Ibrox View: Won 43% defensive duels – Is Rangers defender worthy of praise after Hibs win?
Filip Helander won plenty of praise for his role in Rangers’ 1-0 Scottish Premiership win over Hibernian on Wednesday night.
The defender was again selected to start and Gers fans were full of praise for the Swede following another impressive performance.
However, his stats show that his performance perhaps wasn’t as impressive as first thought as he actually performed below average in some areas.
Firstly, it is worth noting that we believe Helander had a brilliant game and he is deserving of all of this praise.
But we want to put the performance into perspective as he didn’t vastly improve on many of his stats compared to his season averages.
According to Wyscout, Helander only won 60% of his duels against Hibs when he has been winning 63.2% of his duels per 90 minutes on average this season.
This isn’t a huge drop-off but it shows that the defender actually won fewer challenges against Hibs compared to his usual performances.
Similarly, Helander only won 43% of his defensive duels against Hibs which suggests he was actually really poor at the back even though we know this isn’t the case.
On average he wins 72.6% of his defensive duels per 90 minutes this season so there is a huge drop off here as well as the original stat appearing poor on first viewing.
In fairness, Helander won more aerial duels against Hibs than he’s been averaging this season with the Swede winning 75% of his aerial duels on Wednesday compared to his average of 68.2%.
According to Wyscout, there was also a huge increase in interceptions as Helander managed to cut out attacking moves on nine occasions against Hibs which is impressive compared to his average 4.44 interceptions per 90 minutes this season.
Though the defender did give away two fouls as the Gers came under increased pressure and Helander only usually gives away 0.97 fouls per game.
It is easy to pick apart Helander’s performance from the stats but it is a useful indicator when it comes to seeing if some praise is deserved.
Overall, 70% of Helander’s total actions against Hibs were successful compared to the average success rate of 77.6% he has been registering this season.
Again, we all know how good Helander was on Wednesday but his stats suggest that he maybe isn’t as deserving of praise as we all thought.
In other Rangers news, one club boss believes his player will sign for the Gers soon.