While tactics and formations change, there is one player role that will likely never die out, with the vast majority of systems requiring at least one ball winner in the middle ground.
The last two title winners in the Premier League were built around that particular player, with N’Golo Kante helping to inspire Leicester and Chelsea to glory. Meanwhile, though Pep Guardiola loves to dispel such theories in the game, the success of David Silva and Kevin De Bruyne at the heart of a five man midfield this season has owed much to Fernandinho’s work off the ball.
Reigning European champions Real Madrid have Casemiro, who will likely play the role ahead of his aforementioned compatriot at Manchester City for World Cup favourites Brazil this summer. No matter how good a team may be, they all need protection to their defence and always will.
We’ve decided to assess which midfielders are most efficient when it comes to dispossessing opponents in the Premier League, using four key metrics to decipher the best of the best of those that do so the most often.
The players we are looking at are the top midfielders in terms of tackles per 90 minutes this season, of those to have started at least half of their side’s league matches thus far.
Along with that we have analysed how many tackles each has made for every time they have been dribbled past, how many each has made for every foul they have conceded and what proportion of their total tackles see them come away with the ball (as opposed to going to another teammate, opponent or out of play).
In an attempt to visualise the most impressive, the above chart has been plotted, with the key explaining the range for each tackling statistic.
In essence, the bigger the shaded space, the better the ball winner.
Leicester’s Wilfred Ndidi was the man tasked with replacing Kante’s efforts in their spectacular title winning campaign and has at least gone some way to doing so. He has produced the most tackles per 90 minutes in the Premier League this season - a feat the Frenchman managed in 2015/16 - but is below the average of the nine players assessed in each of the remaining categories.
Joe Allen, meanwhile, is below the average in every department, which isn’t to say that he hasn’t done a solid job for Stoke - ranking among the top nine midfielders for tackles per 90 minutes after all - but that the Welshman is some way down on the best here, along with Oriol Romeu of Southampton.
The best player here in terms of producing the most tackles for every time an opponent dribbles past them is the Spaniard’s Saints teammate Mario Lemina. The Frenchman completes just shy of 3.4 tackles for every time that he is outfoxed, which is a very impressive return.
Huddersfield’s Aaron Mooy is not far behind on 3.3, and the Australian leads the way by a distance in terms of the number of tackles he produces per foul (4.5), with Kante his closest rival of the nine here on 3.3. The Australian’s chart, however, is a real outlier as he is so strong in the aforementioned two categories but comfortably the weakest by way of tackle success - the percentage of tackles a player makes that see them emerge with the ball themselves (55.3%).
That’s way back on Emre Can of Liverpool, who leads the way with an excellent 81.3%, and the German is one of the strongest across the board here, along with Kante and Jonathan Hogg, who is able to make up for the statistics that his midfield partner Mooy is lacking and vice versa.
In fact, the only player who is arguably more efficient overall is Idrissa Gueye, getting through a mountain of work across the Mersey with Everton.
The Senegal international is the only player to perform above the average of the sample in all four statistical categories, ranking second of nine in terms of tackles per 90, second in success rate, third for tackles per foul and fourth for tackles made per occasion that he is dribbled past.
Gueye, then, is one Everton player that can claim to have done his bit for the club in an otherwise abject campaign, and a ball winner that some of those above the Toffees should arguably be keeping tabs on.
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