Player Focus: Jack Colback - Not Pirlo or Cattermole but Somewhere In Between
Who’s the most booked player in the Premier League since summer 2013? If you said Lee Cattermole then there’s no prizes for originality and he’s only second anyway. Gareth Barry is third, Branislav Ivanovic fourth and Fernandinho fifth but, thanks to a needless foul on Roberto Firmino on Sunday, the leader is Jack Colback. It turns out the man Roy Hodgson dubbed the “ginger Pirlo” may actually just be the ginger Cattermole.
Colback, of course, learnt at the knee of the master, spending 15 years at Sunderland before his move 14 miles north last year, discovering just how to mistime a tackle just badly enough to pick up a yellow card but not a red. Colback in fact, has been sent off just once in his career – 11 minutes into his Sunderland debut in a 2-1 defeat to Wolves on the final day of the season in 2010. In that regard, he’s rather better at reining in his fouls than Cattermole.
The fouls speak of a combativeness, even if many of his cards come from misjudgements; he averages 2.6 tackles and 2.4 interceptions per game this season, figures that place him in the top 40 on both counts. His booking on Sunday, for instance, was for a foul that was late and had no chance of winning the ball. Colback, though, seems to escape censure for his wildness. When discussions come up of the Premier League’s dirtiest players, plenty will mention Cattermole, but few give Colback a second thought. In that regard, perhaps he is less the ginger anything than just the new Scholes, albeit a less incisive version.
It’s also a matter of style. Cattermole, with shorts hitched high, bristles with an obvious intensity. Colback is more relaxed, noted more for the quality of his passing than anything else. He’s completed 86.9% of his passes this season, more than any other Newcastle player to have started a game (and a little over 5% more than Cattermole this season). Its that quality, of course, that prompted Hodgson’s comparison with Pirlo.
The criticism of Colback, even in his Sunderland days, was that his neatness didn’t necessarily lead anywhere. He’s played 411 passes in 880 minutes on the pitch this season, but none of them have led to a goal and only six have been deemed key passes; three of those have been corners.
He’s a tutor, somebody who keeps the ball moving, but he’s not somebody particularly comfortable breaking forwards. His heat map for Sundays win over Liverpool shows most of his work being done between the edge of his own penalty area and the centre-circle, with another splodge a little higher up the pitch just to the right of centre. That’s a little surprising, given he was playing to the left of the holding midfield pair alongside Vurnon Anita, who also occupied that right of centre zone, but probably a direct result of the opponent. A glance at Liverpool’s heat map shows how they also occupied that area a lot, perhaps because of Joe Allen’s tendency to occupy that zone.
In a career that now totals 139 Premier League starts, Colback has only scored eight goals, although the fact that four came last year and three the previous season suggests he is improving in that regard. But that’s not a strength and never will be. Colback, rather, is a player who does the unglamorous work well. He’s not eye-catching, but he wins the ball and doesn’t lose it. He’s a facilitator, a lubricant. Newcastle’s problem is that that sort of player comes into his own when he’s giving the ball to good players, or at least players playing well. His job is to let them play. The better the team he plays in, the better Colback will look.
Is Colback more Pirlo or Cattermole? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below
