Ross Barkley seems to have found a new home at Luton – and in a deeper role

Luton Town manager Rob Edwards said Tom Lockyer was the natural choice when he was deciding on a club captain for this season.

“His performances since we arrived have been incredibly high and incredibly consistent,” Edwards said of centre-back Lockyer. “He demands high standards and has the respect and trust of us all.”

From the words of his manager alone, it is easy to understand how much of a leader Luton will be missing as they prepare for Newcastle United’s visit to Kenilworth Road on Saturday.

It will be a week on from when Lockyer, who also collapsed on the pitch at Wembley during Luton’s Premier League promotion-clinching play-off final victory over Coventry City in May this year, went into cardiac arrest during their away game against Bournemouth.

The 29-year-old Wales international received immediate medical treatment where he fell on the Vitality Stadium turf and was then taken to hospital. He has since had a defibrillator fitted and returned home to continue his recovery.

It was a hugely distressing day for everyone connected with Lockyer, and it will be an emotional experience for his team-mates stepping out onto the pitch without him.

Luton are not short of leaders, though, and will need their most senior players to ensure the standards set by Lockyer do not slip in his absence.

One man who has been delivering on that front this season is Ross Barkley.

Following his transfer from Nice of Ligue 1, the top division in French football, in the summer, Barkley has become Luton’s midfield dynamo.

Labelled a ‘diamond’ by fans at boyhood club Everton, where he made his debut at 17, Barkley has dazzled for Luton. In recent home defeats against title contenders Arsenal and last season’s treble winners Manchester City, his performances cemented why he is already a fans’ favourite at Kenilworth Road.

“He did something in the Manchester City game that he was doing when he was 16, 17 (years old),” Ray Hall, a former manager of Everton’s academy, says. “I’ve not seen him do it for a while. I think they call it a Maradona Turn, where he beat two players in the space of two touches.”

Hall is referring to the moment Barkley, given the ball by Lockyer, spun away from Bernardo Silva. He then powered past Rodri before releasing the ball to Alfie Doughty on Luton’s right wing.

It was an attack started by Barkley and one that ended in the opening goal of the match as Elijah Adebayo headed in Andros Townsend’s cross.

This was not the first time Barkley has been key to a Luton attacking sequence this season.

A player who turned 30 this month has been playing a more withdrawn midfield role than at other stages of his career. He will often collect the ball in his own half before laying it off to a team-mate or bursting through the centre of the pitch.

His starting position for the sequence that led to Luton’s goal against Brentford this month has become a familiar one.

Barkley picks up the ball near his centre-backs…

… and after a short sprint into Brentford’s half, plays a through ball to Jacob Brown, who scores what turned out to be just a consolation for the visitors in a 3-1 defeat.

Of Barkley’s passes as a Luton player, 31.4 per cent of them have been forward. This is a much higher rate than in previous seasons. For Chelsea in the 2018-19 season, his ratio of forward passes was at 17.6 per cent. It improved the following year with the Londoners to just over 20 per cent and then, during his loan spell at Aston Villa in 2020-21, it crept up to 22.3 per cent.

No Luton midfielder or forward has averaged more passes into the attacking third (6.48) per Premier League game than Barkley; in terms of long balls, 11 per cent of his total passes have travelled at least 32 metres, with a success rate of 56.1 per cent. This makes him Luton’s most accurate passer when it comes to players boasting at least 10 per cent of passes a distance of 32 metres or more.

Before Luton’s winning goal against Crystal Palace on November 23, it was Barkley who went on a similar run into the opposition half to the one we showed him making the following weekend against Brentford.

These forward bursts often attract opposition players to the ball, which can free up his team-mates.

With four Palace players nearby, he plays the ball into the path of winger Chiedozie Ogbene, who went on to assist Brown’s winning goal.

Barkley has been carrying the ball forward for Luton with purpose and the kind of vigour that endeared him to Everton supporters in his breakthrough years, which ultimately led to his transfer to Chelsea in January 2018.

One of his best and longest dribbles for his new club came in the 1-1 draw with Liverpool on November 5.

He recovered the ball as Luton pushed out from a defensive corner and carried it up the pitch, with Issa Kabore and eventual goalscorer Tahith Chong ahead of him.

Barkley released the ball to Kabore, who played it across for Chong to put Luton into the lead.

His success initiating attacks is highlighted by the fact the only Luton player to have been more involved in attacking sequences that have ended in a shot than Barkley is striker Carlton Morris.

“He looks as though he’s in a nice place now and the pressure is off him,” says Hall. “He’s probably enjoying his football, like he was when he was 16, when there was no pressure on him, when he just put his boots on, went out and played and worked hard.”

Hall remembers watching Barkley pick up the player of the tournament award for England Under-16s at the renowned Mondial Minimes tournament, which has been held annually in Montaigu, France, since 1976.

Barkley flew through England’s age groups, before playing his first game for the senior team at 19. He has won another 32 caps but the most recent came over four years ago.

His debut might have arrived sooner had it not been for the broken leg he suffered at 16 when he was playing for England Under-19s. The damage was severe and meant he missed a year of football. His progress up until that point at Everton and England had been electric. Hall says Barkley showed a lot of resilience to get back from that injury and go on to achieve what he has.

When he did return, it was not long until David Moyes handed Barkley his Everton first-team debut in August 2011, only six years after he joined the club. Hall says it was unusual for a player to sign at 11, as most of the local boys had already joined up by age seven or eight.

“I don’t think he ever thought at that age he would have been good enough,” says Hall, who first watched Barkley play for Everton’s under-11s against their Wolverhampton Wanderers counterparts: “Everybody was saying Wolves had a terrific group of youngsters who were big, strong and athletic. Ross played as a centre-back and he was absolutely outstanding. I asked the lads, ‘Who is this?’.

“I often get asked what makes a good player. You’ve got to have just about everything but you certainly need technical qualities. I never, ever knew what foot Ross (predominantly) kicked with, because he was that good with both. Somebody said, ‘Well, tell him to take a penalty!’. I watched him score penalties with both feet.”

For Hall, Barkley’s recent goal against Arsenal, which he scored on his 30th birthday, was like watching him as a 20-year-old again.

As the sequence starts, Barkley is surrounded by four opposition players. Undeterred, he races between Martin Odegaard and Ben White into Arsenal’s half. Being tracked by White, Barkley plays a pass across to Townsend, who returns the favour.

At this point, Barkley is in space out on the left, holding the width of the pitch and is not picked up by a single Arsenal player. He then carries the ball into the box, with Bukayo Saka goal-side of him and White behind him. He makes room with a stepover before forcing a left-footed shot past David Raya.

“When he was younger he got compared to an awful lot of players, but I see a lot of Declan Rice in him,” Hall adds. “He’s not one that always jumps out at you but what he does is always right.

“Ross probably had a little bit of a problem in that he would get into good areas and his final ball wasn’t there. Now it looks to me as though he is playing further back where he can see the whole picture.”

Sitting further back, collecting the ball and sprinting into the opposition half is bringing out the best of Barkley, and Luton are profiting from it.

(Photo: Catherine Ivill/Getty Images)