Loan star Levi is the perfect fit for Terriers!
BEN Chilwell’s goal for England on Saturday night brings back that warm feeling of ‘he used to be one of ours’ that Terriers fans have also enjoyed with Emile Smith Rowe’s meteoric rise at Arsenal and Trevoh Chalobah’s emergence as a goalscoring centre-back at Chelsea this season - and we expect to have many more years of that when Levi Colwill returns to Stamford Bridge next season.
He may have been sidelined with an ankle injury over the past couple of games, and Huddersfield Town may have managed to keep a clean sheet against Luton even without him. But make no mistake, Colwill is a key, key player at the John Smith’s Stadium.
There’s not really a higher compliment we can give him than to say he has just fit straight in to Carlos Corberan’s side with nary a question raised about whether or not he deserves his place.
Premier League loanee or not, that is remarkable for an 18-yearold who had never played a minute of senior football before coming to the John Smith’s Stadium - especially when you consider defenders tend to come of age later than other players.
Colwill is the seventh-youngest player in the Championship this season.
He has won 15 of his 16 tackles this season, easily the best of any of Town’s defenders. He ranks second-best among defenders for interceptions and has won the joint-most headers with Tom Lees from fewer attempts, winning the highest percentage of headers of any player in the Town squad (66 per cent).
Interestingly, only Lewis O’Brien has completed more dribbles past opponents this season. Colwill has beaten his man 11 times, the same number as Sorba Thomas but from 15 fewer attempts.
The only players we have given higher average player ratings to this season have been Lees and Thomas. WhoScored.com’s statsbased ratings put him top of the pile among Town players and in the top 10 centre-backs in the division.
Most important is the effect all of that has on the team as a whole, and the effect Colwill has had on the Town defence is both profound and measurable. In his eight starts at centre-back, Town have concede five goals and kept four clean sheets. In their five games without him at centre-back, they have conceded 11 goals and kept just one clean sheet.
All of which points to what a coup it was that Town were able to get Colwill in on loan in the first place. The club made an exception to their stance at the time that they would need to send more players out before they could add anyone new to the squad having already announced five signings earlier in the window, and that decision is looking incredibly smart now.
He has not been perfect, of course. He had a rare spell of looking a bit rattled against Nottingham Forest, for instance. Further mistakes will surely come, Chelsea sent him to Town to make them and learn from them in the Championship rather than the Premiership. But on the whole he has been no less composed and no more exposed than any of Town’s other, much more experienced defenders.
There is no limit on how far Colwill can go in the game, and on the evidence so far he could eclipse all other comers to go down as the best former Town loanee! But there is no need to wait for that proud ‘he used to be one of ours’ feeling; what he is doing right now is enough for us to boast that he is currently one of ours.