As Manchester City prepare for the first Champions League final in the club's history, Richard Jolly looks at the numbers behind FWA Footballer of the Year Ruben Dias' excellent debut campaign.
For the first time in 686 games as a manager, Pep Guardiola saw one of his sides concede five goals in a game. His response was quick: he signed Ruben Dias two days later.
One was not the result of the other: Manchester City had been searching for a centre-back all summer and the move for Dias was at an advanced stage before Leicester’s historic 5-2 win at the Etihad Stadium.
He was not a knee-jerk signing, but part of a strategy. Yet while he was not even City’s first choice – Kalidou Koulibaly and Jules Kounde occupied higher positions on the shortlist – now he should top other tables.
Because Dias has been the outstanding footballer of the English season.
From the shambles of the Leicester defeat, City have embraced solidity.
After the laments about how Vincent Kompany was not replaced, City now have a situation where Aymeric Laporte does not even figure in their strongest side.
Much like Virgil van Dijk at Liverpool, Dias shows the difference a defensive colossus can make.
City’s defeat to Brighton late in the season marred his record a little. It was the first time City had conceded three goals with Dias playing, even if they were reduced to 10 men for 80 minutes.
How much has Dias improved Manchester City
But it was his first dead rubber, his only appearance since the title was secured. With more at stake, City conceded 16 goals in Dias’ first 30 Premier League matches.
They conceded 32 in the 30 before his arrival. View it that way and he has made their defence twice as good. Arguably, he has been two players in one, because the best form of John Stones’ career has come alongside Dias, acting as the junior partner to a man four years younger than him.
When Stones and Dias have played together, City have conceded 12 goals in 25 games; even that, including the loss in Sussex, represents a decline after beginning with six successive clean sheets and 12 in 13.
With Stones and Dias in the starting 11, City have 22 wins in 25 and two defeats, to Manchester United and Brighton. It gives them an 88 percent win rate as a partnership.
What do the stats say about Dias' impact?
The collective statistics are the best measure of Dias’ impact, but they cannot measure how reassuring a presence a defender is or how authoritative he is.
The reality, too, is that those who play for teams such as City have less defending to do than some of their peers.
Over 150 players have won more Premier League tackles than Dias this season: they include such unlikely suspects as Ayoze Perez, Grady Diangana and Gylfi Sigurdsson. He wins just 23 percent of his tackles against dribbles. Dias’ 44 blocks put him outside the top 80, 69 behind the runaway leader Aaron Wan-Bissaka and trailing a host of centre-backs.
That reflects his style of play. Front-foot defenders get in more tackles and blocks – with Leeds’ man-marking system, Luke Ayling scores highly – whereas Dias represents the reliable last line. It is about quality of contributions, rather than quantity.
Smarterscout gives him ratings of 81 and 74 for defensive quality, just 28 and 10 for quantity, depending on whether he is a right or left-sided centre-back. On the left, he gets a rating (out of 100, compared to others who play in the same position, and in terms of volume) of just 14 for disrupting opposition moves and eight for aerial duels. Those go up to 34 and 18 respectively when he is on the right, but they are still low.
It shows Dias has a more interventionist approach when he plays to the right of Laporte instead of to the left of Stones.
But that is not to say he can’t do the defensive side of the job. In last season’s Champions League, playing for a Benfica team who lacked City’s talent, he got ratings of 68 and 70 for aerial duels.
The paradox of the Dias deal, perhaps, is that he has proved the best destructive centre-back without having to do much of the destructive work himself and while being the best constructive one.
Dias is Pep's perfect centre-back
Guardiola has certain demands of a centre-back. Dias has proved both the best distributor - averaging 84.4 passes per game with a completion rate of 93 percent – in his position and the most prolific; in the entire division only Andrew Robertson and Rodri have completed more passes than his 2410.
His total of 165 that have entered the final third puts him second only to Harry Maguire among regular centre-backs.
Only nine have gone directly into the penalty box, but that illustrates his role: as part of the build-up, rather than being involved remotely near the end of a move.
Dias has the highest xG Chain (the total expected goals of every possession a player is involved in) of any centre-back in the division.
Annual awards are not given on such basis.
Sometimes they reflect a player’s symbolic importance and Dias is a symbol of City’s transformation of their defensive improvement and how they built from the back after the thrashing by Leicester.
