Chances Created (Key Passes):
1: Mata @ 3pg (102 total)
2: Silva @ 2.9pg (104)
3: Modric @ 2.7pg (96)
This is an incredibly impressive position for a deep-lying playmaker. In fact, he is the only deep-lying player in the top 10 for chances created. You have to go down to Danny Murphy and Mikel Arteta at 2.1pg each (11 and 12 best) before you find someone who isn’t an advanced playmaker, winger, or striker. Simply put, he is creating almost as many chances from a deep-lying position as Mata and Silva are in free roles. He creates more chances than players like Bale, Valencia, Nani, RVP, Nasri, Lampard, etc.
Passes Per Game:
1: Arteta @ 76 (90% accuracy)
2: Toure @ 75 (90%)
3: Carrick @ 73 (90%)
4: Modric @ 70 (87%)
This may not be terribly remarkable or unexpected by itself, but let’s look at passes of 25+ yards among outfield players.
Long Passes:
1: Ashley Williams @ 8.8pg (70% accuracy)
2: Modric @ 7.6pg (83%)
[...]
7: Carrick @ 6pg (82%)
9: Toure @ 5.5pg (81%)
This begins to tell us that Modric is more ambitious and incisive with his passing than his competitors. We can take it one step further and look at # of long passes as a percentage of total pass attempts:
Modric: 329/2534 (12%)
Carrick: 218/2192 (9%)
Toure: 216/2419 (8%)
Arteta: 172/2229 (7%)
So ultimately, Modric attempts and completes a comparable amount of total passes to his competitors, but creates significantly more chances. This, when combined with his significantly higher volume of long passes per game and ratio of long passes to total passes, suggests that Modric is the most incisive and creative deep-lying passer in the country by a pretty comfortable distance.
Obviously players like Toure and Carrick have other qualities and are different types of players, but they—along with Arteta—are really the only deep-lying players that even come close to holding a candle to Modric’s creativity. If I try to compare him to players like Danny Murphy or Joe Allen or w/e it’s just not worth the time.
Simply put, he is the best at what he does in the league. I mean shit, I didn’t even talk about dribbles per game. He’s the only deep-lying midfielder on the first PAGE of that stat.