View: Cristian Romero improvement underpins Tottenham rise to top of Premier League table
It took a while for Cristian Romero to find his feet in North London but the Tottenham centre-back is now finally showing the reason why he was signed from Atalanta.
Romero, 25, initially joined Spurs on a loan deal in 2021 and it was later made permanent for £42.5million. However, the first signs of the Argentina international suggested that the Lilywhites had massively overpaid.
Simon Jordan told talkSPORT in May that Romero’s defending was “scandalous” while ex-Arsenal defender Martin Keown said that he’s “lost his head” and needed someone to talk to him about his behaviour on the pitch.
He was also accused of giving up and looking “tired” in matches last term as Spurs finished eighth in the Premier League, got nowhere near any domestic silverware and failed to qualify for Europe.
It was fair criticism too because Romero, like a lot of his teammates at The Lane, was awful.
But this season, there’s a new lease of life about the Argentina World Cup winner with Tottenham currently top of the pile in the league with one of the better defensive records.
Stats by Wyscout show Romero’s improvement very clearly as at this stage of the season, he’s already won a higher percentage of his defensive duels, aerial duels, loose ball duels and passes.
But the improvement doesn’t stop there because per 90 minutes of Premier League football, Romero has won more interceptions [5.9] this season compared to last season [4.89] and has committed fewer fouls [0.73, down from 1.49].
While the drop in fouls is understandable, the fact Romero is winning more interceptions is very telling because usually when teams are playing better overall and conceding fewer goals, players’ defensive stats drop.
For example, stats by Wyscout show that among the five players with the most interceptions this season, three of them are playing for teams in the bottom half of the Premier League.
Spurs have averaged the third-highest rate of possession in the Premier League this season [61%], behind Manchester City [65%] and Chelsea [61.4%].
However, they have conceded 10.23 shots per 90 minutes, which is higher than that of Fulham [9.43] and Everton [9.59] and more on par with Nottingham Forest [10.77].
Therefore, Spurs’ xGA (expected goals against) is fairly high at 11.73, the 11th highest in the Premier League. However, their actual goals conceded stat is on eight, meaning the North London club is vastly over-performing defensively.
As shown in the chart above, Tottenham’s white bar is on the right-hand side of the green line, meaning their defence is over-performing. The more the bar is white, the more the defence is stopping goals they are expected to concede.
Admittedly, Spurs’ difference between xGA and actual goals conceded isn’t the best in the Premier League – but it is easily better than all of the other big-six clubs.
Romero has played a major role in that alongside new signing Micky van de Ven in the centre-back area, underpinning the incredible transformation the Argentine has undergone since Postecoglou was brought in.
A lot of his improvement could probably be due to Postecoglou but that shouldn’t take anything away from Romero himself, who’s clearly knuckled down and worked hard over the summer to prove why Spurs paid so much money for him.
In other Tottenham news, James Maddison and Martin Odegaard have been compared after Jermaine Jenas shared a “world-class” prediction for one of them.