Luke Young’s recent interview caused a predictable little debate here and there about how Carlos Cuellar isn’t a right back, etc. etc. Yes, he’s a better defender, but “he doesn’t offer the same as Luke going forward”. Or words to that effect. Seems like a good time to put their stats alongside each other.

I’ve trawled through the 38 Premiership games from the 2009/10 season and pulled the metrics for the games each player played at right back only. In order to make a like-for-like comparison, I’ve used a “per game” calculation based on the number of minutes played.

For instance, Luke Young played a total of 786 minutes at right back and during that time made a total of 162 successful passes in open play. To calculate the per game rate of successful passes I simply divided the number of passes by the number of minutes and then multiplied by 90 minutes.

( 162 / 768 ) x 90 = 18.55 successful passes per game.

In comparison, Carlos made 499 successful passes over the course of his 2,160 minutes at right back:-

( 499 / 2,160 ) x 90 = 20.79 successful passes per game.

The numbers in the table below back up the assertion that Luke is slightly better going forward, although not spectacularly so, and Carlos is better defensively. It’s clear that Carlos is a better tackler, clears more balls and blocks more efforts on goal. Luke has a better pass completion rate and his mobility allows him to intercept more passes, but if he offers more going forward, he doesn’t deliver. Carlos has the goal and assist to his name, Luke has zip.

The biggest difference between them reveals that those long throw-ins that Carlos takes aren’t very useful.