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Brendan Rodgers has been a busy boss this summer. If the headlines are to be believed – and they should be – the Reds boss could be parading half-a-dozen new faces by the time his second full season, but the first with something resembling his own squad of players, kicks off against Stoke on August 17.

But of all the players chased, signed or linked – that’s a goalkeeper (Mignolet), two defenders (Papadopoulos and Ilori), a wide forward (Aspas), a winger (Atsu), an attacking midfielder (Luis Alberto) and what modern bosses like to call an old fashioned number 10 (Henrikh Mkhitaryan) – there’s one notable omission.

A traditional central midfielder.

Which gives hope that Joe Allen can rise again.

Remember him?

According to the Reds boss he was no ordinary Joe.

He was a midfield ‘technician’ labelled the Welsh Xavi, he was a £15m signing named man of the match in his first three Premier League starts, and he was an international who appeared to be a potential successor to giants like Alonso and Mascherano.

Except he was also a player whose performance levels came down with the Christmas decorations.

The Welsh Xavi tag didn’t help.

Nor did some high profile criticism.

Alan Shearer, in a rare attempt to be as incisive on screen as he was as a striker, highlighted Allen’s preference for a safe sideways ball over a risky penetrating pass.

But was it as simple as all that?

Is Allen a modern day Butch Wilkins?

Did his stock fall simply because he stopped being ambitious with his passing?

Not according to the always illuminating EPL Index website.

A detailed analysis of Allen’s figures last season showed that he wasn’t backwards in coming forward (Steven Gerrard and Jordan Henderson actually passed the ball back more).

He wasn’t a crab either, preferring to pass the ball sideways.

Joe Allen actually passed the ball forwards more than Mikel Arteta (31% to 29%) and only fractionally less than Yaya Toure. And another Allen myth – that he can only pass the ball short, which in the hurly burly, impatient attacking style of the English Premier League is considered a sin – was spectacularly exploded.

Allen’s long pass success rate last season was the second best in the league at 89.66%.

So where did it all go wrong for Joe Allen? Because he was clearly no more a Welsh Xavi in the second half of last season than Robert Earnshaw was a David Villa of the Valleys.

From an early season average of nearly 93% passing accuracy, Allen’s average dropped to below 86% after the Goodison derby and never recovered. That coincided almost exactly with the shoulder injury which eventually ended his season prematurely – and the moment he was handed the added responsibility/distraction of becoming a father for the first time.

Despite the dip in his statistics after October, the only players to out-pass Allen across the season as a whole were Mikel Arteta and Moussa Dembele, while his Open Play Pass Completion (90%), Attacking Zone Pass Completion (85%) and Final Third Pass Completion (81%) were all well above the Premier League average (86.92%, 80.15% and 70.31% respectively).

But the best analysis of Allen’s performances last season came from the man who knew exactly what he was supposed to be doing out on the pitch.

After Shearer’s withering assessment in October when Allen was actually performing well, Brendan Rodgers rapped: “Unbelievable – so-called pundits who don’t know the dynamics of a team and how it functions.

“Joe’s role is to keep the ball. And that, in Britain, is a special talent. It is why Paul Scholes is still playing at his age. It is such a rare talent for a midfielder to rarely give the ball away.”

Allen, as his figures show, treats possession like it is nine tenths of the law.

And given a clean bill of health – and no continental imports like Nuri Sahin jostling for his midfield berth – Joe Allen can belatedly justify his £15m transfer fee.