Freedom For Ben Arfa?

With each passing match I become more of the opinion that Hatem Ben Arfa is not just the most exciting player on Newcastle United's squad, but the most exciting player in the Premier League. If you don't agree, check out the table at right derived from WhoScored.com. That's the league's 10 best players so far this season in successful dribbles, defined as "moving past a player while maintaining possession." Ben Arfa's doing that an average of 4.4 times per match, which may not sound like a lot, until you see that out of 162 rated players, it takes only 1.8 successful dribbles per match to make this list.

In fact, Ben Arfa is leaving challengers in his wake at a historic pace. It's not a stretch to say he might be the fanciest soccer ball dribbler in the world at this moment. Since 2008 (which is as far back as I can find the statistic) only one Premier League player has sustained even three-fourths of Ben Arfa's dribbling pace (Charles N'Zogbia for Wigan in 2010-'11). Here's a fun derby week stat - Ben Arfa has dribbled past more challengers so far this season than Sunderland's entire team.

I'll admit it right now: I'm a sucker for dribbling. Aside from a goal itself nothing electrifies me more than watching a challenger on the other team get faked out of his brightly colored shorts by a Newcastle dribbler, and my all-time favorite goals are the Ben Arfa specials like last year's FA Cup score against Blackburn when he shook off half the population of Lancashire on his way to the net. I also think dribbling is important: In our "Moneyball" study last season successful dribbling was one of the 11 statistics most closely correlated with team success in the Premier League.

So I've begun to wonder if Newcastle could be making better use of its world-class dribbler than relegating him to the side of the formation as in Alan Pardew's favored 4-4-2 and less favored but more successful 4-3-3. On this site and in our podcasts we've talked about the potential advantages of playing Ben Arfa behind the forwards instead as a roaming trequartista in a 4-3-1-2, though the two soccer Einsteins I blog with are in some disagreement over this and have been going back and forth in email about it.

Matt: "The tactical point about successful dribbles is that they force the opposition to change defensive shape. That's something Newcastle has struggled with this year, because most of the outfield players find themselves in very tight areas on the field, meaning they're relatively easy to mark. When Ben Arfa beats his man with a dribble, especially if he's moving laterally across the field, that forces other players to close on him and theoretically opens up space for teammates."

Tom: "While players like Ben Arfa do open up space for teammates because they force other defenders to react, it's also harder for teammates to time their runs, simply because they don't know when he's going to pass. You start to go and then you're offside. Or you hold your run, hold your run, hold your run and he's finally released the ball.... I'm not totally sold on playing Ben Arfa in the middle, although I know with what you guys are suggesting he'd more or less be roaming. The few times he played in the middle last year he didn't do real well and throughout his career he's been on the wings. Giveaways in the middle have the potential to create more danger on counterattacks and when he's out wide it's harder to crowd him out with lots of defenders."

This exchange prompted me to look up how often Ben Arfa is being dispossessed of the ball on challenges, not just winning them. He's getting pilfered a lot, more than 3 times a game. Which led me to compute a custom stat I call dribbling proficiency: A player's successful dribbles per match minus his dispossessions.

At right are the league's top 10 players at dribbling proficiency, figuring in both successes and robberies. Ben Arfa is no longer at the top, but still way up there at No. 5. Even farther up the list, second in the league, is another very interesting name to Newcastle fans, and one particularly near to my Italian-American heart, but I'll leave a discussion of him until an upcoming post. For now I'll just note that where Ben Arfa is concerned, the risk of dispossession doesn't appear to outweigh the potential benefits of his fancy footwork. His net wins on challenges are better than 80 percent of the league's total wins. Keep in mind that challenges in the Premier League usually go to the challenger - only 25 players in the entire league maintain possession on challenges more often than they're dispossessed.

So should Ben Arfa be freed - officially, not of his own volition - to take his dribbling talents over a wider swath of the field? While I respect my friend Tom's concerns, I'd like to see United at least try it, because the potential dividend is so large. Chance conversion continues to be the team's greatest strength and chance creation one of its prime weaknesses. Anything that could help cure the latter might bring the Toon up the table for good. 

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[Toonfella]

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