Ron Vlaar has featured in 10 games for Aston Villa so far this season. It total, Vlaar has played 900 minutes of football for Aston Villa, so far this season. In total he has helped keep 3 clean sheet’s for the Aston Villa defence, more than any other Aston Villa defender. It appears an appropriate time to evaluate Vlaar’s progress for Aston Villa so far.
I’ll be looking at some statistics provided by ‘Whoscored’ to analysis Vlaar’s performance in the League so far this season. Vlaar currently holds the 7th best rating for Aston Villa, his average score is 6.94. This doesn’t sound too good, but Vlaar has done more good then bad. Vlaar has one of the best passing success rate at Aston Villa, with a score of 83.6%. What’s more impressive is that Vlaar has completed the second most amount of successful long-ball passes (8.3 per game) and Vlaar has the third highest passing average of 36.6 passes per game.
It get’s even better. In defence Vlaar has improved aspects of his game he struggled with last season. Vlaar doesn’t concede nearly as many fouls as he did last season, per game Vlaar concedes 0.4 fouls. The Dutch man has one of the highest average clearances per game out of any other defender (7.9) and has only gotten dribbled past by 0.3 opponents in all 10 games.
Having said that, Vlaar has won the least amount of offsides (0.8) and has blocked less shots then fellow defenders Clark and Baker (0.6).
Now I want to get away from the statistics and give my own little personal review of Vlaar’s performances. I reckon he’s been our most consistent and arguably, best defender. He has experience, bosses the defence well and has been a rock in the back. I might even go as far and say that he may deserve his title of ‘Concrete Ron’ back. He has built a solid partnership with Clark, Okore and Baker, he has also had to work with Lowton, Bacuna and Luna. Vlaar has added stability to a very-injury prone Villa defence and I have to give credit where it’s due. The only thing I’d want him to do a little bit more, is perhaps threaten a bit more from set pieces. He has scored goals in the past and I hope he can add a few more to his Villa goal tally this season.
This will piss ohh ahh off positive peace on Ron cock up
I said give him time,Oohah was on his back in the beginning but even Oohah has begun to see his worth, Ron Vlaar a long with Cuzan is the starting of a good defence. we still need creative midfield player’s, that is something that’s showing up today’s game, ulv.
I hope it’s noted that I have acknowledged how much better vlaar has become. I think World Cup year has made him get his arse into gear. Still at fault for a lot of things especially defensive headers going straight to opposition and still looks like a mistake waiting to happen. But credit where it’s due he has gone from a 3 out if 10 to a 7 out of 10 player so not bad.
Fecking hell someone has hacked into oohahh’s account..
He will be severely pi$$ed off with someone saying uch things on his behalf 🙂
Better this season, never has been or will be top class but then again if he was, he wouldn’t be playing for Villa.
Unlike the likes of dunne and collins, he is also a good role model for the younger players.
have to agree with the above comments, he has really upped his game this season. ive not been vlarrs biggest fan but credit where its due, happy he;s proving me wrong this season and his partnership with Clarke(who is also much improved) is going well considering we are now already on our 3rd choice partnership after Baker and Okores injuries.
Not trying to be a party pooper in anyway – as I think it’s always good to lift the pressure off our players and create positivity, but how do these stats compare to other good performers in the league?
Are we saying these stats prove he’s the best of a piss poor bunch, or his stats prove he is actually a good defender when compared with others in the league? I’d be more interested to see that, than how he compares to villa players.
Fair point, next time I’m doing one of these reviews. I’ll definitely to that with all the other reviews.
That would also be very interesting.
Interesting maybe Adam but would that be a true reflect ion to the likes of the big guns, I would think against the likes of Terry ,Vidic, and many others. You can only go by the games he plays on the day, to compare him to last year looking good no doubt about that, but if its against the likes of Dunne, Collins, think he would struggle to show who and what was the better, yes could be interesting?.
There are always uncontrollable variables like that, but I’m a big fan of stats (I work in big data) – and they usually do offer a pretty good picture of what’s going on. If we’re talking about the physical things they do, then I think it is possible to see how they stand apart of other players, whether past and present, villa or not.
Well, maybe not against the top defenders of the league but I’m surely going to look how our players compare to other Premier League teams.
I’ll be doing that with El Ahmadi, he’s also played 10 games so that’ll happen.
I was no fan of Dunnes as everyone knows but at least dunne did well for first season. Dunne at his best is better than vlaar at his best but wouldn’t give tuppence for either of them. Too error prone.
I don’t suppose it crossed your mind that Dunne has vast amounts of expierence of playing top flight football in England where as last season it was Vlaar’s first season playing top flight football in this country. He’s not the first player to of struggled in his first season and been much much better in his 2nd season and I’m pretty certain he won’t be the last. Maybe that’s the reason why next season you’ll probably see a vast improvement in the lads that were signed in the summer that do far haven’t set the team alight. Like most people on here say give them time. 🙂
Yawn yep that will be on your epitaph give em time! Boring
Best if a piss poor bunch. A lot of his clearance headers are awful and always have no power on them or go straight to opponent. It was his poor header to Westwood that put him under pressure that led to the goal
Sorry so you slag him cause his headers never reach one of our player but then also slag him when it reaches westwood and westwood runs the wrong way and is so piss weak that he loses the ball in a terrible area and still its only vlars fault? Makes perfect sense i suppose if your an idiot wind up merchant that contradicts himself at every stupid opportunity. And Clark and bacuna have hardly been piss poor! But i suppose if they are a villa player they are automatically a piss poor player right?
Clark’s improved and possibly our best centre half now okore is injured. Bacuna is average. Virtually all our players are average at best. Says it all when I got a letter from the club to get a corporate box and they put on email that I can meet villa legends like mark kinsella! Who!
In a few years I will get the email asking me to me villa legends like kae, bennet and krapjack!!
I remember posting a link last season that compared Vlaar with Baker and Clark.
Vlaar came out on top in nearly every area.
He also came out very favourably against some top defenders in a couple of areas, although I forget exactly what they were.
I’ve never thought he was as bad as Oohah made out, but what I am happy about is that we all think he’s improved.
Mind you, if he hadn’t, he’d have been on borrowed time, imo.