In every great team there’s always one man doing the donkey work.
The ball-winner – breaking up the play, putting his body on the line and diving into last-ditch tackles.
But if you expected the man leading the way in the Premier League’s best tackler stakes to be an archetypal hard-man at a smaller club, you’d be wrong.
It’s actually Liverpool’s Brazilian star Lucas Leiva.
Despite player fewer games than any of his rivals, Lucas is the only player this season to notch up 50 tackles.
The 28-year-old won five tackles alone in the Reds’ 3-1 victory at Chelsea, but has averaged 6.4 per game – better than anyone else in the Premier League.
In fact, only Southampton’s Cedric Soares has a better tackles won ratio at a staggering 97.3%.
Of course, this is not the first time we have noted Leiva’s tackling. From his 2007 signing by Liverpool until the start of the season, the Brazilian had successfully made 833 tackles to lead the way, once again, in the league.
Data courtesy of the EA SPORTS Player Performance Index, the Official Player Rating Index of the Barclays Premier League.
