Five Premier League unsung heroes
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Who are the unsung heroes of the Premier League this season?
hello and welcome to this sky sports football podcast where this week we're picking out some of the unsung heroes of this premier league season these are the players who have perhaps gone under the radar haven't generated many headlines but deserve praise for the displays i've been putting in i'm peter smith the sky sports football features editor and joining me to discuss these unheralded stars are features writer adam bait and stats guru matt cheatham adam you on the line there yes i'm here yeah good to be on with two of the uh
unheralded stars of Sky Sports.
And Matt Cheetham, how are you?
I'm all good. Stats guru. I think you might have upgraded me last time you went with stats expert. Puts a little bit of pressure on to actually nail these stats with no football going on, but I'll do my best.
Well, that reflects your excellent performance on the podcast. We're expecting great things from our stats guru this time around. So Matt, why don't you kick us off, Matt, then? And we're going to start with a Sheffield United centre-back. Now recently we ran a series of features on the team of the season and Jack O'Connell made the cut for the team. That was the team that we selected on this podcast a few weeks ago. But it's one of O'Connell's teammates, Matt, that we're focusing on today. Who's that?
Yes, Chris Basham. Sheffield United feel like such a cohesive unit under Chris Wilder. Instead of having many individual star names at all. So at times it kind of feels like half their team could qualify for something like this. Yeah, I guess Basham is certainly one of their leading players. And given O'Connell got in your team, I guess Basham, perhaps a slightly less sexy pick at 31 now, goes a little bit more under the radar. Certainly Sheffield United stand out defensively. I think they've scored 10 to 15 goals fewer than all the other teams around them. So it's certainly their defence that has led them to some of their success this season. They're second best in terms of goals conceded, conceding fewer than Liverpool.
And of those two players... He and O'Connell make such different contributions in their now well-known roles as underlapping centre-backs to any other Premier League central defenders, really.
That's the buzz phrase, isn't it? I think when anyone talks about Sheffield United this season, it's about the overlapping and underlapping centre-backs. You've got to throw that one in at some point, haven't you? Absolutely.
They contribute so much more in attack. They cover far more ground. I think Basham covers 10.8 kilometres per 90 minutes, which is the most of any centre-back, and actually second of all defenders behind Brighton's Dan Byrne, who's been playing at left-back. But when you really go over that, it's ridiculous for a centre-back to be covering more ground than practically every full-back in the division, who you just assume would be going forward and back with most attacks. So, yeah, I find that especially impressive. And in terms of his stats individually... It's always a little bit tricky to lord a defender based on anything cumulative. That often kind of just highlights the team style, or certainly anything over individual proficiency.
One of the things all of his numbers do show is compared to his teammates, just how busy he is. He's the one making the most defensive actions per 90 minutes, the most heavy clearances, tackles interceptions. And it just gives that impression that he's the one leading from the front, defending the box, defending from the front. And yeah, I think underlines how central he is to their success at the back.
Yeah, absolutely. Adam, we spoke or Matt just mentioned there about the amount of distance that Bashim's covering. And that sort of points, I guess, to the style that Chris Wilder wants his defenders to defend in. So does he deserve a lot of credit then for this defensive record that Sheffield United have got? As Matt said, 25 conceded in just 28 games this season. It's a remarkably impressive record for a team playing their first season back in the Premier League, isn't it?
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