There are some players that were linked with Premier League clubs so often that it feels like an affront to learn that they never played in England.
Close your eyes and you can picture Luis Fabiano banging in the goals for Tottenham, Wesley Sneijder patrolling the Manchester United midfield or Julian Draxler dazzling the Arsenal crowd with his wing wizardry.
Except none of these moves actually happened, whether that’s the fault of gossip columnists choosing easy targets to reach their word count or, in what’s known as the Matt Le Tissier explanation, the mainstream media gaslighting an entire country of football fans for shits and giggles.
Fabian Ruiz has been linked with a number of English clubs over the years but, just as conspiracy theorists have begun dusting off their pitchforks and googling directions to the Sky Sports News studio, a move to the Premier League suddenly looks likely.
No, really.
Ruiz has been the subject of strong interest from Arsenal and Newcastle United. Both clubs need a central midfielder to elevate their performances above the level of infuriating inconsistency and the Spain international has rejected the latest contract offer from Napoli.
But what would he bring to England? The glib answer is the ability to whack a football with the heat of a thousand suns beyond a hapless, weeping goalkeeper, like this effort for Spain in the 2019 European Under-21 Championship against Germany.
Fabian Ruiz with the strike pic.twitter.com/1sMhwPtNyu
— Steven (@SanPenguinYo) June 30, 2019
But the 26-year-old deep-lying playmaker has been an integral part of Napoli’s attacking play and developed an understanding with his fellow midfielders in Luciano Spalletti’s set-up.
Since replacing Gennaro Gattuso after the conclusion of the 2020-21 season, Spalletti has alternated between his preferred 4-2-3-1 formation and the 4-3-3, which was regularly implemented by his predecessor.
When Napoli have played in the 4-2-3-1 formation, Ruiz is positioned in the double pivot in midfield alongside the Fulham reject Andre Zambo Anguissa.
The presence of Anguissa is important; the Cameroon international provides industry and directness in midfield which means Ruiz can focus on controlling the tempo of the game and picking the right pass to dissect opposing defences with the precision of a scientist using a scalpel on a dead frog.
And this is a player reaching his peak; Ruiz’s passing rate of 90.6% and an average of 67.9 passes per game are…
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