Ron Vlaar has featured in 10 games for Aston Villa so far this season. It total, Vlaar has played 900 minutes of football for Aston Villa, so far this season. In total he has helped keep 3 clean sheet’s for the Aston Villa defence, more than any other Aston Villa defender. It appears an appropriate time to evaluate Vlaar’s progress for Aston Villa so far.

I’ll be looking at some statistics provided by ‘Whoscored’ to analysis Vlaar’s performance in the League so far this season. Vlaar currently holds the 7th best rating for Aston Villa, his average score is 6.94. This doesn’t sound too good, but Vlaar has done more good then bad. Vlaar has one of the best passing success rate at Aston Villa, with a score of 83.6%. What’s more impressive is that Vlaar has completed the second most amount of successful long-ball passes (8.3 per game) and Vlaar has the third highest passing average of 36.6 passes per game.

It get’s even better. In defence Vlaar has improved aspects of his game he struggled with last season. Vlaar doesn’t concede nearly as many fouls as he did last season, per game Vlaar concedes 0.4 fouls. The Dutch man has one of the highest average clearances per game out of any other defender (7.9) and has only gotten dribbled past by 0.3 opponents in all 10 games.

Having said that, Vlaar has won the least amount of offsides (0.8) and has blocked less shots then fellow defenders Clark and Baker (0.6).

Now I want to get away from the statistics and give my own little personal review of Vlaar’s performances. I reckon he’s been our most consistent and arguably, best defender. He has experience, bosses the defence well and has been a rock in the back. I might even go as far and say that he may deserve his title of ‘Concrete Ron’ back. He has built a solid partnership with Clark, Okore and Baker, he has also had to work with Lowton, Bacuna and Luna. Vlaar has added stability to a very-injury prone Villa defence and I have to give credit where it’s due. The only thing I’d want him to do a little bit more, is perhaps threaten a bit more from set pieces. He has scored goals in the past and I hope he can add a few more to his Villa goal tally this season.