80% Duels Won – 3 Reasons Why This Spanish Prodigy Will Help Arsenal’s Midfield Issues

With Arsenal’s form suddenly looking a lot better with three wins in just as many games, there is some serious momentum building up. It is indeed hard to believe that so many of Arsenal’s best players are still out injured. However inspite of all the positivity, there is still two things every Arsenal fan and his dog knows that Arsene Wenger has to do when the transfer window opens in January. One, buy a new centre half which Wenger agrees with so it should not be a problem. The second one is getting an improvement on Mikel Arteta and Mathieu Flamini which is a little more trickier as Arsene Wenger truly trusts his Arsenal captain and is unwilling to get a top class defensive midfielder in the January window. However with news emerging that Real madrid might be willing to let go of Asier Illarramendi on loan, we at Soccersouls chalk up 3 reasons why Arsenal should go for him.

Illarramendi will give Arsenal an incredible work ethic:

Pep Guardiola in his recent autobiography, while talking about how his side beat Arsenal mentioned Arsene Wenger’s tactics of using Mikel Arteta as bait to draw out his team. While that is incredibly smart, the sad reality is that neither Mikel Arteta (nor Mathieu Flamini) has the legs to play in that role against the top teams. It is not for a want of desire but the harsh reality is that Mikel Arteta simply cannot compete with the top teams in respect to work rate. Getting Asier Illarramendi will immediately give Arsenal an incredible boost in that department and the tactics of Arsene Wenger using Asier Illarramendi as a decoy won’t be caught out because of lack of work rate.

Going by statistics:

While he has not really been used to his full potential by Real Madrid (to put it mildly), no club spends £25 million on such a young talent unless he is exceedingly good. Discounting the time he spent at Real Madrid, his stats during the 2012-13 season was indeed exceptional. He had an above 80% success rate in duels won which was higher than even Xabi Alonso at the time. In fact the former Real Sociedad player was fouled an incredible 73 times that season, which shows that the opponents have an incredible respect to his game which gives even further credence to our first point. Even at 24, he would be the improved Mikel Arteta.

He is young and will fit in right at this Arsenal team:

Although chances are that Real Madrid will let go of Asier Illarramendi only on a loan deal, Arsene Wenger must be licking his lips in anticipation of working with a talent like him. He is young versatile and might just be the final jigsaw to the title winning Arsenal side. If Arsene Wenger can convince Real Madrid to sell their young star, this Arsenal team actually looks good enough to compete on all levels.

Stats via Whoscored