Arsenal: 3 reasons Matteo Guendouzi should start

2. He is a superb ball progresser

One of Granit Xhaka’s best qualities is his ability to thread passes between the lines and progress Arsenal up the pitch. But Guendouzi also excels at this.

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This season, Xhaka has played 5.4 accurate long passes per 90 minutes. That is the best in the Arsenal squad excluding those that have played fewer than 500 minutes. But Guendouzi ranks fifth in the squad with 3.8 per 90. He is not far behind. He also plays only 1.1 inaccurate long passes per 90 minutes, a less than quarter of his attempted long passes. Xhaka, on the other hand, plays 2.4 inaccurate long passes per 90, almost a third of his total attempts.

Guendouzi also offers far greater ball carrying. He attempts 1.2 more dribbles per 90 minutes than Xhaka and completed 0.5 more dribbles per 90 minutes. Xhaka is unsuccessful with only 0.2 of his dribble attempts. That may seem like a good thing, and it is regarding retention of possession, but it also means that he does not attempt to carry the ball forwards. In fact, most of Arsenal’s best ball progresses fail on around one or more dribble attempts per 90 minutes. Nicolas Pepe fails to complete 2.8 dribbles per 90 minutes, for example.

Finally, when Guendouzi was at his best, during the opening weeks of this season, he was one of the best ball progressers in the Premier League. In fact, across the first eight weeks of the season, no under-23 midfielder combined for more passes of more than 20 metres or dribbles of more than 10 metres per 90 minutes than the Frenchman. And last season, only Xhaka and Mesut Ozil provided more progressive passes from deep per 90 minutes than Guendouzi. He is a supreme progresser of play, which is a vital role at the base of the Arsenal midfield.