By Alfie Cairns Culshaw (Chief Editor)
After Sunday's enthralling victory over Liverpool at the Emirates, which saw Arsenal retain their place at the top of the Premier League, Benjamin White was asked in an interview with Norwegian TV about needing more than just a family culture to win football matches.
"Well obviously, we're quite good at football as well, so that helps," the Englishman responded.
The Norwegian journalist then put to him how he felt when he saw Jurgen Klopp had selected a front four of Mo Salah, Diogo Jota, Darwin Nunez and Luis Diaz to face up against Arsenal's back four. White replied:
"Yeah, to be fair I didn't really notice."
While some may attribute these dead-pan and emotionless responses to them being some sort of attack from White towards the mainstream media's general treatment of him, most at Arsenal will see this as another example of his lax personality. The former Brighton man has a cold, composed and unbothered outlook on life and it's reflected in almost every media appearance he makes.
Despite receiving pelters for his infamous debut against Brentford last season, and this overshadowing the perception of him ever since from outside the club, White has clearly been able to shut out the noise and produce nothing but extreme consistency in an Arsenal shirt over the last 14 months.
Gareth Southgate's latest England squad was missing our number four and this symbolically demonstrated this strained perception of the player in the mainstream. A good ball-player who can suffer lapses in concentration defensively, is poor in the air and just generally not that good a defender. The general theme in profiling White is that he brings almost all of his value in possession. That appears to be what people who don't watch him perform an integral role in Mikel Arteta's system week in week out think of him.
White's move to operating as a right-back this season may have further heightened these preconceived notions on him as a player. While many outside the club believe it's because he can't be trusted defensively at the heart of Arsenal's backline, it's in actual fact largely down to the excellence of William Saliba in that position, but also the skillset he possesses.
White has everything Mikel Arteta wants from his full-back on that side. Excellent athleticism, effective one on one defending, technically secure, progressive in his passing and carrying, as well as being able to invert naturally alongside Thomas Partey or slot in as part of a back three. He does all these things very well and that ultimately means he's been excellent in this position.
The stereotypes around his on the ball qualities do read true. White currently ranks in the 80th percentile for progressive passes per 90 in the last year compared to other centre-halves. He's in the 84th percentile for progressive carries per 90 compared to other centre-backs. However, this data isn't particularly relevant to how he's performed as a full-back, rather just supporting the fact that he was indeed really, really good in possession as a central defender.
The graphic above (from @adamvoge on twitter) demonstrates just how brilliant he has been at right-back this season. While there are no explicit percentile rankings on the radar, we can see that White is right on the outer edge for progressive passes, final third passes and near it for progressive distance in his passing (all per 90).
This shows that his on the ball qualities not only translate to this new position, but unlock them further and place him at an elite level of ball progression for a full-back. Increasingly in the modern game, ball progression is a pivotal attribute that most full-backs have to provide to their team's system.
The move to a slightly wider part of the pitch has liberated him in the way he attempts to progress the ball. Being less central, he can take more risks in possession, has the elusive Bukayo Saka down the line as a constant passing option, and is able to play diagonal passes either in the form of switches to the other flank or punched line-breaking passes into the team's focal point in Gabriel Jesus.
The radar does indicate a few areas of his game that represent more traditional full-back responsibilities that he's yet to really conquer. Carrying the ball in wide areas is very different to doing so centrally, while making successful crosses and cut-backs into the box is a skill you wouldn't expect a natural centre-back to possess. However, some of these stats will be inhibited based on the inversion instructions he's given and some may even require noting the time in which this radar was made.
Adam released this data during the international break, and in the two league games since, White has shown his ability to not only fulfil all these ball progression and inverted full-back requirements, but also be an outlet in the final third. In the second half against Tottenham, White was constantly supplying Saka with an overlapping option, and this played a role in two pivotal moves in the game.
Firstly, he ran around Saka and ultimately acted as a decoy run to open the space for our winger to cut inside and shoot, which led to the Jesus goal. Secondly, he made the same run again and this time Saka found him, and produced an excellent cross to the back post for Jesus to head wide- a chance he probably would've buried had he not been feeling the effects of a knock sustained a few minutes prior.
Against Spurs, he produced 4 shot-creating actions, three passes into the penalty area and managed 36 touches in the final third (only Saka and Gabriel Martinelli managed more). Against Liverpool, he managed a similar presence in the final third. If you take a look at his heat maps for respective games, you can see a significant increase in his final third presence as the season has gone on.
While a lot of this will be down to slowly adapting to the new role and trusting his athleticism to be everywhere on the pitch, a lot of it is also down to White's mentality. As Carlos Cuesta said on All or Nothing, White's best attribute is his willingness and ability to learn quickly. Arteta put faith in him to fill the void left by an injured Takehiro Tomiyasu at the start of the season, and then entrusted him to develop and evolve in this role in such a short space of time.
Alluding to Adam's radar again, it demonstrates just how good White is on the other side of the game. He doesn't get dribbled past, he wins tackles, when he does press he does so successfully, he wins all his ground duels and all of his aerial duels. Accumulative defensive stats can be misleading, but the eye test supports all of this. White has been solid in every aspect of his defensive game. Not getting beat one on one and winning everything in the air are Tomiyasu's biggest strengths, and White has replicated these strengths of the Japanese faultlessly, while adding more on the ball.
So the answer to the title of this piece is very, very good. He's an undroppable cog in ArtetaBall right now and he deserves the recognition outside of the club, because it feels like he's often dismissed as simply just a good passer. Trust me, we've seen a defender at Arsenal who's sole quality at times was his passing and his name was David Luiz.
When I watch Ben White play, he puts me a lot more at ease than an experienced, 32/33-year-old David Luiz ever did.
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