Micheal Essien V Mikel Obi

Who is the best as a player ?

You decide.

lmaoooo

May be you want to change your question to "who is better" first you can not have a best from just two options.

No doubt Essien is a stronger brand from club and country pedigree. He is acknowledged as one of the best DMs. His core strengths are his ability to support the attack,long range shots and  his ability to play multiple roles (utility player). I must quickly add that because of the name he has built over time, he is rarely criticsed  even when he plays poorly

Mikel on the other hand has better positional discipline, is a better man-marker and passes the ball better. His weakness is poor shooting and unwillingness to take some risks and support the attack.

We have to note however that Essien has reached about the peak while Mikel still has big room for improvements.

@post : me thinks you are high on something.

The only thing i will give Mikel is he huffs and puffs for nothing but hey, as you rightly said age is on his side so he can still learn. As for him being the better passer of the ball, i bet to differ. The guy always passes sideways. Watch Chelsea matches and you'll realize which of them has accurate piercing passes. Essien always find the killer passes.

As for the 'positional discipline and man marking' thing, it all depends on the topposition.  Essien singlehandedly destroyed Gerrard(Liverpool) when they met in UCL. He marked and terrorized Gerrard out of the game completely. If you want to shackle someone, put Essien on him and the job is done. He will even follow that person to the loo(washroom)! Lol  .  Essien tends to bomb forward when the opposition isn't much of an opposition and when he's told to stay put, he does that exceptionally well as well. 

But hey, Mikel is relatively young so he'll pick up but for now, let him learn from the master

I am sincerely not aware of killer passes from Essien may be you need to give examples.

As for mikel he passes sideways and backwards many times , however when he decides to pass the ball forward his passes are world class. The problem is , he does it so effortlessly that he goes unnoticed.
I give you two examples

1. Arsenal VS chelsea at emirate last season, the goal scored by ashley cole was as a result  killer long range  pass from mikel but nobody acknowledged it , if it was a lampard or ballack that gave the pass there would have been applause everywhere.

2. Chelsea VS cLUJ which chelsea needed to win to stay in the CL. When it was 1-1 Mikel gave a clean killer pass to Joe cole which Drogba converted to get the second goal. Nobody acknowledged Mikel.


Yes Essien did well against Gerrard in the first leg, he however was unable to cope  against Alonso and Benayoun in the second leg. If mikel put up such a showing,you can be sure he would have been scored much lower. Mikel too has squared up against Gerrard on many occassions and has not done badly.Mikel was put against Del peiro and he did very well. After the Chelsea Vs Barcelona match in camp nou, foreign commentators gave much of the credit of  the 0-0  feat to the Mikel and Essien for making it impossible for Barca to create anything from the middle. Mikel and  peter czech got joint highest scores on chelsea side.

Essien is an excellent player but i must confess that Mikel's contributions (at least in chelsea) go unnoticed most times.

Hmm.
Man must learn that:
You can never compare DEATH with SLEEP.
You can not compare FILE with FALI(a muslim name)
You can not compare Fish pond with OCEAN
You cannot compare bathroom shower with RAIN.
While all these seems same to shallow-minded folks,
They are as far from each other as they seems close.
Mikel is FAIR,
ESSIEN is VERY GOOD,
THE GOODER AND GOODEST ARE NOT YET BORN.

@ poster
u obviously know nothing about football. u should be banned from watchin football, sorry let me reduce your punishment, u should be restricted to watching ghanian league on black and white tv.

Na so,
i will suggest you stop wasting your time with destiny killers here.
mikel passing sideways, backways, frontways or whatever, as long as such world class coaches and the man signing his weekly checks are not complaining, what has empty brains got to do with that.
nigeria has no coach yet under bridge traders here assume that role just to run great players down here on nairaland.
every nigerian knows everything yet we have the worst country to think of.

You nigerians fit kill person sha  . Wetin I no go see for NL? First it was Obagoal v Shrek,now this. Y'all opening this kind of threads are just being patroitic cuz you and I know quite well there is only one winner here.

@GTay,
as a human being, an african and a nigerian in particular, which position would you prefer?
i wish to remind you that chelsea as a team has over 40 players and in the field of play, a coach is only allowed to select 11 players at the same time.
at his age, mikel has achieved more than most of us here and even our fathers yet many made in nigeria idiots see him as a failure.
playing or not playing, good or bad, nigerians must always learn to live with the realities of life that mikel is not only a star but also a supper star.
if a nigerian has the capacity to context among the best midfielders in the world, that nigerian deserves our praise and not our dark hearted criticisms.

Essien miles ahead