The Situation
Mathieu Flamini and Mikel Arteta are battling for the holding midfielder spot in the Arsenal first team lineup.
The Decision
The Frenchman has started fourteen league games and made five more substitute appearances, whilst the Basque has started seventeen Premier League games with four further substitute appearances.
On occasion the two have started together, but with Arsene Wenger often preferring to play a more positive game than with two holding midfielders, it tends to become a one-on-one shoot-out for that position, with the latter tending to be favoured over Flamini. Both seem to suit different scenarios and react to the same scenarios in different ways. Arteta is more comfortable in a game where Arsenal are dominating and need to break down the defensive door whereas Flamini loves a scrappy defensive display.
Wenger has been accused of ignoring their suitability for certain scenarios.
The Verdict
As fantastic a playmaker as Arteta may be (it is worth mentioning that Flamini is pretty useful in that department as well; his passing accuracy is 93%), Arsenal have a wealth of attacking talent in their midfield with players such as Mesut Ozil, Aaron Ramsey, Jack Wilshere, Santi Cazorla and many more all top quality attacking players. No matter how good a team is at attacking, to achieve real success you always need a gritty defensive organiser to stop the opposition counter attacking or intimidating players.
Every title winning team needs an enforcer: someone who will not let the other team get away with any mischief. If you go through every Premier League winning side since and before Arsenal last won the league you will find a no nonsense midfielder at the heart of that time; be it John Obi Mikel, Claude Makelele, Nigel De Jong or whomever else.
Arsenal have too often in recent years been undone on the counter attack. It has been common for them to dominate teams and go on to throw more and more men forward before the team get the ball and exploit the space they’re given with a sucker punch goal. Sure, if you were to go through all of Arsenal’s games in the last nine years and give the result to the team who statistically “deserved” to win then this trophy drought would never have occurred, but unfortunately, particularly if you are an Arsenal fan, you cannot win things simply by deserving them.
It is often the case that Arsenal are at their most vulnerable defensively when they have an attacking corner: too often have they given the ball away and conceded within a matter of seconds. The infamous 2-1 loss at home to Wigan sticks in my mind most vividly.
Arsenal have allowed such humiliating results as the 5-1 against Liverpool to happen because the moment they have gone a goal down they have flung nearly everyone forward and gifted second, third and more goals to their opponents. I maintain to this day that had Flamini been playing in that nightmare at Anfield then the result may not have changed but certainly the manner would. When a team goes a goal down it is very easy to concede immediately after. Arsenal need a player to keep calm and let the game cool down before looking to equalise.
Then comes the matter of intimidation. In Arsenal’s loss to Stoke they did not produce the quality of football which we have come to expect of them. This is partly because they were shaken and intimidated by the Potters’ physical style of play. Either they can complain about it or they can not put up with it and make them regret it. Flamini would not have put up with any of the actions performed by the Stoke players and his playing Stoke at their own game could have allowed Arsenal’s quality to shine through. The Gunners never needed to worry about matching Stoke’s quality; they needed to worry about matching their passion and aggression. A player like Flamini was more suited to that situation than Arteta.
There are situations where Arteta is the better option, and that is why I think this competition between the two is healthy. However, the verdict is that Flamini should be the regular starter because Arsenal do not need yet another creative midfielder: they need some defensive cover to ensure that it is impossible to outscore them.
Your Verdict
We regularly pose the same question to our @AFCModiOperandi followers and include some replies in our articles – if you are interested in having your comments in our articles, follow our account and reply to our questions marked with #AFCMO. This is what you had to say about the Flamini situation:
@AFCModiOperandi: “Should Flamini be an automatic starter in the #Arsenal lineup?”
@Mikeyward10: yea he should without a doubt! His our best defensive mid and gets the dirty work done!
@RB_AFC: yes but only with Ramsey.
@oaf12: no, nobody should really. But IMO he shouldn’t be, he should be used when the game suits him though e.g. Stoke
@Thermotank: Yes he should. He provides the gritty part which #Arsenal misses without him.
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