Wide Midfielders
Aaron Lennon and Adam Johnson are the two clear winners in the wide midfielder comparison as both players score 27 points each, which is 14 points more than their nearest rival Theo Walcott who scored 13 points.
Adam Johnson has completed the highest percentage of passes out of all the wide midfielders this season by finding a teammate with 81.53% of his passes. This is 1.4% better than Aaron Lennon and 1.79% better than James Milner, who was his two nearest rivals.
As well as completing the highest percentage of passes this season Johnson has also created a chance for his team every 30 minutes which is 3 minutes more often than Lennon and 12 minutes more often than Oxlade-Chamberlain and Young. It is also a staggering 33 minutes more often than Walcott who took the longest amount of time to create a chance for his team out of all the wide midfielders.
Adam Johnson has also found a teammate with one of his crosses 25% of the time –Â the joint highest percentage with Aaron Lennon in this comparison. This is 2% better than Oxlade-Chamberlain and Downing and a very impressive 12% better than Walcott.
Aaron Lennon has created 10 clear-cut chances for his teammates at Tottenham this season which is the joint highest with Theo Walcott and Stewart Downing. Although, Lennon creates a clear-cut chance for his team more often than anyone else in this comparison as he creates a chance for his team every 118.8 minutes. This is an impressive 99.3 minutes shorter than Stewart Downing, 105.6 shorter than Adam Johnson and 137 minutes shorter than Theo Walcott.
Lennon also impresses in how long it takes him to lose possession of the ball, as he only gives the ball away once every 79 minutes. This is the best score in the comparison and is 6 minutes longer than Downing and 9 minutes longer than Young who also score highly in this statistic.
Although, Theo Walcott has not fared very well in his ball retention, pass completion percentage and crossing accuracy this season he has scored 8 goals for Arsenal. This statistic along with the fact that he has created the joint top amount of clear-cut chances in this comparison goes some way to showing why Walcott should be used as a striker and not as a wide midfielder.
Therefore, the two obvious choices for the wide midfielder positions are Aaron Lennon and Adam Johnson. However, both players have one main area where they need to improve to be all round wide midfielders. Johnson needs to improve keeping possession of the ball as he gives the ball away every 39 minutes which 40 minutes more often than Lennon, while Lennon needs to score more goals as he only scores a goal every 396 minutes which is 209 minutes longer than Johnson.
So, if both players can learn from each other and improve what they have not done so well this season then opposition defenders will be dreading facing them as they both have impressive statistics in many of the other areas in this comparison.
Wide Midfielder Choices: Aaron Lennon & Adam Johnson
The team so far (4-4-2 on left and 4-3-3 on right):
Stay tuned in the next few days for the final part: England’s Strikers and the Final Team
All of the stats from this article have been taken from the Opta Stats Centre at EPLIndex.com – Subscribe Now (Includes author privileges!) See Demo’s and videos about the Stats Centre & read about new additions to the stats centre.
