Premier League: Morgan Schneiderlin is good enough for the top but could he get there with Southampton?

Morgan Schneiderlin is good enough for the top but could he get there with Southampton? Adam Bate profiles the midfielder who has developed into one of the Premier League's best...

“Schneiderlin, not being disrespectful to Southampton here, I think he could play at any of the top clubs in the league. I'm talking about Chelsea, Manchester City, Arsenal, United, Liverpool, Tottenham. He's that good. Over a two-to-three-year period now he's shown himself to be the real thing.”

Gary Neville’s praise for Morgan Schneiderlin last weekend is unlikely to have been welcomed in Southampton, but what really counts is what the man himself makes of it all now that the Champions League dream is alive on the south coast. After all, Saints are above four of the six teams namechecked by Neville. And Schneiderlin is talking tough.

“We want to reach the Champions League,” he said this week. “We want to change this tradition of it being all the big teams. We need to be focused in every game, to not get 'big time'. We are Southampton. We are players - like myself - who four years ago were playing in League One. Never forget where you have come from.”

Even Schneiderlin managed to forget that in the summer. Amid the exodus, it must have felt like he was the victim of an elaborate practical joke. Adam Lallana and the rest were allowed to walk but when the Frenchman’s turn came to board the gravy train, there was a firm hand on the shoulder. “Six years of an amazing journey destroyed in one hour,” as Schneiderlin put it on Twitter.

The importance of keeping Schneiderlin The importance of keeping Schneiderlin

Speaking to France Football in October, he was open about a situation that left some tipping the club for relegation. “I was told that the club wanted to move forwards, but how could I understand that when we sold all the best players?” He added: “I felt Southampton would not let me leave. They’d have preferred to leave me in the gutter, so to speak, for six months. So I started training.”

The warm response from Southampton supporters soon banished any thoughts of letting standards slip, while the sight of Dusan Tadic on the training ground as well as Graziano Pelle’s instant goalscoring impact is likely to have helped mellow him too. Exactly one year on from Nicola Cortese’s exit, Schneiderlin has maintained the levels that have seen him flourish in England.

Schneiderlin improved his tackling and has since refined his game to increase his passing accuracy

The evolution of his game has been a feature of his time at Southampton where the progression has not been linear. Arriving from Strasbourg as a teenager, Schneiderlin was part of a team relegated to League One in his debut season and despite being nicknamed ‘ZZ’ in reference to Zinedine Zidane by then coach Dean Wilkins, there were questions over his suitability.

“When I first came to England, people were saying you need to improve on your defensive skills,” said Schneiderlin. “That's what I did.” Back-to-back promotions followed and by the time he arrived in the top flight, he was a very different player. In the 2012/13 campaign, he made more tackles and more interceptions than anyone else in the Premier League.

In fusing the physical with the technical, Schneiderlin looks capable of making good on Mauricio Pochettino’s prediction that he has the “potential to become one of the Premier League's most complete midfielders”. When it comes to tackling and passing accuracy, he ranks among the top dozen players in the country – and the statistics show that’s an unusual combination.

Indeed, Schneiderlin boasts the best passing accuracy (89.3%) among the Premier League’s top 30 tacklers. In the world of the stopper, he offers rare finesse. Among the aesthetes, he’s a robust figure. For example, it’s telling that of the 11 players with a superior passing accuracy, all but one of them play for those clubs identified by Neville as Schneiderlin’s natural habit.

Schneiderlin has been more than a match for the likes of West Brom's Youssuf Mulumbu

The names of those players with these passing characteristics are also revealing. Mathieu Flamini, Michael Carrick and Fernando offer the sort of metronomic passing that’s demanded of the holding midfielder but Schneiderlin has created more chances than all of them. Among the 89 per cent brigade, only Fernandinho and Yaya Toure make more passes into the final third.

It reflects the fact that there is more ambition to Schneiderlin’s distribution, making his accuracy all the more impressive. It’s also worth considering a player’s importance to the team. It can be easy to get swept along at a big club and have the numbers padded, but Schneiderlin ranks top for pass completion accuracy at Southampton. He’s even their joint-third highest goalscorer.

Ronald Koeman rejects talk of a sale Ronald Koeman rejects talk of a sale

At the age of 25 and close to his physical peak – he made 61 high-intensity runs against Manchester United, the most of anyone on the pitch – it feels an unfortunate time to be ruled out for up to three weeks with an adductor muscle injury. Fortunately, the schedule has been kind and that might well amount to only one Premier League game – Saturday’s trip to Newcastle.

As a result, Schneiderlin will watch on as a team he’d lost belief in six months ago attempts to extend their lead on fifth-placed Arsenal to six points. He hasn’t forgotten where he’s come from, but thanks to Ronald Koeman and the new arrivals at Southampton, he now knows where the club is going too.

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