The Weekly Think Tank: What do we do about this Maya Yoshida thing?
I do not think there is has been a more devastating time in my life when I saw Virgil Van Dijk go down with an injury. The disbelief that we had sold our other center back(He who shall not be named) and our other one going down with injury was surely the ending of our season. “Fear not though” states Maya Yoshida, as he takes the position head on with grace and a strong work ethic.
Maya Yoshida was not our plan A or our plan B, but he has now made himself into quite the name. It is a question that will be asked throughout the entire offseason: Should Maya Yoshida be in the starting lineup next season? I will dive into the question in the second edition of: The Weekly Think Tank.
Mentally, he is as good as you’d want a centre-back to be. He understands his positioning on the pitch. This is one of the components that I believe is his best attribute, his overall positioning. One of the things that a lot of center backs in the top flight fail to grasp is their positioning. It requires a skill that is both independent and dependent of the people around you.
One stat, however, justifies the tactical change that Puel has put into place. Yoshida is only averaging 1.1 tackles per game. This is a number that is shocking for a center back to have.
With center backs such as Van Dijk, they will be one of the first ones to step up to the plate. Before Van Dijk’s injury he was averaging 2.3 tackles per game. Although this does not seem like a significant step-up, it is much more visual on the playing field.
Yoshida, overall, is playing extremely well. His style of playing at the moment is passive. This is not necessarily a bad thing depending on what you are needing out of a center defender. He will not take any chances, but he will always work harder than the other player. His style of play will not make any mistakes on the ball, but may make several mistakes off of the ball.
In the previous game against West Brom, he won 5 out of 7 of his aerial duels. These proved to be critical as one of those aerial duels could have led to the goal that equalized for the Baggies. One part of his game that struggles his is inability to push you up the pitch and successful play the long ball.
This season, he is averaging 2.0 accurate long balls per game, while also averaging 4.1 inaccurate long balls per game. This sort of inconsistency of pushing the ball up the field is something that will limit Southampton’s potential going forward.
Although you may not need your center back to be the most successful long ball passer, you need to feel comfortable that they can when a counter attack is available.
It is truthful to say that Yoshida should be our potential MVP for the season. We could have easily collapsed as an organization when we saw the defender combination of Jack Stephens and Maya Yoshida.
But it has been nothing short of exciting. There have been several moments in the season when fans were growing weary of a potential relegation battle. However, we now have seen what Yoshida can bring us and the type of quality we can expect out of him. He has become a hero in the eyes of Saints’ fans.
I do not think it is wise to go against what Maya Yoshida has done. In the previous years before this, he was someone that we feared of bringing into the game. Now, Yoshida has truly proved himself to be someone that is worth trusting. He is now in a conversation to whether we should start him going forward.
I believe that Yoshida is someone that is an amazing backup. Someone that we should feel comfortable having in case someone goes down to injury. I do not think, however, that he is the center back that we will want going forward.
We are a club that continues to strive for success and although Maya Yoshida has all of the intangibles, he does not necessarily have the talent to be our regularly starting center back. Other teams could use a center back like Yoshida.
However, with the high expectations we have, and the will to taste European football again, I do not believe he is the center back we should be starting going forward.