Dier is their weak link - i'd like to see costa deployed centrally like when he came on against fiorentina
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please enlighten me what stats should we be looking at for a midfielder?
Marchisio has played a fraction of the minutes khedira has this season and is supposedly not even 100% unlike khedira's fitness, even so that was not the argument.
People actually think khedira is our 2nd best midfielder in the team when he is not even remotely close to what Pjanic and Matuidi are to the team.
Lets stick to your original example otherwise this could get hairy:
You bashed him cuz he completed 16 passes and 0 tackles
1) How many passes does he usually complete, how many on a good day/bad day. Same with tackles
2) What were those numbers for the other mezzala that was playing?
3) Is he even on the pitch for his passing/tackling? Or is he there for his closing down passing channels, vertical runs to provide more bodies in offence/defence and his timing of going up/tracking back, his pressing of the opposition, aerial balls etc.
As far as I know there are no stats for 3), maybe could look at heatmaps
Finally: Yes he is an important midfielder for us as him, pjanic and matuidi fulfill different roles and are the best 3 at it for those respective roles e.g. 3 pjanics on the field would be imbalanced