Stats Scouting: Central Midfield

Arsenal have let Ainsley Maitland-Niles go to Roma on a loan, Thomas Partey and Mohamed Elneny away for the African Cup of Nations, Granit Xhaka is out for at least the very short term with COVID.

Arsenal are very short in numbers in central midfield.

I had already thought that Arsenal were a bit short because I didn't highly rate Maitland-Niles or Elneny and thought that the team should have been looking to sign another player in the summer but so far the team has survived pretty well with the current numbers.

They may be able to pull through January without an addition (especially if matches continue to be postponed) but I think that the team will be actively looking and if the right player shows up they hopefully will not hesitate to pull the trigger to bolster the midfield.

There have not been a lot of rumors for players that Arsenal have been linked to, so instead of going through those players I have instead turned to my rating system to suggest some names to look at. For this, I am using a 1,000 minute cut off and I will draw the line at 26 years old or under. Could you pick different cutoffs? For sure but the minutes seem to be something that gives us a good sample size for the season and the age is something that will be in line with the "project" that Arsenal are building.

So here is the list of players that meet the cutoffs and score in the 80th percentile or better for overall rating: