Player Focus: Oxlade-Chamberlain Becoming Arsenal Regular in New Central Role

Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain reached a minor landmark against Liverpool on Sunday, starting his twelfth game of the season, more than he has managed in any other Premier League campaign. In fact, he’s played some part in all 17 of Arsenal’s league games so far. He’s played the whole 90 minutes in only five of them, it’s true, but in the last two games he’s come off in the final seconds. Quietly, almost unnoticed, Oxlade-Chamberlain has become a regular.

Although eight players have played more minutes than him for Arsenal this season, nobody has played in so many league games. For a player who has missed so much time with injury – not that that makes him unusual at Arsenal, that is a very welcome sign.He’s still only 21 and so fits into that rare breed of young English players who are learning the game by playing matches in the Premier League. What’s fascinating over the past year is the direction his education has taken, that he has ceased to be the winger he was when he came through at Southampton and is instead one of the flanking players in a three-man midfield.

It’s a position for which there is no term in English – perhaps because the notion of a three-man midfield is comparatively recent, but in Argentina, Oxlade-Chamberlain, playing as he has recently, would be described as a “carrillero” – literally one who moves as though on rails, somebody who chugs up and down (it can also be used of shuttling full-backs).That makes it sound unglamorous, a position for a workhorse, but it’s essentially the player who links between the 5, the holding midfielder, and the 10, the playmaker, a box-to-box player. The best recent example would perhaps be Diego Simeone.

Oxlade-Chamberlain first emerged as a winger at Southampton and when he began to play more centrally last season it seemed it was probably a short-term measure brought about by Arsenal’s unbalanced squad and injury list.But Oxlade-Chamberlain has reveled in the position, largely because it plays to his strengths. He perhaps doesn’t quite have the virtuoso technical skills to flourish on the flank at the very highest level, but by dropping a bit deep so his role is less focused on creativity, his energy, commitment and discipline are showcased.

Such is the sense of technical inferiority in English football these days that it can easily be forgotten that effort, stamina and tenacity are virtues as well (James Milner, perhaps is under-rated for similar reasons), and to say Oxlade-Chamberlain does not pass the ball as well as Xavi, or beat his man with the quick feet of Lionel Messi, is not to suggest he is somehow worthless as a footballer, that he is nothing more than an engine on legs.

A pass success rate of 81.1% isn’t bad for a central midfielder, particularly not one who makes 1.4 key passes and 1.3 long passes per game, but there is room for improvement. The slightly surprising detail is that he averages only 0.1 through-balls per game and that he hasn’t yet registered an assist: the assumption would be that given the pace in the Arsenal forward line, he would have been sliding passes through on a regular basis. Instead, that’s left largely for Alexis Sanchez and Santi Cazorla.

What has improved significantly this season is his defensive work. This season, Oxlade-Chamberlain averages 1.1 tackle per game, up from 0.6 tackles per game last season and, while he also averaged 1.1 in 2012-13, this season he is also making 1.0 interceptions as opposed to 0.6 then.

He’s also carrying the ball far more – perhaps because starting deeper he has more space in front of him: 3.2 dribbles per game this season compared to 1.5 last season and 1.2 the season before that. Shots per game, meanwhile, have remained roughly constant (although his goals return remains disappointing: just one in the league so far this season and just six in his whole Arsenal career), suggesting he is offering a similar attacking threat while also getting more involved on the defensive side.

The new role suits him, he is adapting to it and, given he is still only 21, it could be that he makes the position his own, not only with Arsenal, but also perhaps with England.