Using data to identify the best midfielders...in the middle of the pitch
Declan Rice suffers broken toe! Arsenal sweating on midfielder's fitness ahead of huge Premier League clash against Chelsea with England star eager to play | Goal.com US
There’s a great meme floating around out there that separates the football pitch into thirds. Of course the attacking third is dedicated to chance creation and scoring goals. The defensive third is dedicated to preventing the same. The middle third, though, sometimes is home to “something happens,” or “??? don’t worry about it.”
I’ve probably butchered the meme, and for some reason I struggled mightily to find it while writing this, but I’m hoping you know the one I’m talking about.
All that to set this up: MIDFIELD!
Midfielders have so much to do. Some,like our last list, generate a lot of goal threat and are exceptional at it. Others, which we’ll cover in the future, prevent transitions and keep their defenders out of trouble. But then, there’s another class who do some of both. Whether you want to call these guys your “box to box” midfielders, your “8s,” or anything else, these are the guys whom it would be at least a little foolish to judge merely by how many chances they’re creating, or how many tackles they’re creating, or one other singular stat. The better method is to find the best balance of all of them, because they’re asked to do some of everything.
That’s the group of guys I’m trying to classify here, referred to via headline as thefacilitators. You may also think of them as**progressive specialists,**though the manner through which they progress the ball will vary.
No two of these players are exactly the same, as their required roles within their team systems vary. But generally speaking, players who get the ball from the defensive third to the attacking third did well here. There was also a great deal of weight on being involved in moves that end in shots, as well as ball security. If you lose the ball a lot, you’re going to get dinged. And though there would be some overlap on this list with our last (Morgan Gibbs-White would rank very highly here), I’ve decided to keep double-dippers away for the sake of novelty.
As always, some points to keep in mind as we go:
This list is created relying fully on statistics from this season. Players are rated using a whole bunch of data points of varying weights.
Minimum for inclusion was 5.0 90s, or 450 minutes. Players with more starts were weighted favorably.
I don’t follow a hard-and-fast age limit, but I do prioritize players on the younger side of the “peak age” spectrum.
All scores are subject to an adjustment according to league strength, so you shouldn’t have to mentally raise or lower rankings to make it more “fair.”
**Reminder:**Opta unfortunately has decided to shut off some of its advanced stats for certain leagues for a bit while they evaluate whether it’s worth their investment, so our ability to provide more detailed looks at guys from the Eredivisie, Primeira Liga, Belgian Pro League and other similarly-ranked leagues is gone. So while I can’t give you radars on every target, I’ll still call some guys out below from those leagues and give you radars where I can. There will be fewer radars but just as many writeups.
New feature: I’m going to tack on a top-of-mind valuation for players. This isn’t meant to be permanent, nor is it the result of hours of research (I would for instance treat anything you see in a film study as far more authoritative), but hopefully it gives a ballpark idea of what I think a guy is worth at a certain point in time.
Last but not least: I always encourage a healthy dose of the eye test before forming a final opinion on any player, so please consume this list responsibly. This is especially true for me the farther away from goal you get.
**Alright, let’s get into it.**We’ll start with Arsenal’s representatives at the position, led by none other than Declan Rice: