Nuri Sahin's prolonged injury might have raised some doubts among Madridistas, but here is an article to shed some light on Nuri's true abilities. I bet after you read it you'll be looking forward to seeing a fully fit Sahin work his magic in our midfield. This is a guest article by Madridismo.org's reader Göktug, who offers us his translation of this blog post originally written in Turkish by @YakupSabri, about Sahin's impressive stats:

Last year, when Shakhtar faced Barcelona in Champions League group stage, former European Super Cup winner manager Mircea Lucescu said that "You can't win against Barcelona if you are only defending." There is an important point in that sentence. He does not say "you can't stop them."

So far this year, Mourinho has developed a system which is directly designed to beat Barcelona. Mourinho wants the ball in goal opportunity in 3 seconds after Real Madrid win it. As you all know, our attacker is perfect for this idea. The trigger of this tactic is catching the opponent defenders unprepared and passing the ball directly to Ronaldo, Benzema, Di Maria or Higuain. You can’t do this with Khedira.

Nuri will play there if he can recover from his injury. He was probably the best guy in the world that “Real Madrid can buy.” Does this sound pretentious? Let’s look at the numbers.

We need to understand the TIPS method firstly. Technique, insight, personality and speed are the most important parameters for biggest European clubs. It is not easy to play in those clubs if a player cannot pass this test. In Turkey, numbers are important and some people could not understand why Real Madrid transferred Nuri Sahin because he had 6 goals and 8 assists in Bundesliga last year. But people do not know that Sahin has attempted 1803 pass last year and he was third at this category. He made 14.9% of his team’s total passes and this is the same number as Cesc Fabregas when he was in Arsenal. 1367 of his 1803 passes were successful. It is a little bit low but here comes another parameter here.

Sahin has made 15% of his passes backwards and 21% of them side wards. This means when Nuri has the ball, he plays the ball forward –successfully- 64 times out of 100 times. The surprising thing is the rate of Nuri’s passes on opponent pitch is 85.6! Another fascinating stat is that, he has 94.6% success rate when he tries to pass backwards or sidewards on the opponent area.

Another perimeter which is taken into account by big club is key passes. The description of key pass is providing an opportunity to your teammates. When they cannot use those chances, they are named as key passes.

Now, don’t be surprised. Who do you think the most successful player in making key passes in Europe last year? Xavi, Iniesta, Fabregas? It was Nuri with 3.61 key passes per game. And who was the third? Mesut Özil with 3.35 average.

I have one last stat to tell. His tackling success rate is 83.2%, which does not sound bad. So we can say that he is not only successful in the attacking side of the game but also can make differences when it comes down to defense.

In conclusion, I tried to explain why Sahin will be crucial to this team when he is healthy. He will not only be a back-up for Xabi, I hope he can earn a place in starting lineup and show his abilities to the world. He is a high character guy and will not give up fighting until he deserves his role on the first team.

So what do you guys think, especially in the light of the few matches Nuri has been playing for us now? And many thanks to Göktug for sharing this post with us and translating it so that we can all enjoy its content. Below are a few words from and about Göktug.

I am Goktug, an 18-year old Madridista from Turkey. I started to go to Bogazici University, which is Turkey's best, this year and I am in English preparation class. In June, I hope I will pass the exam and then I will start studying Computer Engineering. I have sympathy for Real Madrid since Zidane scored that amazing goal with his left foot against Leverkusen but I've fully been following Real Madrid for a few years. I try to watch every game that I can.