Popular football stats website recently released their Premier League XI of last decade, which featured a former Arsenal player no one expected to see.
The WhoScored XI considers players with at least 100 Premier League appearances during the decade and based entirely on their player rating system rather than trophies won, reputation or fan opinion.
The XI players being Emiliano Martinez; Trent Alexander-Arnold, Virgil van Dijk, Shkodran Mustafi, Marcos Alonso; Rodri, Kevin De Bruyne, Bruno Fernandes; Mohamed Salah, Harry Kane and Eden Hazard.
As you guessed it, it’s the inclusion of Mustafi that’s hard to digest.
Mustafi is currently an assistant coach with Germany’s Under-17 national team, having earned 20 senior caps for Germany and was part of the squad that won the 2014 FIFA World Cup.
There is, however, another side to the debate.
Musafi actually enjoyed an outstanding start to his Arsenal career after joining from Valencia in the summer of 2016.
From September 2016 to January 2017, he stayed unbeaten in his first 22 appearances in all competitions, creating a new club record and breaking Bacary Sagna’s previous record of 17 consecutive unbeaten games.
Mustafi was well commended for his swift adaptation to English football but the promising start was never fully sustained. In the following seasons, Mustafi became synonymous withostly defensive errors, lapses in focus, and poor decision-making.
The problem was that Mustafi’s mistakes were often spectacular and came at crucial moments.
In the 2018 Carabao Cup final against Manchester City, he misjudged Claudio Bravo‘s long goal kick, allowed Sergio Aguero to get goal-side and then appealed for a foul instead of recovering. Aguero scored, and Arsenal eventually lost 3-0.
A year later came one of the moments that probably did more damage to his Arsenal reputation than any statistic could repair.
Against Crystal Palace in April 2019, Mustafi incorrectly assumed Christian Benteke‘s flick-on would be dealt with by Bernd Leno. He stopped instead of tracking Wilfried Zaha, allowing the Palace forward to run through and score. Arsenal lost 3-2, ending a ten-match winning run at the Emirates, and Mustafi was singled out for the mistake.
There were other examples. In the 5-1 defeat at Liverpool later that year, Mustafi and Sokratis were involved in the defensive mix-up that allowed Roberto Firmino to equalise. In January 2020, a poor Mustafi backpass against Chelsea put Tammy Abraham through, with David Luiz bringing him down and receiving a red card.
As Arsenal’s results dipped, Mustafi became a target for criticism, eventually falling out of favor under Mikel Arteta and departing the club in 2021.
Regardless of his reputation, Mustafi regularly produced great underlying defensive numbers throughout his Premier League tenure, which is wha helped him get included in the WhoScored XI.
WhoScored’s algorithm rewards actions such as aerial duels won, interceptions, tackles and clearances, categories in which he regularly ranked highly.
Because the rating system focuses on the volume and success of defensive actions, it does not heavily penalise the occasional individual error that can directly lead to a goal.
That gap between statistical performance and public perception largely explains why he made the Team of the Decade.
Mustafi’s numbers in these areas were so good that players like Ruben Dias, John Stones, Gabriel Magalhaes, William Saliba; who is considered best defenders currently, were not included in the PL Team of the Decade.
