With the summer clear out at Southampton coming to an end, a few more faces are still looking for moves away from, including French midfielder Morgan Schneiderlin.
Having seemingly secured a move to Tottenham Hotspur, the rumours have died off in recent weeks but I’ll take a look at whether or not Spurs actually need Schneiderlin, and compare him to their other central midfielders.
Having had a wonderful season last time around under Mauricio Pochettino at St Marys, it’s no surprise that the French midfielder has attracted a lot of attention over this summer. But do his stats from last season match up to that of the current Spurs midfielders?
As you can see from the stats, having played more minutes than any of the other Spurs midfielders, Schneiderlin achieved much better results in almost all the areas to the other four. All predominantly holding midfielders, assists were always going to be low, with only Paulinho getting more than 1 in the campaign.
For a holding midfielder, his stats were up there with the best in the league last season, making the second most interceptions in the league, with 68, 36 more than the closest Tottenham competitor Paulinho. All the categories in the stats above that Schneiderlin didn’t win he came very close to the top in terms of Tottenham players, and for this reason I believe Tottenham do need the French midfielder in their quest for the Champions League places.
The only negative to bringing Schneiderlin is someone would almost certainly have to leave. The most like-for-like player Spurs have to Schneiderlin is the young Algerian Nabil Bentaleb, in terms of someone who can keep possession of the ball, and defend, allowing other attacking midfielders such as Paulinho and Dembele to get forward and support the attack.
For £17million, Schneiderlin could be worth the gamble and having previously worked with the manager, it can only be a positive for Spurs going forward.
Having seen Spurs play against West Ham in the opening game of the season, the midfield of Nabil Bentaleb and Etienne Capoue looked very, very poor.
Just scraping three points thanks to summer signing Eric Dier but the build up play looked slow and without any purpose, leaving a gap for a Schneiderlin to come in and play a killer ball to unlock what was a shaky West Ham defence.
Although the deal for Schneiderlin looks to be disappearing day by day, his performance at Liverpool showed exactly why Spurs do need him.
Breaking up Liverpool play in important areas and getting Southampton attacks started at pace meant they always looked a threat, and his work goes often unnoticed in games.
The only problem I see for this transfer is plenty of Spurs fans don’t want Schneiderlin, with many labelling him as an “ordinary midfielder” and “not worth more than £5 million”, although I think these stats tell a completely different story.
I personally think Schneiderlin is needed by Spurs, and I think he would make a telling difference to a side who have to break into the top four in the Premier League soon with all the investment.