Van Dijk vs Vidic: Whose prime Premier League season was better? | OneFootball

Virgil van Dijk vs Nemanja Vidic feels like it’s become the Premier League’s answer to Lionel Messi vs Cristiano Ronaldo.

Ever since Liverpool‘s defender in chief rose to such dizzying heights that he was only narrowly pipped to the Ballon d’Or trophy, fans have been comparing him to the greatest defenders in the history of England’s top-flight.

So, it’s perhaps only natural that one of the fieriest limbs of that entire complex sees Van Dijk pitted up against arguably the most cherished modern defenders of the Reds’ fiercest rivals: Manchester United.

Vidic vs Van Dijk debate

But before the barstools start flying, let’s pause for a second and be unemotional about things, take biases out of the equation and try to settle the debate using the cold, hard world of statistics.

Yes, that’s right, we’re once again seeking to unpick the Van Dijk vs Vidic back and forth by taking a look at how their prime seasons in the Premier League compare to one another.

It is, after all, round about the fairest route of comparison between the two seeing as we don’t have a full career’s worth of data from Van Dijk to contrast with the complete body of work put out there by Vidic.

What are their prime seasons?

First thing’s first, though, we’ve got to decide which seasons are indeed the high watermark for each player and we’ve decided upon 2018/19 for Van Dijk and 2008/09 for Vidic.

To tell you the truth, it was a pretty easy pick as far as Van Dijk is concerned because that’s the year in which he won the PFA Players’ Player of the Year award, finished second in the Ballon d’Or, lifted the Champions League trophy and wasn’t dribbled past once in club football.

And while things were a little less clearcut for Vidic, we settled on the season where he first bagged the Premier League Player of the Season award by leading a United defence that shipped just 24 goals and went on a run of 14 consecutive clean sheets.

Who wins?

Two formidable seasons to contrast, it must be said, but which comes out on top? Well, to find out, we called upon the Premier League’s official stats comparison tool and duly crunched the numbers.

So be sure to take a look for yourselves as to how Vidic and Van Dijk compare to one another at the peak of their Premier League powers by checking out their defensive data sets down below:

Wowsers. Well if that isn’t emphatic, then we don’t know what is.

An emphatic win for Vidic

Now, at least as far as the defensive statistics are concerned – which, let’s face it, are most important for a defender – Vidic romps his way to a clear victory over the very best version of Van Dijk.

The United legend comes out on top for clean sheets, blocks, interceptions, tackles, last man tackles, clearances, headed clearances and all with fewer goals and penalties conceded along the way.

Van Dijk is left to pick up the pieces with a lone victory in the aerial battles won department, while the pair just happen to be level for errors leading to goals as well as own goals.

Obviously, the usual caveats apply because not only did the style of play in the Premier League evolve between those two seasons, but the manner in which United and Liverpool defended was markedly different.

However, while that might have been a watertight argument to gloss over a few victories for Vidic, it’s hard to look at him winning in almost every single metric and say that it’s not without credence.