Starting to think it’s deliberate by Mikel. First of all, if everyone is fit, the main two will be Ode and Rice (personally think it could/should be Partey) which is meh already. When you add Havertz, and Mikel’s underappreciation of ESR (who seem to fit the role most), it looks like Mikel doesn’t view those roles as playmaking ones, placing emphasis on duels and ball-winning first. At best, when it comes to going forward, he prefers they become box crashers or at most just play a simple final ball to the forwards. It seems like he doesn’t want them to dwell on the ball. I was rewatching our earlier matches with Partey this season and it was astounding to see how many times Rice/Partey would just ignore Odegaard.