In defence of Joachim Andersen

Our Danish centre-back is, statistically, Fulham’s best defender - by a lot.

Yes, Joa (and maybe the ref) lost us the Southampton game and, yes, it is terrifying to see any player with speed run at him, but he is not, according to stats, a bad defender. Instead, he ranks as one of the league's (and Fulham’s) best in terms of total defensive contributions.

Total defensive contributions refers essentially to the total number of clearances, blocks, interceptions and tackles (CBIT). Joa has accumulated almost a hundred more this season than the next player on Fulham, Sander Berge ,who has 293 CBIT. It’s not close.

If you look at the data as CBIT per 90 for the Fulham squad (regardless of total starts), Cuenca edges out Andersen with a total of 10.76 CBIT per 90 compred to Joa’s 10.30, but Andersen is still a lot better than the rest of the club.

Based on the numbers, it’s not clear if Diop, for example, is a one-for-one replacement for Joa (even though he is faster and bigger). And, in addition to making an inordinate number of clearances, blocks, interceptions and tackles for Fulham, Andersen is one of the the best in league in making long passes, which is critical for Fulham because of our passing-challenged goalkeeper. He’s currently, third best in the league with 5.5 accurate long balls per 90.

While he’s very good at a lot of things, Joachim Andersen is not perfect. He is relatively slow for the Premier league. As I mentioned previously, FIFA ratings gives him a pace rating of 39, the same as 38-year-old Tim Ream. He can - and has - been beaten by attackers with pace, like what happened with Southampton when Joa ran back and pushed a faster attacker running by him and gave away a penalty - and the game.

In his book How to Win The Premier League, Ian Graham writes about when Liverpool looked to acquire Andy Roberston and the data team, which he led, expressed concerns about Robertson’s defensive abilities. Jurgen Klopp overruled them because he wanted Robertson’s offensive strengths on the team despite his apparent defensive weaknesses. As Graham writes, “Rather than demanding the perfect player, he (Klopp) was willing to find creative solutions to maximize each player’s strengths and to minimize their weaknesses.”

Joachim Andersen is a very good defender with a real weakness: his speed. Marco has managed this by protecting him with strong and aggressive defenders who can help recover like Kenny Tete. This is especially important given that our goalkeeper was rated the slowest player in all of the Premier League. Fulham’s problem, though, is really our defensive depth. Timothy Castagne is a fine player but is he really fast enough (and a good enough tackler) to protect Joachim Andersen? And, yet Marco Silva doesn’t have many other options if Kenny Tete is not available.

Ironically, Fulham, even more than Liverpool because of the club’s relative financial constraints, needs to construct a winning squad with imperfect players but can’t always afford all the options needed to manage the weaknesses of these players. We, as a result, have to live with some risk if we want to win.

So, yes, maybe we could replace Andersen with Diop to deal with the lack of speed in the back, but we might be giving away what we need to win in other areas as well. And, based on Andersen’s stats - relative to the league - he might not be the first puzzle piece on the board that Fulham should look to replace.