Just in an effort to stoke up the heat a little bit around this Sunday's North London derby, someone decided to dig up an old tweet by Eric Dier slating Arsenal reserves after a match and branding their players "wingebags" in hashtag form:
Good 2-0 win to finish of the season, aresnal players all the same #wingebags
— Eric Dier (@ericdier) May 2, 2012
Granted he was playing for Everton reserves at the time, but now that he has been elevated to starting lineup material at Tottenham, any criticism of Spurs' North London rivals will be given added emphasis.
The defender, who is being deployed as a screen in front of the defence by Mauricio Pochettino of late, is an interesting test case, given that he developed in Portugal having moved there as a child.
And he will be under greater scrutiny now that the England senior setup haven taken notice of his abilities and called him up for their forthcoming friendly internationals.
It's not undeserved since the 6-foot-2 21-year-old has been a virtual ever-present for Spurs this season, starting 10 out of the first 11 games in that defensive midfield role, performing effectively in a side that has averaged the most tackles per game in this season's Premier League.
Since Arsenal are the opposition on Sunday and have a plethora of attack-minded midfielders like Mesut Ozil and Santi Cazorla, who will try and exploit any space in the lines between midfield and defender, Dier's role will be key.
One of the more prolific midfielder tacklers in the Premier League this season, he has attempted just shy of 3.5 challenges per match, which is a comparable figure to Chelsea's Nemanja Matic and only inferior to left-back Danny Rose and fellow midfielder Moussa Dembele within Spurs' ranks.
Interestingly, a look at the locations where he makes his tackles and interceptions in a sample size of games, he tends to makes his attempts at preventing danger, not directly in front of his centre-backs as holding midfielders can be stereotyped as doing, but in wider positions - the examples being games against Crystal Palace, Manchester City, Bournemouth and Aston Villa.
For example, here is where he attempted his tackles in Monday night's win over Villa according to Squawka, which is certainly not an isolated case when other games are taken into account:
Assuming that pattern holds, Arsenal's Ozil has a tendency to drift into wide positions left and right, which could well see Dier playing a crucial role in trying to fend off his considerable threat, although there is always the danger that leaves space more centrally for other Arsenal players to exploit. So keep one eye on Dier as that portion of the field could well be crucial.
The North London derby will be live on Off The Ball this Sunday. Kick off is at 4pm with commentary and analysis from Nathan Murphy and Gary Breen. We also have the 1.30pm kick off betwen Aston Villa and Manchester City with Dave McIntyre and Stephen Ward there for us.
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