Oriol Romeu, the La Masia graduate, has so far been an unexpected but integral part for Saints this season – the club briefly topping the Premier League table on Friday night after a 2-0 win over Newcastle United.
Cast your mind back to the end of the previous season, and many would’ve considered the Spaniard a surplus to supplies. The 29-year-old only was not featuring in the first team, and was benched by a Tottenham bound Pierre-Emile Hojbjerg, who had shown lack of commitment with his desire to leave the south-coast club at the end of the 2019/20 campaign.
It would seem that even Southampton boss Ralph Hasenhuttl potentially thought the same of Romeu, given the numerous links to central-midfielders over the transfer window – and the eventual signing of Ibrahima Diallo, paved a potential path for Romeu to be dropped to the bench once again, after just regaining a first-team spot.
But eight games now into the Premier League season, Romeu has now featured in every game and played 682 minutes of football – third for Southampton, and only to his midfield partner in James Ward-Prowse (JWP) and right-back Kyle Walker-Peters, who have both played the maximum of 720 minutes.
So what has been the change of fate for Oriol Romeu, between the end of last season and this current campaign?
Defensive Record
For one, the partnership that has been formed between Romeu and JWP in the centre-of-the-park has proven to be quite aggressive and hard tackling – Southampton place third for tackles in the 2020/21 Premier League campaign at 151, behind the likes of Leeds and Everton respectfully. With Romeu having contributed 31 tackles towards that tally, which is the second most in the Premier League and a fifth of Southampton’s tackles in total.
The knock on affect of this has been that Ralph Hasenhuttl’s men are tied 1st for most clean sheets this season on four with Wolves and Aston Villa – and have conceded a total of 12 goals in eight top flight games, a rate of about 1.5 conceded per game (pg) and a slight increase of last campaign’s 1.57 pg.
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However, when analysing the stats from Southampton’s six game unbeaten run; Romeu’s defensive attributes have guided the team to conceding six goals in that mentioned run, and therefore a conceding rate of 1 goal pg – as well four of those games ended in clean sheets suggesting Saints could become a tough team to crack.
There have obviously been games where Saints have conceded three or more goals, but all of these have been to other Premier League high-flyers in Chelsea, Aston Villa and Tottenham – and given the nature of this campaign, high scoring games are a running theme for any team it would seem.
Experience
Despite the face that Southampton have invested in the young Frenchman Ibrahima Diallo, the 21-year-old might’ve had a tough time being chucked straight into the starting line-up – especially given that he would be adapting to a new country and way of life.
Meaning that Romeu, who is in his 6th season with Southampton has the know-how to play in the Premier League – and after all was nominated as Saints Player of the Season by fellow players and fans only just as far back as 2017, arguably three years is a long-time in football terms; but it is an example of the standard of which the Spaniard can play at.
But going off of how Southampton have one of the better defensive record’s in the league, and the fact that the goals conceded rate is lower to last season when Romeu didn’t feature as much; there seems to be a correlation that when the 29-year-old features, that the team are more defensively assured.
Conclusion
For the meantime, whilst Southampton have young-talent such as the mentioned Diallo developing in the wings, and other youth prospects such as Will Smallbone and Alexandre Jankewitz being bleed in – having a highly professional individual such as Romeu can only be a dream for a manager such as Ralph Hasenhuttl.
Especially one that has evidently sured up the defensive line and formed a hard-working, gritty play style with Saints captain JWP in such a short space of time of playing together again – continuation of it could continue to see Hasenhuttl’s men reap the benefits of this and provide a platform to keeping more clean sheets and therefore in turn good results.