Oriol Romeu is outperforming all Premier League opposition and stats prove it

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Oriol Romeu is currently outperforming all defensive midfielders in the Premier League. We look at the stats to show why that is.

Southampton are shining this season. They’re fourth after eight games, unbeaten in six, and playing very well. Even after Danny Ings got injured, they rebounded with a comfortable win.

So we recently wrote about one of the reasons for that. The Saints are the most effective team in the Premier League at taking advantage of a press, recovering more loose balls than anyone else.

They top the charts as a team, one place ahead of Liverpool, and have three individuals in the top five. And it’s worth honing in on one of those individuals a little more.

Oriol Romeu

Oriol Romeu leads the league in recovering loose balls. He picked them up 125 times over eight appearances – three more than anyone else. It’s a fantastic sign for Southampton, if only because that’s exactly how they want their system to work.

They want to put pressure on the opposition high up the pitch – something they do well. They have pressed the seventh-most in their attacking third, and the third-most in the middle.

Doing so rushes opposition players into making poor passes and Romeu, as the sweeper in front of the back four, gets in position to collect them. Romeu topping the charts in that regard shows how wonderfully well it works.

But the Spaniard is more than that. He also applies pressure himself – the fifth-most presses in midfield. The outstanding stat, though, is Romeu topping the charts for tackles in the Premier League.

He’s made 31 and the interesting thing is that only 12 of those resulted in winning the ball back. It suggests Romeu usually tackles it out of play or back to the opposition.

Not that either is bad – Romeu is there to stop counter-attacks. He does that by sweeping up loose balls, primarily, but will also stop them physically with a tackle.

Romeu also has seven interceptions this season, and his 38 tackles and interceptions combined is good enough for third in the league. Only one behind N’Golo Kante, in fact.

So Southampton can lay claim to arguably the best-performing defensive midfielder in the Premier League right now. Few players can match his numbers and fewer still fit into their team’s style of play so ideally.