David Luiz vs Gary Cahill

Who deserves to start for the European Champions?

When Gary Cahill joined Chelsea in January 2012, an argument arose – ‘Who should partner as a centre-back along-side JT, David Luiz or Gary Cahill?’ Both players are young, pacy defenders, but for now, only one of them can play when Terry is available.

There’s no question really that David Luiz, on his day, is a world class centre back – he has all the attributes; pace, strength, tackling, heading, even flair. But the biggest eyebrow raiser towards Luiz is how often ‘his day’ comes about. Many Chelsea, and general football fans, feel that the number 4 is far too inconsistent to play for a club of the Blues standard. Of course this is a true assumption, however, his recent performances toward the end of last season and his performances in Chelsea’s cup runs suggest otherwise.

From battling relegation with Bolton to winning the Champions League with Chelsea, Gary Cahill’s experienced an unforgettable 2011/12 season. Many struggle to find fault in any of Cahill’s performances, in both Chelsea and England colours (before being pushed by Mertens and missing the Euro’s). However, unlike Luiz, he rarely grabs the headlines for any right or wrong reasons, after a fairly little money move in January from Bolton, nobody expected great things, and his solid performances often go unnoticed when selected.

Ultimately, although both centre-backs are of high ability (on most days), only one is chosen and currently RDM seems to think David Luiz has the edge, but one or two more bad days at the office, and he could well be axed from the starting line-up. Using Opta’s stats from last years Premier League season, I take a look at whom, statistically speaking, should have their place cemented in Chelsea’s starting line-up…

In general, David Luiz was the superior of the two Centre-Halves, taking into account that Gary Cahil played around a third more (2494) minutes than Luiz had (1649). Luiz contributed more key passes (9), than Cahill (3), and more assists too (1 to 0), Luiz’s pass completion rate, surprisingly was also greater than Gary’s (85% to 79%) and even more surprisingly, he performed less unsuccessful passes in the defensive third (9) than Cahill’s 24. However, unsurprisingly, Luiz attempted far more dribbles than Gary Cahill, (31 to 5), but Gary had higher dribble completion rate (80%) then David’s 61%, an area for improvement for David Luiz.

Moving on to more defensive statistics; both Luiz and Cahill averaged a similar amount of duels completed, (56% to 58%), with David Luiz being more consistent with aerial duels (72%) than Gary (61%). Both defenders averaged 53% of ground duels completed, and also sharing similar tackle completion rate, (Luiz’s 82% to Cahill’s 79%). During the campaign, the Brazilian made 2 last-man tackles, whereas the Englishman made just 1.

Perhaps the most impressive stats of all however, are those in favour of David Luiz, showing that despite playing around 850 minutes less than Cahill (equalling around 9 and a half games), he managed to still perform more interceptions and recoveries than Gary Cahill, (56 to 53 and 222 to 200).

Opta’s stats back-up Roberto Di-Matteo’s current decision of starting Luiz over Cahill, and perhaps have converted many minds of supporters deluded in this argument, in the favour of the man with the curly haired perm.

L. Urso-Baiarda