Losing the ball in your own defensive 3rd often spells trouble. Which players are prone to this and who are those that maintain possession defensively?
For this analysis I have looked at defenders and central midfielders (this season Brown, Christie, Ntcham and McGregor). I’ve included players who’ve played over 450 minutes as this allowed me to include Gamboa and Izaguirre.
I didn’t collect these particular metrics before this season so there isn’t any comparative data.
Winning Possession in the Defensive 3rd
Winning possession means challenging (aerial or tackle) for the ball and winning it, or intercepting the opposition pass, shielding the ball out to gain possession and finally blocking a cross that results in keeping possession.

What surprised me is that there weren’t groupings by position. There are 3 full backs at the bottom and as they are in wide positions they don’t see as much of the ball as central players. But Tierney is the highest rated which given the amount of time he spends attacking caught the eye.
Simunovic leads the centre backs and he is an out and out defender even compared to Boyata who is second.
Brown has a higher possession recovery rate than most of the defenders in 3rd place with Christie in 5th.
Bain has a better possession recovery than Gordon (for goalkeepers I include more data such as crosses caught). However, Bain has tended to play in the easier games and it is a small sample.
This is yet another metric by which Hendry trails the other central defenders.
Losing Possession in the Defensive 3rd
A loss of possession includes losing a challenge plus possession, clearances and losing the ball through miss control. Note it does not include passing – this is assessing defensive actions. However, I have plotted defensive 3rd loses with Defensive Errors that can include giving the ball away through a stray pass leading to an opposition chance.
The reason for this is that a safety-first defender may give possession away in the defensive 3rd because they clear the ball rather than take a chance with a pass or dribble. If they have a low error rate but high possession lost rate then that would be significant.

More surprises. It is Boyata that both concedes possession in the final 3rd the most (1.57 per 90) and has a relatively high defensive error rate (0.59 per 90m). Anything over 0.5 is poor in my experience (the Ambrose Benchmark is nearer 1.0).
Of the other central defenders, Benkovic and Ajer have the lowest rates on both categories. The outlier is again Hendry who gives possession away the least but has the same defensive error rate as Boyata.
Tierney has the lowest error rate of the full backs and the second highest possession lost rate as he tends to clear the ball if he senses danger. You can see why Gamboa does not figure much as he has the highest error rate.
Bain has not given away possession in the defensive 3rd (does not include passing) in his five matches.
The central midfielders are bunched except Christie who loses possession the most but has the lowest error rate.
Possession Won / Lost
Being high in either category does not tell us the propensity to keep or maintain possession through defensive actions overall. We need to compare possessions won and lost in the final 3rd to do that.

Brown wins the ball back 1.28 time per 90m more than he loses it, the highest rate on the squad and better than all the defenders. This is one of these unshowy aspects of consistency crucial to defensive midfielders. Indeed, Christie is listed with only one defender (Simunovic) above him.
Simunovic is quite away ahead of all other defenders with net 0.93 possession gains compared to the next defender Benkovic on 0.39. The rest of the defenders are then grouped with not much between them. Again, Tierney has a surprisingly high success rate given he is so often attacking.
Tierney’s rate is also in sharp contrast to the other full backs who are all in negative values – i.e. they lose possession more often than win it back in the defensive 3rd. As I mentioned I do not have history for these metrics so do not know if that is “bad” or normal for full backs. I suspect it is not good and indicative of the need for improvement in that area of the team. In the equivalent of 2.5 matches, Ralston’s Possession W/L rate is 2.4 which is nearly double Brown’s and would lead the squad!
Summary
Analysing possession won and lost in the defensive 3rd shows us some of the underrated work the likes of Simunovic, Brown and Tierney do.
We can see that Boyata is having a mixed season in this regard. This further illustrates the large improvements Hendry needs to make to be competitive in this squad.
Furthermore, the needs to strengthen the full back positions is highlighted using this data.
Finally, these are yet more metrics by which Christie performs well.