Why Yaya Toure is the best midfielder in the world

Manchester City overcame some first half jitters in their penultimate Premier League match to secure a 4-0 victory against 17th place Aston Villa on Thursday.

While a brace from Edin Dzeko and an 89th minute goal from Steven Jovetic were crucial in securing the win, it was Yaya Toure’s surging run and collected finish for their fourth that would stamp the exclamation mark on the match, City’s premiership chances and the perception on the man himself as the best midfielder in the world.

For many of the naysayers, the argument will be simple: it was Aston Villa, hardly the toughest opponent to drag into a premiership race. Villa was barely considered a challenge for the Sky Blues in their penultimate match of the 2013-14 premiership.

In many ways, this assumption speaks volumes of the change in the perception of Manchester City in the league these last few years.

We have become used to seeing premiership-winning teams be unfaltering and clinical in their run in. We had years of watching Alex Ferguson’s Manchester United calmly win the handful of critical games at the end of a season that would deliver them the title unchallenged, or watching Roman Abramovich’s Chelsea (Sorry Mourinho!) run away with it.

However, Manchester City are not the Red Devils or Blues.

While many players on the City team already have an EPL title to their name (and in some cases, La Liga titles, Europa Cups and Champions League titles), as a team in Sky Blues shirts, they possess just one. Any player will tell you that match day mentality and confidence is developed as a squad, and cannot purely be transplanted as required.

This is still a team in the process of building its dynasty, and it is hard to fault the club and its fans from feeling that same engulfing nervousness that any would when closing in on something as life-changing as an English Premier League title.

There is something to be said of just how harrowing an EPL title race can be, and how imposing a team like Villa can become when there is a premiership riding on the result, on your performance, on every play. At this end of the season, molehills become Mount Everest, and every win seemingly against the odds. As Liverpool’s capitulation against Crystal Palace showed, nothing is certain when you are the top dog.

This was the context of City’s match against Villa – and in fact many of their matches this year: high importance, requiring players talented enough to step up and make the plays the team needed.

Of course, Toure has not been the lone ranger in this respect. The City midfield are built not around any one player, but rather a trio of talent – Samir Nasri, David Silva and Toure. It’s a beautiful thing to watch the three float from one side of the pitch to the other, feeding and running off one another to find that moment of weakness in the opposition defence.

Against Villa it was Silva responsible for the first two goals, finding pinpoint passes behind the line for Pablo Zabaleta to deliver the ball in the box for Dzeko. Other nights it will be Nasri.

This cohesion in the midfielder belies the impact each has directly on City’s outcomes, particularly Toure.

While he may be responsible for less clutch winners than City’s successful 2011-12 EPL campaign, it is his work bringing out from defence that has been unparalleled this year. The very definition of a holding midfielder but with heightened capabilities in attack. The box-to-box prototype brought to life.

This is what makes him the best midfielder in the world.

Where other superstars in the park can defend or attack with jaw-dropping brilliance, Toure does both, and is peerless in how he does them, in the toughest league in the world.

This season, Yaya has scored 20 goals in the premiership – third behind Luis Suarez and Daniel Sturridge. For context, the next highest recognised midfielder is Eden Hazard; Chelsea’s 32 million pound key player and recent recipient of the PFA Young Player of the Year Award (2013-14). In assists he managed a respectable eight, to place equal seventh in the Premier League. He also managed 90 per cent completion rate for his passes and in defence he ranks highly for tackles and for clearances.

Also, without the benefit of the Sky Blues key striker Sergio Aguero, the Manchester City midfield has had to make more of its own luck. Despite this, it has seen them score the greatest amount of goals of all the teams in the Premier League this season, threatening Chelsea’s all-time record from 2009-10.

Many will point to Steven Gerrard and the almost identical statistics he has registered for this season as proof he is in fact the best. You are well within your right to. After all, Gerrard has had one of his best seasons, after many years of high performance and a swag of individual and team achievements. He deserves such suggestions.

Picking a player as ‘best in the world’ is not an exact science but rather a judgement call – a personal preference often based on one defining feature.

What tips the scale is Toure’s command of beautiful football that still gets results. He is grace and power personified. When City have needed him to stand up, he has done so, and with an elegance seldom seem in world football.

He is a pleasure to watch and (barring calamity) will help lift the title for his club once more in a few days time. Does this not deserve him the additional title of world’s best midfielder?