Central midfielders in the modern game are generally expected to be all-rounders. Gone are the days of specialists in the centre of the park where players may be expected to have one specific skill set that they brought to the team.
The old ideology around team building, for example, would be that in a midfield three you could create a system with three specialist roles, one would be the passer one would be the runner and one would be the defender. In the game today central midfielders would typically be expected to be proficient in at least two of those roles in order to be considered a good player at first-team level.
Whilst we do believe this is true, there is still a place for a specialist in the centre of the midfield but only if they truly stand out in one of the categories mentioned above. They then have to be capable of fulfilling at least one of the other specialist roles, even if that is at a lower level of output. In order to fully examine this theory, we wanted to identify a central midfielder in League Two who is a true standout when it comes to progressing the ball.
It is completely normal in football (even amongst those that work in player recruitment) to have certain biases around the type of players that they like in different positions. The key though is to recognise these biases and ensure that they do not completely cloud your judgement. One of my own biases is a preference towards central midfielders who are strong in terms of ball progression. So, as a starting point lets identify the most progressive passing midfielder in League Two amongst central midfielders.
Confession time. I already knew that the answer to the question was going to be Elliot Watt of Salford City. Why? Well, because when you talk about progressive passers in League Two, the answer is almost always Elliot Watt. The 22-year-old Scottish central midfielder moved in the summer on a free transfer from Bradford City to Salford City in what was one of the coups of the pre-season for me. I was surprised that Watt did not make at least one step up the football pyramid but with the budget of Salford, they are often able to recruit players who we might expect to see moving up at least a level.
The scatter graph above is fairly self-explanatory in that it shows passes and progressive passes for all central midfielders in League Two this season who have played at least 500 minutes. Elliot Watt is the clear standout with an average of 62.76 passes per 90 and 12.22 progressive passes per 90. The Scottish midfielder is typically an aggressive passer in the midfield with a clear tendency to move the ball through the thirds and to test the oppositions defensive block. We can though, of course, use data to give us a more complete picture of the all-around game of Watt. Does he fit the criteria as a midfielder who is a standout in one area while being balanced in others?
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