I have traditionally looked at tackles + intercepts total.

however yesterday I looked at the stats for the melbourne victory sfc game and if you just looked at tackles + intercepts you would think mv were significantly better defensively. Funny enough most stats sites dont even include missed tackles so it is hard to keep track of this aspect of overseas aussie defenders

Also some player considered good defenders have relatively low tackles + intercepts

What was unusual was the number of missed tackles in the mv sfc game where mv were way way way above normal. Here only Geria was a good performer by that metric

One way to include missed tackles is to look at 1v1 defensive duels (tackles - missed tackles) however I'm starting to wonder if even this underestimates how detrimental missed tackles are to a defense

Iirc our best defenders that I have looked at (all positions) for missed tackles are spira mooy and franjic. Of these only mooy does well on tackles + intercepts metric whereas spira does ok and franjic does poorly

valeri and sfc's italian defender both have very low tackling rates but don't make many mistakes and they are considered good defenders at least by many on this forum

what are peoples thoughts :-k

Edited by grazorblade: 28/1/2014 02:46:39 AM