Come, if you will, back with me to October 2016. Those who watched the Arsenal match on the 19th night of that month will remember it with mixed emotions. The Gunners took on Ludogrets at the Emirates Stadium and managed to secure a superb 6-0 victory in the Champions League. Alexis Sanchez delivered a mesmeric performance up top, Theo Walcott and Alex-Oxlade Chamberlain were causing havoc on the flanks and Mesut Özil grabbed his first and only career hat-trick.
Meanwhile, it seemed Shkodran Mustafi and Laurent Koscielny were forming a truly formidable partnership at the back. Little did Arsenal fans know that this would be the night which would completely derail our season. This game represented Santi Cazorla’s final match in an Arsenal shirt. Since his injury, Arsenal haven’t replaced the Spaniard. Quite frankly, this is because it’s impossible to replace the irreplaceable. Tears in my eyes.
Nonetheless, this doesn’t mean the likes of Arsène Wenger, Sven Mislintat, Unai Emery, Raul Sanlehi and Francis Cagigao haven’t attempted to fix this problematic area. Granit Xhaka was brought in the same year that Cazorla’s injury problems began to surface. In the Summer of 2018, Lucas Torreira joined the club from Sampdoria and more recently Dani Ceballos was brought in to provide a temporary fix in this area.
If you look at the combined attributes of this trio, you do get a Cazorla-esque player. Torreira brings the tenacious and combative aspect of Cazorla’s game, Ceballos offers the superb dribbling skills and Granit Xhaka’s range of passing is bettered by few when the Swiss international is at his best. However, the clear issue here is that these are three players who possess similar collective attributes rather than just one player who can boast them all. Yes, Cazorla is the sort of player who pops up once in a generation, but still, the downgrade Arsenal have made in trying to replace him is vivid.
However, it’d be unfair to suggest that these are bad players just because they aren’t on the elite level Santi Cazorla was at during his prime days with Arsenal. Granit Xhaka is one of Europe’s most cultured midfielders and his leadership abilities aren’t really bettered by anyone else in the Arsenal squad. Lucas Torreira, especially during the first half of his first season at the club, gave the impression of sort of player we’d been crying out for since Gilberto’s departure. Meanwhile, Dani Ceballos’ ceiling is incredibly high and boasts some of Europe’s best ball progression stats. Alongside this trio, Mattéo Guendouzi is one of the world’s hottest midfielding prospects and Joe Willock has all the attributes required to become a top-quality player one day.
So, why have Arsenal looked so weak within their core this season? Are these players just massively overrated? Are they under performing? Or, are they being deployed incorrectly?
Well, an obvious reason for our weakness in midfield is the lack of consistency we’ve had in this area. The only true mainstay we’ve had in the engine room this year is Granit Xhaka but even he has been in and out of the side. Lucas Torreira and Dani Ceballos have spent a large portion of their season out injured whilst the former has looked far from himself on the pitch since the beginning of 2019. Joe Willock’s talent is clear to see but he is still a little rough around the edges. The same can be said for Mattéo Guendouzi whose temperament has been called into question this campaign. A combination of these factors have meant little to no stability has been found in Arsenal’s midfield this year .
It is no surprise that our midfield looked its strongest this season when we did gain a semblance of stability in this area prior to lockdown. Granit Xhaka and Dani Ceballos proved to compliment each other really well in a double pivot and their work in the midfield was a key reason for why we started 2020 so strongly. The only problem with this pairing was that it could never be viewed as a long-term solution. Dani Ceballos has not shown a desire to extend his stay with Arsenal and a formation containing a double pivot is not part of Mikel Arteta’s long-term vision.
Due to a mixture of the injury of Granit Xhaka and Mesut Özil’s absence since the Premier League’s return, Mikel Arteta’s hand has been forced and he’s had to accelerate his conversion to a 4-3-3. The problem with this is that Arsenal’s midfielders don’t really fit the criteria of player required to play in a flat 3. The regista, who plays at the base of the 3 needs to have a combination of physicality, long range of passing and tactical nous.
The two players in front of the reigsta, a pair of attackings 8s, need to be agile and predominantly offensively-oriented. In terms of the trio which started against Brighton: Guendouzi is not in a position as of yet to play as a regista consistently shown by his poor second-half display, Dani Ceballos prefers to operate from deep which isn’t really the job of a mezzala and Bukayo Saka has no experience in central midfield and it’s widely accepted that his long-term future will be situated on the left-wing.
The likes of Lucas Torreira and Granit Xhaka, who will reportedly return to full training in just over a week’s time, are not players who are particularly well suited to this formation either. It’s likely that Mikel Arteta will revert to the 4-2-3-1 when Mesut Özil is available again but the experimentation against City and Brighton showed the Spaniard that we just aren’t ready to convert to such a formation yet.
With regard to the ability of these players, it’s a strange one, because it’s clear that a lot of these players are really talented. Those who have been calling out Dani Ceballos’ ‘mediocrity’ just need to look at his brilliant 8.5 ball progressions/90 to understand that the man who won Player of the Tournament at the Under 21 Euros last Summer is far from ‘mediocre.’ Xhaka’s quality is shown through the fact that Arsenal have not won a league game without him in the team since August and even in this mess of a team Lucas Torreira makes an average of 2.5 interceptions/90 (possession adjusted).
These are not mediocre players. The key problem with these three is that they are our best midfielders, yet, realistically it is impossible to play them all simultaneously. Arsenal clearly should’ve opted to sign an out and out attacking midfielder rather than Ceballos last Summer in spite of his obvious ability.
And that leads me on to the main issue with this current crop of midfield options. Individually, they’re all pretty good players, they just don’t really suit each other. Any double pivot featuring Mattéo Guendouzi is always imbalanced. Lucas Torreira and Granit Xhaka together is just too pragmatic a pairing. The latter individual is the only left-footed option we have in midfield. In addition, a partnership consisting of him and Ceballos represents two ball progressers who don’t like operating in the final third. We’re crying out for a player who can break through the lines and offer goals and assists. Yet, the Arsenal board chose to let Aaron Ramsey leave on a free transfer last year. One of the worst footballing decisions in our club’s recent history.
The underlying point is that our midfield issues stem, not from a quality standpoint, but from a lack of diversity we have in this position. Too many of our midfielders possess similar attributes to one another and we need to bring in players by having specialized roles in mind. We certainly do not need more ‘jack of all trades, master of none’ kind of midfielders.
Thomas Partey would certainly go some way towards solving this problem but this on its own would be nowhere near enough. As mentioned above, we need a Ramsey-esque player to offer us something offensively and we also require someone who can offer us more agility in the middle of the park. Until then, a conversion to a mezzala-regista-mezzala midfield is just impossible.
Mikel Arteta will know that it is not a evolution that is required in his midfield, it is a revolution. Our current options in midfield are not bad, they just don’t fit the bill for Arteta’s long-term vision in the centre of the park. Huge changes need to be made and I wouldn’t be surprised if Mattéo Guendouzi and Joe Willock are the only midfielders remaining from our current crop in a couple of years time.
Please Stan Kroenke, give Mikel Arteta what he needs so he can deliver this club back to where it belongs. As Sash insinuated with his article earlier on in the week, we need our owner to invest now more than ever before.
