Now you have presented what he does on the defence, let's look at what he can do when in possesion of the ball. I'm afraid I can only remember passing to fullbacks as his only attacking ability on the ball. Look at the stats in the website in your post, mikel has 5 chances created from 14 matches, not even a chance created per 2 matches, look at modric vs ajax. Not only that, he has won only 54% of duels, proves he is not aggresive enough to make slide tackles and win balls like I said in my earlier post. I didn't even need to check up statistics to realise that these are mikels greatest problems. 1. No foward passing sense 2. Have rarely seen him get in takles to stop dangerous situations as the supposed defensive player. I like some of his qualities but he must add those two qualities above to become a top class DM. He can function better in a 4-3-3 with more midfielders to help him but in a pivot, his present qualities are not enough. As long as he can only do what he has so far, he isn't even going to be a starter in a liverpool squad or any top team in spain, italy, germany or england. He needs to develop because he is average at best in my opinion.