Mikel Arteta: Better Suited as a Deep-Lying Playmaker or Shielding Midfielder?

A lot of Arsenal fans don’t quite know whether Mikel Arteta is better suited as the tackling and distributing midfielder, which he played in the 2012/13 season, or whether he is better suited as a deep lying playmaker. Throughout this piece, I hope to address some statistics which may best answer this question in which role he may be better suited to Arsenal.
Addressing the deep-lying playmaker role firstly, Arteta has the necessary capabilities to play this role effectively for Arsenal in the 2013/14 season. This role, as the name suggests, requires the player to assist in the team’s attacking forays, but they must also be able to defend stoutly in the team’s defensive structures. These are both aspects which Mikel Arteta has shown he can achieve successfully.
In the 2011/12 season, Arteta was played in a deeper role where he would veer forward assisting in Arsenal’s attack, as would Alex Song. The statistics show in the first 25 games of the 2011/12 season, Arteta was averaging 2.2 key passes, a pass which creates a goalscoring opportunity, per match. This amounted to a chance created every 41 minutes. However, Arteta only had 2 assists to his name in those games, which raises some questions.
Arteta, in the 25 games in 2011/12, continued to show that he was able to get thoroughly involved in the side with a high amount of passes. He averaged 78 passes in those matches at a pass completion rate of 90.5%. A criticism of Arteta in the 2012/13 season by some Arsenal fans was he passed the ball backwards and sideways too often, but this wasn’t the case in 2011/12. 47% of his passes went forward, with only 12% going backwards.
As mentioned previously, the deep-lying playmaker must also be able to defend in a structured system, something that Mikel Arteta has shown he can do in the past few seasons. Even with Alex Song in the side, Arteta averaged 1.9 interceptions and 2.5 tackles per match in the 2011/12 season. This is heavily important as Arteta has shown he can balance between the offensive and defensive aspects of the match in this position.
Moving onto the 2012/13 season, where Mikel Arteta played in the tackling/shielding midfielder, who started many of Arsenal’s attacking plays. Arteta’s statistics from 2012/13 show that he averaged 80.9 passes per match at 91.5%. A statistic which is important is that Arteta only averaged 5.3 long passes (over 30 metres) per match. This means in 2012/13, he played lots of short, sharp passes and gets the ball moving along the ground. Compared to the 2.2 key passes Arteta averaged in 2011/12, he only averaged 0.8 key passes per match in 2012/13, which is expected in the role he played.
The most important stats for this role, though, are the defensive based statistics. In 2012/13, Arteta attempted 109 tackles throughout the season at a 69% success rate. Arteta completed 99 interceptions, which means he averaged 2.91 per match. Arteta was dribbled past 33 times in 34 EPL appearances in 2012/13 and made 2 defensive errors, which lead to opposition goals.
To gain some context, these statistics must be compared to see where a player actually sits. Arteta’s statistics will be compared to Michael Carrick, who many feel is the best defensive midfielder in the EPL. Carrick averaged 77.1 in his 36 2012/13 EPL appearances at a success rate of 88.1%. This means that Arteta played more passes per match, on average, at a better pass completion rate. Carrick, also, averaged 5.8 long passes per match, which is similar to Arteta.
Defensively, the better statistics are weighted between Arteta. This is as, Carrick only achieved at 83 tackles throughout the season, at 71.25% success rate. In terms of interceptions, Carrick completed 76 interceptions, compared to Arteta’s 99. Also, Carrick was dribbled past on 38 occasions in his 36 appearances in 2012/13 and made 4 defensive errors which lead to goals, compared to the 2 of Arteta.
This shows that Arteta can play in both positions very well, which allows Arsene Wenger to use him in both knowing Arteta can do the job. In terms of better benefits for Arsenal, I believe that Mikel is better used for Arsenal in the role next to the tackling midfielder, where he can assist more so in attack, as he showed he could do in 2011/12.