EVERYONE was delighted to see Christian Eriksen return to professional football after the shocking events of last summer, but surely no-one thought he’d be this good. A move to struggling Brentford made sense for the Dane, back to the city where he had played out the majority of his career and to a promoted club who had started the season well but were spiralling down towards the relegation zone.
Fast forward five games into Eriksen’s Bees sojourn and the effect of adding in – statistically – one of the most influential midfielders in world football to an up-and-coming football club in Brent has been stark. Brentford are averaging about two more shots per game with Eriksen and goals per game has leapt from 1.0 to 2.2 at the same time that goals conceded per game has fallen from 1.6 to 0.8. Yes, it’s a relatively small sample size but the pub car parks of England used to be alive to the sound of arguments about what would happen if you parachuted a world class player into a struggling Premier League team. Here we have a pretty good answer.
WATFORD v BRENTFORD – ALL MARKETS
So Eriksen’s reintroduction to English football has so far been a huge positive, and that is absolutely worth celebrating. In the aftermath of his cardiac arrest at Euro 2020 (in summer 2021), he was fitted with an implantable cardioverter-defibrillator, a procedure that has allowed Eriksen to resume his football career but not in Italy, where the technology is not permitted in professional sport. It’s an ongoing debate there too, as cyclist Sonny Colbrelli, the European road race champion and winner of Paris-Roubaix last October, suffered a similar cardiac issue in a race last month, and has also had an ICD fitted. Colbrelli, though, is facing the end of his career because a sudden (necessary) shock from the device plays out a lot differently descending a mountain or in a bunch sprint than it would on the relative isolation of a football pitch.
Really, though, we should be thankful this technology even exists, just as we should be thankful that we can once again see Christian Eriksen playing football, one of the most elegant sights of 2010s football extrapolated into the 2020s. Brentford are grateful that he has artistically guided them towards mid-table, Ivan Toney has seen a transformation in the chance quality (see graphic below) served up to him, with six goals the more than acceptable result.
The fly in the Bees’ ointment is that due to regulations, Premier League games are filmed and shown on television while at the same time advanced football data is collected and distributed to the clubs and the media. In other words, the football world has witnessed just how well Eriksen has settled back into England’s top-flight, and other clubs are circling like the drone that delayed Brentford’s game with Wolves in January. Eriksen’s creative output of 0.58 xA per 90 has put him straight into the mix and ahead of players such as Jadon Sancho, Martin Ødegaard and Bukayo Saka, so it’s no surprise to see a host of clubs ready to swoop for Eriksen this summer.
The truth is that Eriksen would improve all but a couple of teams in the division, so while Brentford fans might feel aggrieved if the Dane’s stay at the club is a short stop on the way back to a bigger club, their part in the reintroduction of such a classy act to top-level football will live in the memory for a long time. And, maybe more importantly, he will have established the club in the Premier League for a second season with the chance of more to come. Not many football stories are four-dimensionally feelgood, but this is certainly one of them.
