The Missing Link in Arsenal’s Midfield
An analysis of Arsenal’s current midfield and what type of player they need in order to compete with the world’s best
Arsenal by all accounts had a poor 2019–20 Premier League season. Their 14th FA Cup triumph should not forego the fact that the Gunners finished 8th in the Premier League, their worst league position in 25 years. There have been signs of improvement, hiring a technically competent coach in Mikel Arteta and beating the other teams that finished in the top-4 (Liverpool, Manchester City, Manchester United, Chelsea), have no doubt instilled a new belief and confidence in the squad. But, for all these victories, there were also the defeats against West Ham and Brighton where Arsenal was lacking in creativity when the onus was on them to do the attacking.
The team from North London have begun the transfer window well, addressing gaps in their squad. The arrival of two young centre-backs in William Saliba and Gabriel Magaelhas adds strength to a weak back line and the addition of Willian addresses the aforementioned lack of creativity.
However, there is still the lurking question - Is the addition of Willian enough to solve Arsenal’s creative woes? The pursuit of two other midfielders -Thomas Partey and Houssem Aouar is well documented. I will address this, and many other concerns about Arsenal’s midfield over the course of this article, using a combination of visualization techniques.
What does the Arsenal Midfield need?
Arsenal’s attacking output mimics that of another rival. The Gunners depend heavily on their attacking trio of Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, Alexandre Lacazette and Nicolas Pépé. This is not an altogether negative thing, as can be seen with the current Premier League champions, Liverpool, who depend on goals from their holy trinity of Mohamed Salah, Sadio Mané and Roberto Firminho. Both teams do not rely heavily on goals from their midfielders which is evident from the fact that no other Arsenal midfielder scored more than one goal, and no Liverpool midfielder scored more than 4 goals in the Premier League last season.
Yet, Liverpool’s midfield was still able to provide the transition between defence and attack with utmost ease along with breaking up the flow of the opposition’s play. Jordan Henderson, Fabinho and Georginio Wijnaldum often played as the three central midfielders and Arsenal can learn a lot by the way these midfielders operate. By drawing a comparison between Arsenal’s central midfielders and Liverpool’s we can get a clear picture of the areas in which the Arsenal midfield is lacking.
A radar chart is a useful way of comparing similar metrics of entries belonging to the same data set. The methodology for creating these radar charts (using R) is as follows:
· Filter data for all Central Midfielders from the Big 5 leagues. The Big 5 Leagues are the Premier League (England), La Liga (Spain), Bundesliga (Germany), Serie A (Italy) and Ligue 1 (France).
· Only consider players who have played a minimum of 1000 minutes in the 2019–20 season. This will exclude players who have had one-off exceptional performances.
· Ensure that there are different types of metrics —attacking, passing, defensive — so that a well-rounded midfielder can be analysed. In the above charts, if you move in an anti-clockwise direction from xG (12 o’clock) the metrics move from attacking to passing (Passes to Pen Area onward) to defensive (Defensive Duels onward).
· Different types of metrics have been clubbed together to depict the style of the midfielder.
For example: Since Fabinho (in green) is high in the top-right corner it means his defensive metrics are good. Similarly, Jordan Henderson is strong in the bottom right corner which means he has excellent passing metrics.
· All metrics are successful and not attempts per 90 minutes.
For example: “Thru Passes” represents successful thru passes per 90 minutes and not just attempted thru passes per 90 minutes.
· All data values depicted on the outer perimeter show the value representing the 98th percentile of that metric. This was done to avoid outliers and to get a truer representation of a player’s standard in a specific metric.
For example: The value depicting the 98th percentile for “Final 3rd Passes” is 10.4.
The difference between the Liverpool and Arsenal CMs (Central-Midfielders) is the lack of Thru Passes, Long Passes and Final 3rd Passes as seen in the radar charts for Arsenal and Liverpool. While Henderson provides this dynamism for Liverpool, Arsenal is crying out for a creative threat from this area of the field.
It is not just in creativity that the Arsenal midfield is lacking. In Fabinho, Liverpool has one player who is strong in several defensive metrics. Out of the Arsenal midfielders, Torreria has the best Possession Adjusted Interceptions, Ceballos the best Defensive Duels and Xhaka the best Aerial Duels. Arsenal should target a player in Fabinho’s ilk who is strong in several different defensive parameters.
After making the above observations, it is easy to conclude that Arsenal needs to address two areas in their central midfield:
Creativity: Player with a good passing range including a high volume of thru balls, long passes, and final 3rd passes
Defensive Minded: Player who has a high volume of possession adjusted interceptions and aerial duels.
Arsenal’s possible CM trio for the new season
Currently, Arsenal has three different transfer targets to solve these problems — Thomas Partey, Houssem Aouar and Amadou Diawara. Let us look at the radar charts for these three central midfielders from the 2019–20 season.
Diawara, though a good player in his own right, does not appear to be offering anything that the other two targets lack in.
Aouar is more attack-minded and performs the role of a carrier which can be seen in his exceptionally high dribbles and progressive runs.
Partey offers the most balanced option and, out of the three, satisfies the two criteria mentioned above. He is an upgrade in terms of Thru Passes and is also one player who can offer the triple defensive ability of interceptions, aerial duels, and defensive duels. No wonder he is Arsenal’s primary target.
A lot of people might be thinking that since Aouar offers something so distinct and will provide a different dimension to Arsenal’s midfield, why are Arsenal not making a more decisive approach towards him? It is because Arsenal has already made a similar signing in Willian.
It should be noted that although Willian and Aouar played in different positions last season and since Aouar played more centrally, it would be more difficult to dribble successfully in a more congested and tight space; the above radar chart simply shows that Willian also has the ability to take on opposition players and carry the ball. Arsenal has also said publicly that they are looking to use Willian in a more central role. Hence, even if Arsenal lose out on Aouar they do have a player with a similar playing style waiting in the wings.
This makes Ceballos, Xhaka and Partey the most likely trio in the Arsenal mid-field for the 2020–21 season. With the help of a polar chart, which looks at the percentiles of these three players compared to other CMs from the Big 5 leagues in Europe, I will analyse where this central midfield partnership is still lacking.
What can be inferred is that Partey provides a one-stop solution to many of Arsenal’s weaknesses. As already stated, he not only provides a much-needed defensive cover for Arsenal but is also good at different passing metrics such as Thru Passes and Final 3rd Passes and provides an upgrade to Arsenal’s current players in these metrics. It should also be noted that since Partey played for Atlético Madrid last season — a team ranked 10th for average possession of the ball among all La Liga teams last season his percentile ranking for passing metrics is even more remarkable.
Arsenal’s radar chart with these three players in the central midfield looks a lot more like the radar chart of Liverpool’s central midfielders.
What does Arsenal need to scale greater heights?
There is no doubt that Thomas Partey will add a significant amount to the Arsenal central midfield. However, if we look at the scatter plots of the top central midfielders in terms of passing range and defensive attributes, we will see that Arsenal will still not possess someone who they can term as “world-class”.
We can make this claim by looking at the best central midfielders in the Big 5 leagues in terms of the two criteria mentioned above — passing range and defensive attributes. For passing range, I have looked at Thru Passes and Long Passes, and for defensive attributes, I have looked at PAdj Interceptions per 90 and Aerial Duels (the same methodology for data prep that was used for the radar charts is used here as well).
The players labelled in pink and light blue belong to the top 5 percentile of central midfielders in the Big 5 Leagues or the “world-class” players for their respective metrics. What is interesting to note is that all of Arsenal’s rivals have a player in at least one of these categories, whereas, neither the current nor targeted Arsenal CMs fall into the “world-class” bracket. When we look at successful thru passes per 90 — Manchester City (Kevin de Bruyne and David Silva), Liverpool (Jordan Henderson), Manchester United (Paul Pogba), all have a player in the top 5 percentile and when we look at successful long passes per 90 — Manchester City (Rodri) and Chelsea (Jorginho) again have players in the top 5 percentile. Ceballos and Partey are the closest current and potential Arsenal CMs to the “world-class” category in both these metrics.
Similarly, for defensive attributes, Chelsea has both Jorginho and Kante in the top 5 percentile for PAdj Interceptions per 90. Even players such as Eric Dier and Wilfred Ndidi from Spurs and Leicester City respectively are present, but there is still no Arsenal player in the top 5 percentile in either metric.
When we look at both these graphs, the lack of Arsenal players stands out. Almost all the Premier League clubs have at least one player from their team in either of these graphs. Apart from the teams that finished in the top-6, there are also players such as Jonjo Shelvey (Newcastle United), Oliver Norwood (Sheffield United), Tomáš Souček (West Ham United), Cheikhou Kouyaté (Crystal Palace), Oriol Romeu (Southampton), André Gomes (Everton) and Philip Billing (Bournemouth).
Some readers might argue that Liverpool and Manchester United only have one player each in these charts, but when looking at where Henderson and Pogba are in the passing range charts they are in the top 5 percentile for thru passes and in the top 10 percentile for long passes. Both Henderson and Pobga provide the twin capabilities of long-range passing and slicing open a defence in one player, which is an added benefit to the team they play for.
Ideally, Arsenal should target a player who is present in both these charts. The only players who possess the dual traits of excellent passing range and defensive traits are Casemiro, Sergio Busquets, Thiago Alcântara, Sergej Milinković-Savić, Jorginho and surprisingly, a Moroccan midfielder, Mehdi Bourabia who plays for Sassuolo. Ideally, Arsenal would have liked to target one of these players, but even getting a player who is on either of those charts would be an upgrade on the current side.
What can be concluded from this article is that Arsenal is in desperate need of reinforcements in their midfield. Ceballos and Xhaka, the two likely survivors from Arsenal’s midfield for next season do not possess enough defensively and creatively. Out of Arsenal’s three public targets, Partey will provide the most obvious point of difference. Diawara and Partey have similar traits but Partey’s stats from last season are better than Diawara’s. Aouar offers something different to the other Arsenal targets, but perhaps Arsenal already has a player like him, albeit playing in a different position, in Willian. However, if Arsenal wants to compete with the best teams in Europe, they should be targeting a central midfielder who is “world-class” in either creative or defensive metrics.
