diff --git a/scrapy/spidermiddlewares/urllength.py b/scrapy/spidermiddlewares/urllength.py
index ee3cb9fd6..450d4ff40 100644
--- a/scrapy/spidermiddlewares/urllength.py
+++ b/scrapy/spidermiddlewares/urllength.py
@@ -14,17 +14,15 @@ logger = logging.getLogger(__name__)
 
 class UrlLengthMiddleware:
 
-    def __init__(self, maxlength, stats):
+    def __init__(self, maxlength):
         self.maxlength = maxlength
-        self.stats = stats
 
     @classmethod
-    def from_crawler(cls, crawler):
-        settings = crawler.settings
+    def from_settings(cls, settings):
         maxlength = settings.getint('URLLENGTH_LIMIT')
         if not maxlength:
             raise NotConfigured
-        return cls(maxlength, crawler.stats)
+        return cls(maxlength)
 
     def process_spider_output(self, response, result, spider):
         def _filter(request):
@@ -34,7 +32,7 @@ class UrlLengthMiddleware:
                     {'maxlength': self.maxlength, 'url': request.url},
                     extra={'spider': spider}
                 )
-                self.stats.inc_value('urllength/request_ignored_count', spider=spider)
+                spider.crawler.stats.inc_value('urllength/request_ignored_count', spider=spider)
                 return False
             else:
                 return True
diff --git a/tests/test_spidermiddleware_urllength.py b/tests/test_spidermiddleware_urllength.py
index 33c524627..6a72d2a8d 100644
--- a/tests/test_spidermiddleware_urllength.py
+++ b/tests/test_spidermiddleware_urllength.py
@@ -5,7 +5,6 @@ from testfixtures import LogCapture
 from scrapy.spidermiddlewares.urllength import UrlLengthMiddleware
 from scrapy.http import Response, Request
 from scrapy.spiders import Spider
-from scrapy.statscollectors import StatsCollector
 from scrapy.utils.test import get_crawler
 
 
@@ -14,21 +13,16 @@ class TestUrlLengthMiddleware(TestCase):
     def setUp(self):
         crawler = get_crawler(Spider)
         self.spider = crawler._create_spider('foo')
-
-        self.stats = StatsCollector(crawler)
-        self.stats.open_spider(self.spider)
+        self.stats = self.spider.crawler.stats
 
         self.maxlength = 25
-        self.mw = UrlLengthMiddleware(maxlength=self.maxlength, stats=self.stats)
+        self.mw = UrlLengthMiddleware(maxlength=self.maxlength)
 
         self.response = Response('http://scrapytest.org')
         self.short_url_req = Request('http://scrapytest.org/')
         self.long_url_req = Request('http://scrapytest.org/this_is_a_long_url')
         self.reqs = [self.short_url_req, self.long_url_req]
 
-    def tearDown(self):
-        self.stats.close_spider(self.spider, '')
-
     def process_spider_output(self):
         return list(self.mw.process_spider_output(self.response, self.reqs, self.spider))