In last season’s Premier League, Arsenal had the sixth highest number of passes attempted, behind Manchester City, Chelsea, Liverpool, Brighton and Fulham. This is not quite unprecedented for a Premier League Champion. Conte’s Chelsea in 2016-17 were also sixth for number of passes played. Ranieri’s Leicester were 18th for passes played in 2015-16- an outlier in every sense.
But other than those two examples, the Premier League champion has topped the passes played metric 10 times in 34 seasons (Guardiola’s Manchester City are responsible for six of those), been in the top two 17 times and the top three 26 times. (Interestingly, none of Arsenal’s four Premier League title winning seasons have seen them play the highest number of passes).
Arsenal were fifth in the Premier League for short passes completed last season, exactly where Conte’s 2016-17 team sat. I won’t beat you over the head with figures any further- not least because this is intended to be illustrative rather than an exhaustive interrogation of the data. (There are Arsenal writers far more equipped for that task than I!)
In short, while Arsenal are not a total outlier as a Premier League champion when it comes to ball circulation; but they are not far off. What Ranieri’s Leicester and Conte’s Chelsea share in common is that not only did they not retain the Premier League title, they didn’t come close to doing so.
Chelsea finished 5th and Conte left the following summer. Leicester, perhaps more understandably, finished 12th and Claudio Ranieri was sacked nine months after winning the league title. Many of us are preoccupied with the idea of Arteta and Arsenal addressing this issue over the summer. Which makes links with Aston Villa’s Morgan Rogers seem a little curious to some.
Rogers is no metronome. According to whoscored.com his pass success rate in the league last season was 74%. Arsenal’s average pass success rate was 84.2%. Rogers is a high risk, high reward player who ranks highly on key passes and shots. But he doesn’t help you to control a game through possession like Martin Odegaard, for example. (84.7% pass success rate last season).
In any discussion around Arsenal’s technical level and passing proficiency, Martin Odegaard is a central character. He is very much Arsenal’s technical reference and his qualities are especially important in a midfield built chiefly around the more bombastic qualities of Declan Rice. Odegaard has endured two punctuated seasons due to injury.
In 2024-25 he was haunted by an ankle injury. While he was out injured, his initial replacement in the right midfield role was Kai Havertz, who is a tidy technician with a strong touch and soft feet in small spaces. Odegaard had returned by the time Havertz himself suffered a season-ending injury in February, albeit as a faded facsimile of his former self.
In 2025-26, Odegaard suffered a succession of small and medium-sized injuries which gave his season a fractured feel. The signing of Eberechi Eze meant that Arsenal had star power to offer in his place without the need to shift another pivotal player like Havertz out of position to amend for Odegaard’s absence. Eze is an effective player; but he could not be more opposed to Odegaard.
As the season wore on, the impression lingers that Odegaard has slightly shifted from an absolute stonewall ‘pick for every minute of every game’ player that he was until his ankle injury in the autumn of 2024-25, into more of a ‘special teams’ role player. In the summer of 2025, Thomas Partey departed the club.
Partey was a somewhat immobile presence at the base of the midfield but one with an obvious penchant for punching the ball through the lines. The same was true of his understudy Jorginho. Both moved on and Arsenal signed Martin Zubimendi from Real Sociedad. It is interesting re-reading Phil Costa’s profile piece on Zubimendi upon his signing https://arseblog.com/2025/07/new-signing-profile-martin-zubimendi/.
‘Zubimendi isn’t really a deep-lying playmaker who makes 110 passes-per-game at 95% completion rate,’ Phil wrote. ‘The midfielder might not always play accurately, but he always looks to play quickly (and confidently on both feet) which could provide a welcome antidote for the horseshoe of death.’
Arsenal did not go like-for-like in their quest to replace Partey and Jorginho. Many characterised Zubimendi as more of a deep lying playmaker based mainly on a (relatively harmless) national stereotype. Many of us naturally assumed that a Spanish pivote would offer technical assurance as a matter of genetics.
While Merino’s technical level is underrated, he is primarily appraised by his physical qualities- Arsenal have signed Spanish midfielders in the last two summers, neither of whom significantly raise the team’s technical ceiling. Zubimendi started last season excellently but obviously tired as the season progressed.
I think Myles Lewis Skelly, with his 91% pass completion rate and his ability to burst through lines of pressure, will be a significant presence in Arsenal’s midfield next season. But ultimately Odegaard and Zubimendi, two players charged with nursing Arsenal’s ball circulation, became role players last season.
Which begs the question as to what happens next season. Will ball retention be a master or a servant? I am struck by the match away at Everton last December. Arsenal made 654 passes in this game, way above their season average of 404. They recognised Everton’s strengths, especially at home, and wanted to limit the prospect of a transitional game as much as possible.
Martin Zubimendi played the full 90 minutes of that game. Odegaard was replaced by Merino on 88 minutes. Eze and Madueke were unused subs. The game plan was clearly to be as accurate in possession as possible. Against Sporting in Lisbon, Arsenal played a team with similar qualities to Moyes’ Everton on their home ground.
In that game, they played 510 passes at 91% accuracy. Once again, Zubimendi played the full 90 at the base of midfield while Odegaard came off injured on 70 minutes and was replaced by Havertz. All of which begs the question to me as to whether having a high technical level and elite ball retention will be a constant for Arsenal next season, or a dropdown option to deploy when required against especially transitional opponents?
What if Arsenal’s technical level is not really seen as a problem that needs to be solved? What if Arteta wants to lean into being more of what we are and getting better at it? The last three midfield signings have not primarily been technicians and that trend will continue if Arsenal are successful in their pursuit of Rogers. It will be fascinating to see how this unfolds and what Arteta has in mind for next season.
