This article is part of Football FanCast’s In Numbers series, which takes a statistical look at performances, season-long form and reported transfer targets…
Patrick van Aanholt is a bit of an enigma at Selhurst Park.
On the one hand, the Dutchman pops up with a number of important goals and often finishes the campaign with some pretty impressive goalscoring figures – the left-back has 12 goals in 88 games for the Eagles.
On the flip side, however, he often sacrifices defensive discipline.
The man who cost Palace £14m can often rely on Jeffrey Schlupp for some help, whereas his performance against Tottenham recently drew fierce criticism from some of the club’s supporters.
One thing is certain, however – the 29-year-old is a far worse defender under current boss Roy Hodgson than he was under his former Sunderland manager, Sam Allardyce.
The Athletic’s Crystal Palace correspondent Matt Woosnam recently got some interesting snippets from Allardyce, who signed van Aanholt for Palace in his six months at Selhurst Park.
Interestingly, the former England manager cited the former Chelsea man’s defensive abilities as his “major problem” and added to that with some intriguing words.
“His ability can never be questioned, with his touch, his tackling, his crossing, and his goal-scoring is very good — he normally provides four or five goals a year. But he will switch off.
“Whether he will ever deal with that now is entirely up to him. In my time, I was always talking to him about it. Whether managers do that now or he just drifts away into not taking that responsibility, I don’t know, but it is something that has held him back from being one of the top left backs in the Premier League.”
It is a sentiment that another of his former coaches Gus Poyet also echoed in the same article, and the numbers do not lie in regards to the impact Allardyce had on the goalscoring full-back.
It must be noted that van Aanholt spent less than one season with Allardyce at the Stadium of Light, as the 64-year-old was appointed as Dick Advocaat’s replacement after just eight games of the 2015/16 campaign – nevertheless, seeing as the pair were together for the bulk of that term, the numbers should contain enough accuracy.
Van Aanholt averaged 2.6 tackles per game in that 2015/16 season, as well as 1.9 interceptions and 3.1 clearances – he was handed a 7.11 average rating from WhoScored for his efforts that year.
However, the Holland international has since regressed in his defensive numbers under Hodgson at Selhurst Park.
Under yet another former England manager in the 2018/19 campaign, the Palace No.3 recorded 1.3 tackles per game, 1.3 less than he managed under Allardyce on Wearside three years earlier.
Van Aanholt also managed just 1.1 interceptions per game – 0.8 down on his previous average – whereas his clearances per game were also down 0.8 in comparison to his 2015/16 Premier League return.
Unsurprisingly, in these two highlighted campaigns, the left-back scored seven goals and recorded five assists.
Goal scoring has never been a problem for him – it can often be helpful for Hodgson’s misfiring side who are currently the joint-lowest scorers in the Premier League this term.
In the 72-year-old’s ‘defend-first, attack second’ system, however, defensive negligence and naivety will often stand out like a sore thumb as it has done with van Aanholt throughout Hodgson’s tenure.
Whether or not Hodgson needs to take a leaf out of Allardyce’s book and drill this side of the game into his left-back is a question for another day, but having spent a long time as van Aanholt’s manager already, the lack of defensive improvement – and frankly, amount of regression – is alarming.
The experienced manager’s qualities in that department cannot be questioned with his side sixth in the Premier League clean sheet table for last season, but he must find a way to instil this mindset into his left-back – something that Allardyce managed to do effectively.