Player Focus: Re-signed Matic Growing in Importance at Chelsea

Imagine, for a moment, that things had gone badly. Imagine that in January Chelsea had paid £21 million to bring Nemanja Matic – a player they had let go as a makeweight in a deal that also saw them give Benfica £21million for David Luiz – back to the club, and that he had played badly. Imagine what the headlines would have been. Imagine how Chelsea would have been mocked.

As it is, with David Luiz offloaded for a scarcely believable £50million to Paris St-Germain in the summer, paying £20-odd million for Matic to complete his education with three years in Portugal has come to seem entirely sensible. There is a wider point here, which is that at major clubs the stakes are so high and the squads so large that it’s almost impossible for young players to develop sufficiently to prove they are worth a place in the first team that gifted prospects are almost forced to seek their fortune abroad. That’s why Chelsea have 26 players out on loan; it’s an attempt to get their players the sort of experience Matic has had without having to spend £21million doing it.

But that’s another debate: the astonishing thing about Matic is that hardly anybody ever mentions any more that Chelsea paid so much for a player who was once theirs. His quality is so obvious, his adaptation to Jose Mourinho’s side so complete, that it seems vaguely absurd to contemplate that they wouldn’t have signed him. The risk of ridicule was enormous, but the gamble has more than paid off.

Sunday’s game between Manchester City and Chelsea was just Matic’s type of match. In a sense, it was a throwback to the clashes between big sides from a decade or so ago: this was a tough game for big men, space at a premium, the Etihad echoing to the sound of huge bodies clattering into one another. Matic revels in that; he can handle the physical side of the game, but also has surprising subtlety of touch.

Last season, of players who had played a minimum of 15 games, only five finished the season with a higher whoscored.com rating than the 7.63 Matic achieved. After five games of this season, he is averaging 7.57 and is 19th on the list. Perhaps most striking is that despite the image of him as a destroyer, he registered 4 assists in his 17 appearances – two as a substitute – last season, and already has a goal and an assist this season. His pass completion rate, meanwhile, was 84.8% last season and is 86.1% this.

It’s in his defensive work, though, that Matic’s real quality stands out. Of midfielders to have made at least 15 appearances last season, only Mile Jedinak and Marouane Fellaini won more aerial duels per game than the 2.8 managed by Matic. At the same time only six midfielders made more than his 3.3 tackles per game and he was 18th among midfielders who made more than 15 appearances in terms of interceptions per game with 1.8.

It’s not in one facet that Matic excels but in his range. When José Mourinho decided to convert Mikel John Obi from the attacking midfielder he had been for Lyn and for Nigeria into a defensively minded player, Matic may be what he was trying to generate: a physically robust player who can pass the ball, a breakwater at the back of the midfield, but one who also contributes in other departments. Mikel never quite adapted to the role – although he clearly retains his use as a squad player, despite the constant rumours he is about to be sold – but Matic is that player.

The majority of the talk around Chelsea this season has surrounded two of the summer signings - Diego Costa for his goals and Cesc Fàbregas for his assists – but it may be that in terms of providing a platform for them, the man they brought in in January has been just as important.

Do you agree that Matic is now amongst Chelsea's most important players? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below