Why Araujo Is The PERFECT Premier League Defender right now! | The Deep Dive

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

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Josh (0:33)

Hello everyone, welcome to The Deep Dive. You are about to watch a show. Pretty much wholly about Ronald I'll see you. next time.

And what the What sort... of tactical shift was it in terms of the rest of the season around that? We also talk about whether we should sign Araujo permanently and how much keeping a clean sheet meant to each of the Liverpool players before we discuss the Arsenal game at the weekend. Enjoy the show. Ronny Araujo, so we're gonna touch on him again. This time, we're gonna talk about Milos Kerkers with him, because in a man-to-man orientated world that the Premier League is, that we've spoken about at length, you need people who are gonna win the duels, don't you? Kerkers relishes those duels.

Ronny relishes those duels, and apparently, heading the ball as tackled on the floor as well, amongst other things. They just give us something a little bit different, don't they, the two of them together?

Chris Pajak (1:59)

Yeah, well, I'll say it again for people who don't tune in every single week. The way the Premier League is at the moment, it's like when Liverpool were on the clock, it was kind of like this, where your approach to defending was zonal. So you would focus on taking care of spaces, and if the ball was over here, everyone would shuffle over as like a zone, and you'd be like a collective, you know, almost all attached by rope, and you wouldn't care too much about individual guys. You would just kind of like... Just move as a net, yeah.

And if the ball's building out from the back or whatever, Salah would focus on taking care of those two players and blocking the pass into this guy, and same over there and all that sort of thing. Whereas in the Premier League at the moment now, nowadays, it's more about you've got your man, I've got my man, he's got his man, and it's all about one on one duels for the most part. And that's really impacted the Premier League. That's one of the reasons why the Premier League is not great to watch at the moment.

But it's also the reason why some players struggle a little bit in England, Vert could be one of them. And it's also the reason why some players thrive in England. And I think Araujo is on that end of things, where suddenly now he's come to a league where it's all about that. It's all about just like contact, fights, winning those duels. And the football isn't especially pretty. If we get up my NDI quickly, again, going back to pass maps, this is Araujo's pass map in the game. Not particularly elaborate. He's not creating many chances at all, nothing like that. But a lot of the balls he's playing are just kind of like, you know, fair few over the top, fair few down the line and stuff like that.

So you're getting a relatively limited possession game from him, but you're getting a lot of, he will win his deals basically. And I think the insistent thing is, Keokh is on the opposite side, although he frustrates people. Few grounds in the stadium around where I was sat at times with him on the ball and stuff like that. But what Keokh gives you, again, is a minimum. Is that? Just like, you know, he'll get tied to his man, he'll stay tied to his man, you don't have to tell him to do it, he'll just do it naturally anyway.

So I wanted to almost tip me hat to the pair of them, who are, you know, potentially upgradable on the ball, but rarely suited to what the Premier League has become, defensively, and the help of Liverpool because of that.

Josh (4:45)

Yeah, absolutely. I think if you go to my NDI, please, Aaron. Obviously, Milos is a young player still.

Only three defensive contributions, one tackle, two clearances, two added clearances, four recoveries on the day. But he's still won five of his eight ground duels, and he still, as a very short player as well, wins half of his aerial duels. In comparison to Ronnie Araujo, 11 defensive contributions, three tackles, one with his head, eight clearances, two added clearances, six recoveries, wins all four of his ground duels, and wins his aerial duel. That just highlights the point that he sort of made for this style of defending, isn't he? And he just looks so damn good in the system as well, because, you know, I think it's easy for him, and I thought Vert did really well to link up at times with Barcaule and Araujo, and not so much the centre midfielders, but I think he shifted over to that right hand side and made it easier for Barcaule, but the two defenders, it brings to the big question, next.