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There's A Surprising Name Who's Given The Ball Away More Than Alexis Sanchez

There's A Surprising Name Who's Given The Ball Away More Than Alexis Sanchez

The Manchester United forward has been criticised for giving the ball away so much.

Ryan Sidle

Ryan Sidle

Alexis Sanchez has not had a stellar start to his time at Manchester United with many criticising how many times he gives the ball away but he's not actually the Premier League's worst when it comes to that.

Life at Manchester United is more up and down than a yo-yo right now. Wins against Chelsea and Liverpool raised hopes for the end of the season but results against Sevilla, Newcastle and Spurs were real downers.

For every right turn that Jose Mourinho makes there's a major blow like Tuesday's performance against Sevilla that was as poor as the one against Liverpool was good.

In the middle of that is Alexis Sanchez who is yet to really string a complete performance together and whose only goal came against Huddersfield. The Chilean has been on the end of lots of criticism since his January move.

Chief amongst the problems has been the amount of times the former Arsenal forward has given the ball away to the opposition however Sanchez isn't the biggest guilty party. In the Premier League two men sit above him on that stat, first place is extremely surprising:

The stat is itself a little misleading as god of stats Bill Edgar points out. Essentially players playing with attacking intent always give the ball away more, mainly because they have it more and take more risks with it in a compact area.

De Bruyne has attempted more passes than his Manchester counterpart and so it actually makes sense that he'd give the ball away more often, equally Sanchez tries more passes than a lot of others so it's likely he'd give the ball away more.

Sanchez has far more dribbles completed than both De Bruyne and Eriksen ahead of him in the possession lost stats though the Belgian has created more from open play and both men have far more successful passes than the former Barca man.

Basically stats tell us a lot, they just don't tell the whole story!

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Topics: Manchester City, Football News, Manchester United, Alexis Sanchez, Premier League, Kevin de Bruyne