Geoff Cameron at QPR: What do the stats say about the player? What can he improve? | OneFootball

Queens Park Rangers take on Preston North End in the Sky Bet Championship this evening, looking to keep up a fine run of form.

The Hoops have won six of their last seven league matches and have climbed the table nicely, now ahead of tonight’s hosts.

Indeed, that has coincided with the arrival of Charlie Austin but also the introduction of a 3-5-2 system which has made the R’s much harder to beat.

Mark Warburton deserves credit for that, then, and here we’re looking at one of the players whose position has changed because of that and how he is getting on; Geoff Cameron. (All stats taken from WhoScored.)

The American has dropped from a holding midfield role into defence – an area he has played in before anyway – with him in the middle of the back-three.

With Rob Dickie to his right and Yoann Barbet to his left, the trio have been hard to beat in recent weeks with them taking to the system well.

Cameron, in the middle, likes to bring the ball out when he can and that is highlighted by the stats – only Luke Amos has completed more dribbles on average per game this season and the midfielder was ruled out early on this year.

When on the ball, Cameron plays more passes than most with just Dickie, Barbet and midfield metronome Tom Carroll averaging more than his 41.2 per game.

Cameron might like to improve his accuracy with his passing, though, with him ranking 17th overall in the side at 71% – though that moves up to 13th if you take out players that have only featured in snippets this season.

Indeed, both Dickie and Barbet have better pass accuracy but, admittedly, only just with all three under the 80% mark.

Defensively speaking, Cameron has been impressive – perhaps to be expected with the R’s on a good run.

He’s making 1.7 tackles a game – only Luke Amos ranks higher and, again, he’s not played anywhere near as much. Cameron also intercepts the ball 1.5 times a game – he’s only bettered by Dickie and Barbet which is obviously pleasing to see for Hoops fans that all three top this chart.

Again, the trio top the blocks tally with Cameron in third with 0.6 a game and so it’s clear that the defensive three has formed a strong understanding with them all doing their jobs well.

Of course, Cameron might like to increase things further to top his defensive partners but that’s only healthy competition – you cannot say he’s not pulling his weight at all.

Perhaps the only real issue is the number of cards he’s received since moving to centre-back. Cameron has had four cautions in the league this season and three of them have come in the last six games where the 3-5-2 has been in use whilst another came in the cup against Fulham.

It’s the nature of the beast that you pick up yellows when you’re a defensive player but, of course, if he can avoid that as much as he can in the weeks to come Rangers will only benefit further.