Reviewing Federico Fazio

With the exception of Danny Rose and, to a slightly lesser extent, Eric Dier and Jan Vertonghen, the Tottenham defence has been a major cause for concern this season. Only Leicester, Aston Villa, Newcastle and QPR have conceded more goals than Spurs in the Premier League, and Tottenham’s rate of shots conceded has increased from 11.13 per game last season to 12.97 this season.

Of course, it is likely some of this is due to the lack of a proper defensive midfielder to help shield the back four (discussed below). However, it also seems likely that some blame must be apportioned to Tottenham’s defensive unit.

One target of recent criticism has been Federico Fazio. The Argentinian centre back was bought from Sevilla in the summer of 2014 for £8m, having been a defensive mainstay of a Europa League winning side. Several profiles were written about him at that time (i.e. here and here), most of them focussing on his physicality, aggressiveness, aerial prowess and technical ability. The general consensus was that Fazio possessed all of the attributes necessary to quickly make the transition from La Liga to the Premier League.

The profiles also highlighted some of Fazio’s weaknesses, most notably his lack of recovery pace. However, it is not Fazio’s lack of pace which has come in for criticism in recent weeks, but his failure to win key headers. This is somewhat surprising since Fazio’s aerial prowess is supposed to be his main defensive attribute.

However, after getting beaten in the air by Christian Benteke in the recent loss to Aston Villa, the former Tottenham striker Garth Crooks noted:

Federico Fazio just half turns his back. If you clash heads, you clash heads. You have to attack the ball. He doesn’t want to get hurt. It’s unforgiveable for a defender to do that.

The same could also be said about his failure to jump against Graziano Pelle in Tottenham’s recent draw at Southampton. With rumours that he might be for sale in the summer, the questions which must be asked are: (i) has Fazio really been as bad as has recently been suggested? and, (ii) are there any adjustments Tottenham could make to get the most out of their Argentinian centre back?

A look at the baseline defensive statistics would – perhaps unexpectedly – suggest that Fazio is performing better than any of Tottenham’s other central defensive options this season. Thus, he has the highest rate of interceptions, clearances and blocks, and his aerial duel success rate is extremely high (to put it into perspective, John Terry also has a 72% aerial duel success rate this season).

(stats from Squawka and WhoScored)

Of course, some of these stats may be misleading. After all, a player with terrible positioning and anticipation will probably need to make more tackles and blocks, while Fazio’s extremely high clearance rate might suggest that he’s hoofing the ball away rather than trying to control it and pass to a team mate. The slightly misleading statistical success of Fazio was noted in an article for Squawka by Nick Harris-Fry:

[Fazio’s] statistical success is grounded on shaky foundations… it is not backed up by his other, less quantifiable, defensive work. The 27 year-old is prone to lapses in concentration, possesses a turning circle wider than that of many small aircraft, and struggles to read the play when the ball is kept on the ground. He is also bone-achingly slow…

However, if there is no obvious statistical basis to Fazio’s weaknesses this season, then surely it is possible that we are subjectively magnifying them on the basis of a few bad performances? To avoid this, I would suggest that it might be worth looking at some other metrics.

I present below some other statistics in which Fazio does not come out too well. Due to the fact that Dier and Chiriches have played a significant amount of minutes at full back – while Younes Kaboul has seen little action at all – the best comparison with Fazio is clearly Vertonghen.

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Now it might be suggested that, for example, take on success rate might not be the best metric for judging a central defender. However, since Fazio is normally attempting these take ons in his own half, his high failure rate is particularly significant. Losing the ball to the opposition attackers can often lead to scoring opportunities, as the video below shows.

The same can be said for a few of the other statistics gathered in that table: more errant passes mean more chances for the opposition to intercept, and the same is also true for bad controls. Moreover Fazio has, along with Eric Dier, committed the most defensive errors in the Premier League for Tottenham this season with 4.

In terms of the individual statistics I have access to, however, it is still hard to avoid the impression that Fazio has, on the whole, been a solid defensive performer this season.

One way to gain more insight into Fazio’s performances, however, is to look at how team metrics alter when he plays. Most significantly, after crunching the numbers my analysis suggests that Tottenham have conceded 14 shots per game in the Premier League (of which 5.2 are on target) with Fazio in the team, and 11.8 shots (of which 4 are on target) without him.

This means that the opposition team are achieving 25% more shots on target when Fazio is playing, and that would surely suggest that his overall contribution to the defence leaves something to be desired.

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Now that we have a statistic which quantifiably proves that Fazio is something of a defensive liability at the moment (although it remains difficult to quantify exactly what he does which is so wrong), it is worth speculating for a moment exactly why a much-lauded Europa League winning defender has played so poorly for Tottenham this season. I would suggest that in essence there are two main reasons for this:

(1) Lack of a defensive midfielder.
(2) Tottenham’s high defensive line.

Lack of a defensive midfielder

Tottenham’s double pivot of Ryan Mason and Nabil Bentaleb has not offered a great deal of defensive cover this season, as has been noted by a number of commentators. By contrast, the Sevilla team of 2013-14 had a number of ‘true’ defensive midfielders who acquired significant minutes, among them Daniel Carrico and Stephane Mbia.

It seems likely that many of Fazio’s problems this season – not to mention the Tottenham defensive unit as a whole – have been caused by a lack of adequate midfielder cover.

Tottenham’s high line

Sevilla in the 2013-14 season operated with a deeper defensive line that Mauricio Pochettino’s team this season. As can be seen in the Squawka heat map below, Fazio conducted the majority of his play on the edge of, or just outside, his penalty area.

This helps to reduce the liability of his extremely slow recovery pace as it is much harder for the opposition team to knock balls in behind for strikers to run on to. It is also worth pointing out that Elche finished 16th in La Liga last season, so this was not a match in which Sevilla sat deep against a superior team.

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By contrast, I have created a heat map for Fazio below showing his match action zones in the recent home loss against Manchester City. In a match against one of the most lethal – and quickest – strikers in world football, Fazio clearly spent most of the match operating 10-15 yards further up the pitch compared to his positioning for Sevilla. It is surely not Fazio’s fault that he is being asked to play in a more advanced position, and it is clearly a problem with player recruitment – or Pochettino’s team selection – that a notably slow defender is being made to play in a high line.

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Overall, it is clear that while Fazio’s game does possess a number of flaws at the moment – most notably, a tendency to miss-control the ball, to fail to successfully take on players, and to commit defensive mistakes – part of the reason for this is that he is being asked to play within a system with which he is unfamiliar and which he is not physically suited to.

In order to see the best of Federico Fazio in a Tottenham shirt it seems likely that Pochettino needs to adopt a slightly deeper defensive line (perhaps not a bad idea considering the number of goals conceded this season) and to provide him with proper defensive cover in midfield (ditto).

Failing this, I would suggest that Fazio should be moved on for the sake of his career this summer, as it is unlikely that we will ever see him recapture his Sevilla form in the current tactical system.