Right-back
Norwich are short in numbers of right-backs right now, but both Martin and Naughton make up for that with quality.
When it comes to passing, Naughton outshines Martin, but only just. He appears to have just that bit of extra quality.  But Martin shows his lower-league tenacity with better battling qualities:
Whilst enjoying a similar success rate with their crossing, Naughton again demonstrates his quality by creating chances or assists far more often than Martin. We must be careful with this statistic though because Martin has played many of his games at centre-back, meaning his attacking opportunities have been more limited.
Overall, Naughton comes out top but playing Martin might be preferable against better quality opposition:
With Naughton on loan from Tottenham until the end of the season, it remains to be seen whether Lambert will be able to lure him away from White Hart Lane. Being a young player, he has lots of potential and can only improve with the experience he’s gaining at Norwich now.
Centre-back
Possession and battling stats are the key attributes for our centre-backs. With five main central defenders at Norwich, competition is fierce:
In the few games Ayala has been fit, he has shown an outstanding passing success rate. He also rates comparably when it comes to clearing the ball effectively. Barnett finds himself adrift of the other four centre-backs here though. His ability to find another Canary shirt when he has the ball is quite poor at this level. This won’t come as a surprise to those Norwich fans that watched Barnett week in week out before he fell out of favour with Lambert.
Barnett makes partial amends with his strength and, in particular, his aerial ability. Whilst these qualities are extremely important, a Premier League defender needs to have more about his game. The days of big strong no-nonsense centre-backs are going – today’s centre-back needs to be much more rounded. Other stats worth highlighting are Whitbread’s all-round ability in this category; Ward’s shocking tacking percentage and Ayala’s generally poor showing across all the battling stats.
Whitbread comes out the clear winner for the first of our two centre-back berths. Next best are Leon Barnett and Elliott Ward, however both have worrying attributes about their game. Given that Ward has only recently returned from a long injury, he may still have improvement in him as he gets used to the rigours of Premier League football. For this reason, he will take our second centre-back place.
Next Page: Final Positions…
