View: Int’l West Brom star showed big improvement in new position
West Brom defender Dara O’Shea turned in a much-improved performance for the Republic of Ireland in their 1-0 loss to Wales after disappointing against England.
We looked at the 21-year-old’s performance against England and the stats revealed that the young defender was the weak link in his international side.
Thankfully, O’Shea improved in Ireland’s clash with Wales even though he couldn’t help his side pick up any points.
The stats suggest this is the case, as according to Wyscout, O’Shea won 63% of his defensive duels against Wales. He only won 25% of his defensive duels against England so he has shown a dramatic improvement in that area.
He also won 40% of his aerial duels which is an improvement on the zero aerial duels he won against the Three Lions.
O’Shea also registered more clearances and committed fewer fouls against Wales in what was a much better performance from the Albion defender.
This improvement could be down to O’Shea being given a new position by Republic of Ireland manager Stephen Kenny.
As you can see from the heatmap above, O’Shea was played at left-back in his country’s last game after being mainly deployed as a centre back for West Brom.
This provided the 21-year-old with his second clash against Gareth Bale in as many weeks as he faced off against the Tottenham winger last time out in the Premier League.
Despite being right-footed O’Shea managed to contain Gareth Bale to a certain extent and he was not at fault for the Wales goal.
O’Shea didn’t have an incredible game against Wales but the fact that he has dusted himself off and got back to his usual standard after a poor performance shows that the young defender has the right mentality.
This will serve him well this season as it is unlikely he will be on the winning side of many Premier League games if the Baggies’ early season form continues.
In other West Brom news, we think that Albion don’t need to worry about the result of their clash against Manchester United.
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