Declan, Dier and the Battle at the Heart of England's Midfield

The Basmati Busquets. The Pilau Pirlo. Whatever else he may achieve in his career, Declan Rice has already reached some remarkable heights in the nicknaming stakes.

More relevantly, he has finally declared himself for England and is already the Next Big Thing to many, pre-destined to stand alongside the greatest midfielders in our storied history - or at least to stand alongside Harry Winks for a few years. The Risotto Robson, anybody?

Leaving aside the debate about his decision to switch away from Ireland - which has already been the source of many nuanced comments from people who definitely don’t need to be dual nationals to understand how people with mixed heritage should think, feel and act - there is a more pressing question to be answered, at least for Gareth Southgate…

Is he good enough for England?

Let’s start with a glaring, albeit reasonable, assumption - that Southgate plans on sticking with 4-3-3, with a staggered three-man midfield, for the foreseeable future. It matches England’s personnel better than the hybrid 3-4-3/3-5-2 we used before the World Cup and was good enough to topple the Spanish.

Prior to the summer, Jordan Henderson and Eric Dier formed a two-man defensive shield which gave the wing backs license to press on but isolated the midfield from the forward line.

With the 4-3-3 used in the Nations League campaign, Eric Dier was entrusted with the deep-lying role with either Henderson, Harry Winks or Fabian Delph acting as a conduit between the defensive and attacking phases. They would feed an attacking, creative midfielder who both managed the transition into attack and posed a threat himself - a role filled by Ross Barkley in the 3-2 win in Seville, but which may well be taken by Dele Alli in the long run.

From the point of view of Rice (or the Jasmine Juninho Pernambucano, if you prefer) this puts him in direct competition with Dier and Henderson for the sole defensive midfield role.

The biggest advantage Rice (aka The Arborio Alonso) has is that, much like Dier, he can naturally slot back into central defence on the back foot, or when an attacking full-back gets caught upfield - an important attribute in Southgate’s system and one that Henderson might struggle with in comparison.

Given that Henderson is a solid ball-player and is perhaps more likely to compete directly with Winks, we are probably looking at a straight slog with Dier for one place - and as such, the move couldn’t be better-timed. Dier has had a tough, injury-interrupted season and is already viewed by many fans as one of the weak links in the England set-up.

Statistically speaking, the Spurs man gets a pretty tough rap. Leaving out his current tricky campaign, his numbers line up well with his peers. Let’s take a look at a lovely table full of beautifully-crunched numbers from the recent careers of Dier, Henderson, and Rice - and, to show where the bar is set at the highest levels, I've also included stats for N'golo Kante during Chelsea's title-winning season and Fernandinho during the current season:

*2017/18 season

**2016/2017 season

Look, I'm no HTML expert and I've never tried formatting a table on this website before, I think that's pretty good. I do wish I knew how to change the font but life is hard and I have bigger things to worry about (says the man who's just spent two hours poring over Eric Dier's passing percentages).

Either way, let's go through the caveats quickly. These stats are for Premier League matches only, and only take into account performances when playing as a defensive midfielder. I've used Dier's stats from last season because, frankly, it's a fairer comparison - all his numbers have declined noticeably this term but were extremely consistent for several years prior to that. I chose to use the numbers of Full Beast Mode N'golo alongside Fernandinho's most recent figures to show just what a first-rate midfield wrecking ball can do.

All of the numbers were sourced through the excellent whoscored.com and if you want to poke about more, all their numbers are there.

Sufficed to say, England's three most prominent midfield destroyers are still some way off the world's best - although it is pleasing to note just how rarely they lose the ball, even in comparison to two of the modern game's giants.

The thing that jumps out immediately is that Rice has lower tackling and passing success percentages than either this year's Henderson or last season's edition of Eric Dier. He has also given the ball away slightly more often.

He has made more tackles and interceptions overall but that is partly because he's playing for West Ham and, frankly, the ball is coming his way a heck of a lot more than it does if you play for Spurs or Liverpool - that is also largely why he's made so many fewer passes than his peers. Your team needs to have the ball before you can give it to anybody else.

One thing that is worth noting is that all of Rice's stats have improved substantially from last season - but then he was playing as a defender under David Moyes, so an extra 10% passing accuracy is, perhaps, to be expected, if only on stylistic grounds.

The statistics lead us to a couple of conclusions - first of all, if you praise Declan Rice to the rafters whilst laying into Eric Dier, you've probably got it wrong. Rice has outshone Dier this year, but Dier's numbers over the last few years are, frankly, pretty damned solid and he's been worth his weight for both Tottenham and England.

The second conclusion is that Rice would not necessarily be out of place in the England squad - but that he probably isn't quite ready to be regarded as a first-team regular, and certainly shouldn't be viewed as an automatic starter. That's fair enough, of course - he is 20 after all. He has years to improve his use of the ball and cut out the missed tackles.

The biggest concern I have for Rice is that there is always a risk with talented youngsters that we hype them half to death. If Rice gets a chance - which would be perfectly justified based on form - there is always the risk that we allow a few good performances to artificially inflate our opinion of him.

That has arguably already happened to some extent following a particularly towering - and televised - performance against Liverpool. The danger is that if and when Rice goes off the boil, he could get ripped in to. English fans tend to turn on their own quickly and nastily when frustrations boil over, as a long list of internationals past and present can attest.

Ultimately, Rice stands up well enough alongside his obvious rivals for a starting berth and he deserves a chance to prove that his ability and influence can exceed the raw numbers. However, let's not get too far ahead of ourselves - we must allow the Medium-Grain Makélélé the room to breathe that all young players need.