly in the game enough. He's up to speed with the pace of the game with the amount of football he has played.

He needs to start running these games else we will leave him behind.

He has the ability. He isn't using it

 

32 isn't awful, but yes, he wants to be averaging 60+ a game if he really wants to make his mark.

The sad thing is that we got very close to signing a player (JWP) who averaged 64 passes per game last season:

Quote

Rank	Player	Club	Nationality	Total passes
1.	Rodri	Manchester City	Spain	2,785
2.	Pierre-Emile Højbjerg	Tottenham Hotspur	Denmark	2,765
3.	Youri Tielemans	Leicester City	Belgium	2,482
4.	James Ward-Prowse	Southampton	England	2,434
5.	Granit Xhaka	Arsenal	Switzerland	2,189
6.	Bruno Fernandes	Manchester United	Portugal	2,112
7.	Fabinho	Liverpool	Brazil	2,108
8.	Ashley Westwood	Burnley	England	2,044
9.	Rúben Neves	Wolverhampton Wanderers	Portugal	1,979
10.	Stuart Dallas	Leeds United	Northern Ireland	1,961

From https://www.premierleague.com/stats/top/players/total_pass

Our man Dougie was a bit further down the list of midfielders:

Quote

31.	Douglas Luiz	Aston Villa	Brazil	1,415
32.	Oliver Norwood	Sheffield United	Northern Ireland	1,405
33.	Kalvin Phillips	Leeds United	England	1,404
34.	Jonjo Shelvey	Newcastle United	England	1,401
35.	Ezgjan Alioski	-	North Macedonia	1,377
36.	Bernardo Silva	Manchester City	Portugal	1,372
37.	Oleksandr Zinchenko	Manchester City	Ukraine	1,368
38.	John McGinn	Aston Villa	Scotland	1,367
39.	Abdoulaye Doucouré	Everton	France	1,341
40.	Paul Pogba	Manchester United	France	1,333

Personally I think his stats are decent (especially for his age) - last season was an average of 42 passes per game.

But if he wants to be a really quality deep-lying midfielder, he needs to be showing for the ball more aggressively - demanding the ball constantly. He has the ability to take control of games, as others have said.

And yes, I realise that stats don't tell the whole story. A clever pass through the lines is more important than a little lay off to the full back. But these numbers give a decent sense of who is really recycling possession well.

But imo the issue we have is more that Leeds managed to get Dallas, Klich, Alioski and Phillips into that top 40 of midfielders for total passes. Whereas we only managed Luiz and McGinn.

The answer isn't replacing Luiz - it's adding more midfield quality around him.

[Thug]

 

1 hour ago, KentVillan said:

32 isn't awful, but yes, he wants to be averaging 60+ a game if he really wants to make his mark.

The sad thing is that we got very close to signing a player (JWP) who averaged 64 passes per game last season:

From https://www.premierleague.com/stats/top/players/total_pass

Our man Dougie was a bit further down the list of midfielders:

Personally I think his stats are decent (especially for his age) - last season was an average of 42 passes per game.

But if he wants to be a really quality deep-lying midfielder, he needs to be showing for the ball more aggressively - demanding the ball constantly. He has the ability to take control of games, as others have said.

And yes, I realise that stats don't tell the whole story. A clever pass through the lines is more important than a little lay off to the full back. But these numbers give a decent sense of who is really recycling possession well.

But imo the issue we have is more that Leeds managed to get Dallas, Klich, Alioski and Phillips into that top 40 of midfielders for total passes. Whereas we only managed Luiz and McGinn.

The answer isn't replacing Luiz - it's adding more midfield quality around him.

You’ve answered your own statement really.

That list is completely pointless and proves nothing.  

For a start, it doesn’t even take into account how many games they played.

Ashley Westwood in the top 10 tells you all you need to know.  Getting the ball and passing it 5 yards, and getting it back and passing it 5 yards is a totally pointless skill that should not be celebrated.

The best holding midfielder in the world (Kante) doesn’t make the top 10.

Where are the Chelsea (European champions) players?

Where’s KDB?

 

Edited August 22, 2021 by Thug

[Laughable Chimp]

1 hour ago, KentVillan said:

32 isn't awful, but yes, he wants to be averaging 60+ a game if he really wants to make his mark.

The sad thing is that we got very close to signing a player (JWP) who averaged 64 passes per game last season:

From https://www.premierleague.com/stats/top/players/total_pass

Our man Dougie was a bit further down the list of midfielders:

Personally I think his stats are decent (especially for his age) - last season was an average of 42 passes per game.

But if he wants to be a really quality deep-lying midfielder, he needs to be showing for the ball more aggressively - demanding the ball constantly. He has the ability to take control of games, as others have said.

And yes, I realise that stats don't tell the whole story. A clever pass through the lines is more important than a little lay off to the full back. But these numbers give a decent sense of who is really recycling possession well.

But imo the issue we have is more that Leeds managed to get Dallas, Klich, Alioski and Phillips into that top 40 of midfielders for total passes. Whereas we only managed Luiz and McGinn.

The answer isn't replacing Luiz - it's adding more midfield quality around him.

I think the amount of passes a player has in a game is more indicative of the tactics being deployed more than anything. JWP gets a lot of passes because Southampton play in a way that allows him to get on the ball a lot. If he came here and replaced Dougie for example, I think you'll quickly see that number decrease without any tactical change.

But then that begs question. Why exactly is our midfield on the ball so little? It isn't just Luiz, but its the entire midfield(to which Luiz is actually the person with the most touches comparatively).

[Keyblade]

32 minutes ago, Laughable Chimp said:

I think the amount of passes a player has in a game is more indicative of the tactics being deployed more than anything. JWP gets a lot of passes because Southampton play in a way that allows him to get on the ball a lot. If he came here and replaced Dougie for example, I think you'll quickly see that number decrease without any tactical change.

But then that begs question. Why exactly is our midfield on the ball so little? It isn't just Luiz, but its the entire midfield(to which Luiz is actually the person with the most touches comparatively).

We transition very quickly. Not necessarily counterattacking but we like to get the ball to the front players as soon as we can. Smith has mentioned it before. We also make good use of long balls into the channel from Mings and Targett in particular.

[KangarooVillan]

I don’t think people really know what they want and are too happy to criticise Doug for not being it.

Thought our midfield looked a lot better with him there today and thought he had a decent outing.

[KentVillan]

40 minutes ago, Thug said:

 

You’ve answered your own statement really.

That list is completely pointless and proves nothing.  

For a start, it doesn’t even take into account how many games they played.

Ashley Westwood in the top 10 tells you all you need to know.  Getting the ball and passing it 5 yards, and getting it back and passing it 5 yards is a totally pointless skill that should not be celebrated.

The best holding midfielder in the world (Kante) doesn’t make the top 10.

Where are the Chelsea (European champions) players?

Where’s KDB?

 

Well I did actually convert a few players' total passes into passes per game to illustrate.

It's no coincidence that the top player in the list played for the team that won the league.

Kante doesn't make the top 10 because he isn't really a player who controls possession, and he missed a few games through injury. He is 23rd in the list.

KDB is missing because he was injured for a fair chunk of the season, and only managed 25 appearances. He's 46th in the list on 1,265 passes which = 50 passes per game. He'd be higher up if he had stayed fit.

As for Chelsea... Jorginho was 14th, Kovacic 15th, Mount 20th

So calling it "completely pointless" is a bit unfair. Tbh if you'd clicked on the link I shared, you could have worked this all out yourself. It's a pretty good indicator of which midfielders are controlling the play over the course of a season.

[abdulaziz1]

He did good, I missed some parts especially in the first half, but I think having Ramsey rather than Buendia helped us more. 
I think for the time being, we shall continue on the 433, I don’t care if it would mean that Watkins or Traore don’t start. We’ll develop other formations during games when needed. We can’t keep losing because we want to play Buendia as a number 10, or to start Watkins. Although I’d much prefer playing two striker rather than trying to put a winger as a number 10. 
Last season we were suffering when we played Barkley (I know his workrate is different than Buendia, but still we will lose the midfield battle). Our best consistent games last season were when Jack been the 3rd midfielder. Apart from Liverpool and Arsenal away we seemed to lose all midfield battles with Barkley (Sheff and Fulham we had Hourihane). 
I think having McGinn and Sanson infront of Luiz would make us look a lot stronger. We’ll have Buendia and Bailey to create rather than El Ghazi and Trez. We’ll also have Traore and Watkins to add to the game when needed.

[Thug]

9 minutes ago, KentVillan said:

Well I did actually convert a few players' total passes into passes per game to illustrate.

It's no coincidence that the top player in the list played for the team that won the league.

Kante doesn't make the top 10 because he isn't really a player who controls possession, and he missed a few games through injury. He is 23rd in the list.

KDB is missing because he was injured for a fair chunk of the season, and only managed 25 appearances. He's 46th in the list on 1,265 passes which = 50 passes per game. He'd be higher up if he had stayed fit.

As for Chelsea... Jorginho was 14th, Kovacic 15th, Mount 20th

So calling it "completely pointless" is a bit unfair. Tbh if you'd clicked on the link I shared, you could have worked this all out yourself. It's a pretty good indicator of which midfielders are controlling the play over the course of a season.

I’m sorry, I wasn’t meaning to have a go at you, more to say that that particular table in its current form is a little pointless.  All it states is the number of passes made.  You need per 90 stats, and a lot more stats than just a pass was made.

what if I told you that Douglas Luiz has a pass completion rate of 85%?  And I presented to you a table of pass completion statistics with him near the top, and KDB miles below him on a pass completion of 76%?  Does that mean anything?  
What if I now tell you that KDB progresses the ball With his passing by an average 278m per game compared to Douglas’ 118m per game?

Suddenly the 85% statistic means nothing.

Ashley Westwood has a pass success rate of 73%, but progresses the ball more than KDB!

The point being, you can’t read too much into a single statistic like that.

Tactics deployed make a huge difference to these kinds of stats. 

Here’s a comparison of a few players
 

https://fbref.com/en/stathead/player_comparison.cgi?request=1&sum=0&comp_type=by_type&dom_lg=1&spec_comps=big_5&player_id1=6f7d826d&p1yrfrom=2020-2021&player_id2=3515d404&p2yrfrom=2020-2021&player_id3=8b04d6c1&p3yrfrom=2020-2021&player_id4=e46012d4&p4yrfrom=2020-2021&player_id5=495945ef&p5yrfrom=2020-2021

[KentVillan]

1 hour ago, Thug said:

I’m sorry, I wasn’t meaning to have a go at you, more to say that that particular table in its current form is a little pointless.  All it states is the number of passes made.  You need per 90 stats, and a lot more stats than just a pass was made.

what if I told you that Douglas Luiz has a pass completion rate of 85%?  And I presented to you a table of pass completion statistics with him near the top, and KDB miles below him on a pass completion of 76%?  Does that mean anything?  
What if I now tell you that KDB progresses the ball With his passing by an average 278m per game compared to Douglas’ 118m per game?

Suddenly the 85% statistic means nothing.

Ashley Westwood has a pass success rate of 73%, but progresses the ball more than KDB!

The point being, you can’t read too much into a single statistic like that.

Tactics deployed make a huge difference to these kinds of stats. 

Here’s a comparison of a few players
 

https://fbref.com/en/stathead/player_comparison.cgi?request=1&sum=0&comp_type=by_type&dom_lg=1&spec_comps=big_5&player_id1=6f7d826d&p1yrfrom=2020-2021&player_id2=3515d404&p2yrfrom=2020-2021&player_id3=8b04d6c1&p3yrfrom=2020-2021&player_id4=e46012d4&p4yrfrom=2020-2021&player_id5=495945ef&p5yrfrom=2020-2021

Thanks, that's a great little site. Better than the stats I shared. I would take from that the basic point that all 4 of those players (JWP, KDB, Westwood, Hojbjerg) are better than Dougie currently:

Quote

Passing (per 90)

						Total					Short			Medium			Long
Player	Span	Nation	Pos	Squad	90s	Cmp	Att	Cmp%	TotDist	PrgDist	Cmp	Att	Cmp%	Cmp	Att	Cmp%	Cmp	Att	Cmp%	Ast	xA	A-xA	KP	1/3	PPA	CrsPA	Prog
Douglas Luiz	2020-21	br BRA	MF	Aston Villa	30.9	39.3	46.3	84.8	814.1	183.5	13.8	15.3	90.3	17.3	19.3	89.9	7.31	9.77	74.8	0.06	0.05	0.02	0.61	4.11	0.49	0.10	3.43
James Ward-Prowse	2020-21	eng ENG	MF	Southampton	38.0	55.7	68.9	80.8	998.7	264.8	24.7	27.4	90.3	24.1	26.6	90.4	5.89	13.1	45.0	0.18	0.11	0.08	1.50	4.08	0.63	0.03	4.08
Pierre Højbjerg	2020-21	dk DEN	MF	Tottenham	38.0	62.9	70.7	88.9	1191.2	321.6	25.4	27.7	91.6	28.6	31.3	91.3	8.13	10.5	77.3	0.11	0.05	0.06	0.45	6.18	0.53	0.11	5.08
Kevin De Bruyne	2020-21	be BEL	MF	Manchester City	22.2	48.1	63.3	76.0	950.9	278.5	20.4	24.1	84.3	18.8	23.1	81.4	7.93	12.6	62.9	0.54	0.46	0.08	3.56	5.77	3.56	0.41	7.79
Ashley Westwood	2020-21	eng ENG	MF	Burnley	37.9	41.3	56.1	73.7	876.8	279.2	14.6	16.4	89.1	17.1	20.6	82.9	8.52	16.9	50.3	0.08	0.13	-0.05	1.29	4.78	1.93	0.32	5.33

...which doesn't really contradict my original point, which related to Dougie's ability to control possession.

Dougie's stats are okay in that respect. JWP would have been an upgrade. Westwood is underrated. Hojbjerg is quality.

KDB isn't really a like-for-like comparison, because he was often playing in a more attacking role, where you're already higher up the pitch (so can't progress the play) and lose possession more often.

But Dougie is 23... JWP and Hojbjerg are 26, KDB is 30, Westwood is 31. Clearly Dougie is the one who's going to keep improving the most.

Edited August 22, 2021 by KentVillan

[andyjsg]

I thought he was really good yesterday, don’t know what game others on here were watching. I know football is about opinions but some on here are beyond comical. Dougie definitely has bad days, this wasn’t one of them.