Crazy stat, Romero has played 5 games in PL for season and committed one foul?
Tottenham’s Cristian Romero, the calmer version - The Athletic
In the 94th minute of
Tottenham’s win against
Sheffield United,
Cristian Romero did something that would ordinarily have been entirely unremarkable. He blocked
Cameron Archer to stop a counter-attack and was penalised for a foul.
As anyone who has watched Romero since he joined Spurs two years ago will know, fouls and cards are a staple of his game.
Except this season, they haven’t been,
and that foul on Archer was, incredibly, his first of the season. This from a player who, in his previous 21 club matches, received 11 yellow and two red cards. One of the bookings in that sequence was against Sunday’s opponents
Arsenal, and he was lucky not to get a second one in that game for a foul on
Granit Xhaka that went unpunished. Looking back, it felt symptomatic of a player who in the second half of last season often seemed a step slow. His first season saw him commit a foul at a rate of 1.4 per game, which went up to 1.6 last year. It’s a very small sample size, but that figure is down to 0.2 for this campaign.
The lack of fouls is indicative of where Romero is compared to last year and the one before that. He is still extremely aggressive but he is that bit less impetuous. Tottenham’s improved structure and greater dominance of the ball also mean he is less often exposed and required to make desperate tackles
With a stronger defence around him and better structures in place this season, it’s no surprise that the fouls and cards have come down. With Spurs having more of the ball (61.2 per cent possession compared to 49.8 per cent last season) and doing a lot more attacking, Romero can more readily pick and choose his moments to make those trademark meaty tackles.
The numbers back this up. It’s a small sample size but Romero has reduced how many challenges he is making. Last season, he made more ‘true’ tackles — a combination of tackles won, challenges lost and fouls committed while attempting a tackle — than any other Premier League centre-back, with 6.5 per 1,000 opposition touches. This season, that figure is down to 5.1.
He has also been much more successful in his actions,
winning 91.7 per cent of his true tackle attempts this season compared to 58.1 per cent last season.
