Welcome to The DeBrief, a Sky Sports column in which Adam Bate uses a mix of data and opinion to think about some of the most important stories from the latest Premier League matches. This week:
⚡ Anthony Elanga's stunning sprint statistics⬆️ Pau Torres' Importance for Aston Villa🏃ß🏃§ Daniel Munoz's distances at high speed
Elanga speed sets it all up for forest
Technically, the fastest man in the Premier League is Tottenham's Micky van de Ven this season, clocked at 10.31 meters per second in September. But the most impressive speed star in the competition is certainly the consistently fast fast Anthony Elanga van Nottingham Forest.
It is Elanga that is second on the list. But the Swede has a total of six entries in the top 18 sprints of the season. No one else is there more than once, not even from the Ven, whose hamstring problems mean that he started only six Premier League matches in six months.
Elanga's Running is not just a statistical grill, but an integral feature of the success of Forest this season, which offers an outlet for the passes of Morgan Gibbs-White and a regular out-ball for a Nuno Espirito Santo-Team that promotes rapid counterattacks.
There was an excellent example of its effectiveness in the 2-1 win over West Ham on Sunday. Gibbs-White sent a sloping pass that seemed to float only from the game for Elanga to pick it up and win a mistake after quadrating Jean-Clair Todibo.
Elanga took the free kick herself with Nikola Milenkovic and got the touch for what the winning goal turned out to be. The run of Elanga that made it was not his fastest of the season – a relatively slow 9.63 meters per second – but it was the fastest of the game.
As Jamie Carragher noted on co-commentary for Sky Sports, the pace of Elanga is “absolutely exciting” and it means that Forest always retains a threatening threat in games, even when the ball is around their own punishment. Chelsea only on Sunday.
Villa blooms with Torres of Mings
The ability of your Tielemans to play ahead between the lines is crucial for Aston Villa, and that is why it is particularly impressive that they have won their last two games without him. Pau Torres played an important role in securing the one against Tottenham.
Torres is the only other Villa Outfield player who stands in the Top 50 in the Premier League for most defenders bypass per 90 minutes (based on a minimum of 1000 passings). He carries the ball and plays penetrating through the opposition.
When asked about Torres after the game, Unai Emery said: “Pau Torres was more or less consistent last year and this year. After we have recovered Tyrone Mings, we are stronger and we can manage both players in the moments we need.”
Villa's season has been hectic. The visit to Manchester United will be their 57th game of the season in all competitions. By having available Torres and Mings, Emery has enabled to rotate based on the requirements of that specific game. Mings started in Bournemouth.
“They are different players, but both are very good players. The problem we had was when we could not play with one of them because they were both injured. At that moment we had problems. When both players are available to play, I am so happy.”
Emery is of course right. There are only three Premier League matches this season in which Villa has not mentioned any of their starting line-up. Two of them were lost and the other was a draw at home at Ipswich, in which Mings came up as an early replacement.
It is also worth mentioning the home game with West Ham in which Mings was forced by his side. West Ham tied. If Emery had at least one available all season, Villa would probably already have Champions League football.
And finally … Shout for Munoz
This column tends to deal with the Premier League statistics of players and although that principle continues, it would fail to ignore the efforts of a team that is not in action in the competition when Crystal Palace won the FA Cup for the first time.
Daniel Munoz thought he had scored Palace's second goal, but had to satisfy himself with a hard-earned winners medal and the Colombian wing-back is worth it, given his contribution to their campaign. Munoz remains a statistical biting.
There are other aspects of his game that are marked in this column during the season, but what about his distance that runs at high speed. Genius IQ data tells us that this is 33,641.77 meters in the Premier League alone.
That is 3,457 meters more – more than two miles – than anyone else.
Sky Sports to show 215 Live PL games next season
From next season, the Premier League coverage of Sky Sports will increase from 128 games to at least 215 games that are exclusively live.
And 80 percent of all Premier League matches broadcast on television will be on Sky Sports next season.