STATS: Huddlestone’s passing for Tottenham Hotspur vs Lallana’s crossing for Southampton
Tottenham v Southampton, Saturday 15:00
– After being held to a draw by Wigan in their last game, Spurs are three points behind North London rivals Arsenal in the race for fourth place and Champions League football next season.
– Bale scored in that game to cap a remarkable weekend where he also won both PFA Player of the Year and Young Player of the Year.
– Bale now has 19 goals this season, having had an incredible 136 efforts at goal, an average of one every 18 minutes 11 seconds when on the pitch. More impressively, he has maintained a 63.2% on target percentage (better than Robin van Persie) and needs 7.15 shots per goal (better than Suarez).
– He’s also ranked joint 4th in the EA SPORTS Player Performance Index for dribbles completed (44), and is one of just four players to have delivered over 100 crosses (108), culminating in 8 assists.
– Michael Dawson has impressed this season for Spurs after returning from injury to feature regularly for the first team. He made 18 interceptions against Wigan, the joint highest of the last round of games.
– The equaliser for Spurs against Wigan came courtesy of a low cross from Tom Huddlestone, forcing an own goal from Emmerson Boyce. Huddlestone put in an impressive performance for Spurs in that game, completing 41 passes in the opposition half, the fifth highest of any player in last weekend’s games.
– Southampton suffered a 3-0 defeat at the hands of West Brom in their last game, but should be safe as they remain seven points above the relegation zone.
– Adam Lallana delivered 6 crosses in that game, the most by a player in the last round of games and the most he has delivered in a game this season.
– That takes Lallana’s tally for crosses this season to 55, just shy of the EA SPORTS Player Performance Index’s top 20 most prolific crossers. His minutes per pass completed in the opposition half rating is also the best at Southampton, averaging one every 4 minutes 26 seconds (James Ward Prowse is marginally better, but has played a quarter of the minutes of Lallana this season).
– Saints fans will remember this season as a breakthrough for Rickie Lambert, the season in which he contributed 14 goals and 9 assists, having a hand in 23 goals in total. Only one English player (Theo Walcott) has had a part in more goals in the Premier League this season and only seven players in the EA SPORTS Player Performance Index overall have contributed more than Lambert.
– Lambert has maintained a 51% shooting accuracy rate this season, needing just 5.85 shots for each goal. Interestingly, of the players in the EA SPORTS Player Performance Index who have score ten or more goals this season, Lambert is actually the most shot-shy, having a shot at goal every 72 minutes, suggesting that the striker prefers to wait for clear chances than employ a more scattergun approach.