The stats that suggest Sunderland missed Luke O'Nien in Birmingham win

From the moment that it became apparent in the summer that Sunderland were going to move Danny Batth out of the side in favour of Luke O’Nien, debate among fans has raged.

The terms of the debate has always been simple: Batth is a ‘proper defender,’ and O’Nien isn’t, so get that round peg in the round hole and get on with it.

Batth was also Sunderland’s player of the season last year, an award decided by a fan vote, so it’s easy to see why, to many, it was an affront to common sense for the club to place their trust in O’Nien.

Such was the prominence of the debate over the summer, Tony Mowbray decided it best to explain his decision to the press.

"He brings composure, he brings quality with the ball, he sees the spaces and steps into them. He steps past the striker with the ball and picks the pass into midfield, which helps the fluency of our team.

"With total respect to Danny, that's not his game. Danny's strengths are dealing with set plays, goal kicks and organising the defence and the midfield in front.

"At this moment in time, with total honesty to the supporters, I'm picking Ballard and O'Nien with all of the players there because I want them as the central defenders at this moment time."

The reason was therefore clear: Quality on the ball and advancing the team with passes into midfield

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With total respect to Danny Batth as well, I think few fans would argue that he brings those things to a team. He brings plenty of other things to a defence, but not the things the coach needed to play the football he wanted his team to produce.

The debate essentially ended when Batth was moved on to Norwich on deadline day, although O’Nien’s defending has been questioned at times during the first third of the season.

Against Birmingham, though, we got an opportunity to assess the value of what O’Nien does bring by virtue of its absence, and it was certainly interesting.

Luke O’Nien ‘advancing the team’

It’s incredibly hard to compare two players when one has played a single game and the other has a bigger statistical sample size. It has real limitations and it’s important to acknowledge that from the start.

What you can say without statistics is that Sunderland definitely had less control of the ball from the back than we have been used to this season. Birmingham had an aggressive high press – almost overly-aggressive for their own good really – but Sunderland did struggle more than usual to manoeuvre the ball out of their own half.

The statistics certainly confirm that O’Nien has been crucial in how well the team have done that this season. The below table shows the progressive passing yards per 90 minutes from O'Nien and Dan Ballard from the first 15 games of the season.

Progressive passing yards/90	Progressing passing yards/90 (Home)
Luke O'Nien	515.4	634.7
Dan Ballard	353.3	388.2

Clearly, O'Nien is doing the bulk of the work there in Sunderland moving the ball from defence to midfield. That's what he gives you and why he's in the team, so you would expect to see it.

Of the two defenders to replaced O'Nien and Ballard against Birmingham, it was definitely Jenson Seelt who did most to fill O'Nien's shoes with 456 progressing passing yards. Nectarios Triantis was less comfortable here with 308.

While Seelt's 456 is impressive, it's also worth noting that, with the exception of the Southampton game (which was a bit of an anomaly in terms of statistics), it would have been O'Nien's poorest figure of the season at home so far.

There is also value at looking at how much Sunderland's centre backs advanced the play as a pair against Birmingham compared to the rest of the home games this season. The below table shoes just that, again in yards.

Opposition	O'Nien PrgDst	Ballard PrgDst	Total PrgDst
Ipswich	748	492	1240
Rotherham	813	430	1243
Southampton	270	115	385
Cardiff	576	438	1014
Watford	992	435	1427
Middlesbrough	549	333	882
Norwich	495	475	970

In comparison, Seelt and Triantis posted a total of 764. As the table shows, with the exception of Southampton that was, by some distance, the lowest of the season so far at the Stadium of Light. It is also well short of the season average (1003).

Luke O'Nien 'quality on the ball'

'Quality' is not really reflected in statistics, but we can notice a few noteworthy numbers, specifically with regards to passing.

Seelt attempted 56 passes against Birmingham, which is fewer than Dan Ballard’s home average of 67. Triantis, meanwhile, attempted 49.

O’Nien is again well ahead of them all. He has averaged 85 attempted passes at home this season. That is a big difference, so he’s obviously doing something different to the rest.

One thing you could put it down do against Birmingham was the midfield. Pierre Ekwah especially was not retaining possession as he normally does, so it’s likely the defenders were not receiving the ball from the midfield as often as usual.

That said, you could also suggest that part of the reason the midfield struggled to retain possession as normal was due to them not getting the same quality of passes from the defence, in the desired areas of the pitch, and were not receiving the same positional support from the defence then they did have it.

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As I stated initially here, it’s very hard to ascertain quality from the passing statistics and the best we can really do here is clues.

What we can say for certain, though, is that Luke O’Nien provably spends more time on the ball than the defenders did against Birmingham, and he uses that to progress the team further up the pitch.

The reasons for that will be open to debate and interpretation because while you can acknowledge the defenders who faced Birmingham didn't perform as well as O'Nien does on these metrics, the reason for that are inconclusive.

Is it that O'Nien is just better? Or was it down to Birmingham's aggressive high press, Pierre Ekwah's off-day, or just a general below average showing?

It genuinely is impossible to tell, and so the Luke O'Nien debate is sure to continue. However, the statistics certainly make a strong case to suggest Sunderland were a lot worse in transition without O'Nien than they have usually been with him.

Luke O’Nien ‘advancing the team’

Luke O'Nien 'quality on the ball'

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