Fellaini, the second player who commits the most fouls. He is inefficient in his duels; basically whenever he gets past he often has recourse to a foul. The difference between him and a proper defensive midfielder is that Arteta has no great ability to gain the ball back without taking him out whereas the DM would do it by the rule book.

He tends to go higher on the pitch and tries to get more involved. Arteta cannot be Arsenal’s defensive midfielder, he is the type of player with great game intelligence, who reads perfectly the game. He is not an attacking midfielder neither nor a box to box neither, for example Coquelin and Diaby perfectly fit in the box to box role: a player running a lot withintelligent runs through the field in order to perforate the defense, who is a link between and attack, good strength, pace. I’d put Arteta in a very special category: skilled defensively, he reads the game in order to gain the momentum on the other midfielders. Offensively, in an open play situation he regulates the action by diversifying his type of passing: long balls, short quick passes, though balls. He can adapt himself to the game. Mikel Arteta is that type of player. When you realize the quality and the quantity of work he supplies to in a position he doesn’t really like it would be outstanding to allow him to go higher with a decent back up behind him. Besides, despite his positioning fairly deep he provided around