Is Mikel Chelsea's best defensive midfielder at the moment ahead of Nemanja Matic?

Ben Andrews and Jason Cundy asked the question on Chelsea TV recently and I wanted to read as many opinions on Mikel as possible. Is he our best defensive midfielder at the moment ahead of Nemanja Matic?

I have been hammered on here in the past by fans for singing Mikel's praises over the years. Plenty of people think of Mikel and get sucked into the stereotypical opinion that he is useless, slows the game too much and never plays the ball forwards. You have to question this and ask yourselves what actually is it that you expect from someone playing that defensive role? What are they in the team to do?

It's no coincidence that Chelsea's unbeaten run has been ever since Mikel was brought back into the team to protect and shield our back four. That's not to say that we are keeping clean sheets on a regular basis at the moment but, you have to hold your hands up and admit that Chelsea no longer get exposed as they were doing earlier in the season.

Mikel is the most naturally gifted defensive midfielder we have and his instinct to defend seems to be put in him the right areas more often than not. OK, I admit that at times his use of the ball isn't the best but as I said, right now we just want our defensive midfielders to stop attacks, win the ball and start a Chelsea attack.

Nemanja Matic has suffered a crisis of form and recently is the man that is replaced by Guus Hiddink if we are chasing a game or if he wants to change something whereas last season he was a mainstay of the team.

So to the whole point of this post. Answer me this:

Is John Obi Mikel the best defensive midfielder we have at Chelsea now?