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Comparing Lucas Torreira’s 2017-18 stats to Arsenal’s existing midfielders

Planet Football •

Uruguay international Lucas Torreira has become the most recent arrival to join the new era at Arsenal under Unai Emery.

Torreira has joined Arsenal in a £26million deal from Sampdoria and will be tasked with solving the Gunners’ long standing problems in deep midfield.

We’ve taken a look at the 22-year-old’s Serie A stats from the 2017-2018 season and compared them to Emery’s other options in central midfield: Aaron Ramsey, Granit Xhaka and Mohamed Elneny.

Goals and assists

As a deep-lying midfielder, Torreira is not exactly a prolific scorer, but he still managed four goals last term, more than both Xhaka and Elneny, who finished on one and none respectively.

Ramsey leads the way in that regard with seven, and also recorded the most assists with eight. Xhaka provided the next most with seven, while Elneny and Torreira both registered only one each.

Unsurprisingly, Ramsey was directly involved in a goal more often than anyone else on the pitch, providing a goal or assist every 102.66 minutes. Xhaka is second with one every 408.25 minutes, Torreira third with one every 637 minutes and finally Elneny with one every 870 minutes.

Defensive contributions

Torreira mad the most tackles of the four players last season, completing 2.8 per 90 minutes with an overall success rate of 68%. Xhaka is in second with his completion of 2.1 tackles per 90 minutes and a lower success rate of 63.6%.

Elneny had the highest tackling success rate of any Arsenal player last season with 70.6%, but that’s with only 1.2 completed per 90 minutes. Ramsey completes 1.7 tackles per game, but with only a 48.6% success rate.

Torreira also leads the way with an average of 2.0 interceptions a game, Ramsey is second with 1.2, while Xhaka and Elneny both average 1.0.

With a slight 5ft 6in frame, the new Arsenal man doesn’t win many aerial duals, but he still manages to find himself second on this list. The Uruguayan wins 0.6 per 90 minutes with a success rate of 37.5%.

Elneny also wins 0.6 per 90 with a success rate of just 30%, and Ramsey finishes bottom with only 0.5 aerial duals won but a slightly better success rate of 38.5%. Xhaka wins by far the most duals with 1.4 per game with a success rate of 50%.

Attacking

Looking into their attacking play in more detail, Ramsey again wins out in terms of chances created per game with an average of 1.4. Xhaka created 1.1 with Torreira and Elneny joint last with 1.0 each.

When it comes to passing accuracy, Elneny tops that list with 93.7%. Torreira just pips Xhaka to second with 87.2% in comparison to the Swiss’ 86.9%, and Ramsey finally finds himself at the bottom of something with 84.9% accuracy.

None of the Arsenal midfield are particularly prolific dribblers, but Ramsey completes the most with 1.4 per 90 minutes at a success rate of 77.7%. Torreira boasts the highest rate of successful dribbles with 83% but is behind Ramsey by completing 1.0.

Xhaka and Elneny are much further behind – Xhaka (0.5 per 90 at 71.4%) and finally Elneny (0.3 per 90 at 75%).

 

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