Morning all and happy Friday to you. Not long now and we can stick a collective two fingers up to this disaster of a Premier League season. Can’t wait.
I don’t really want to look ahead too much at the Watford game because, frankly, it is of little consequence to me. So last night and this morning my mind started to wander off along in the direction of thinking about the clear and obvious lack of creativity that just about every Arsenal fan has been talking about this season. No more was that evident than against Aston Villa and as many of us have seen all season, when you don’t have a Mesut Ozil type creative player to connect midfield and attack, then you’re going to suffer.
Well, I say a ‘Mesut Ozil type player’, but we can all see that Mesut Ozil hasn’t been that player for some time, so it is abundantly clear that we need a new connector to step into his place. Willock doesn’t have the passing range to be that guy and whilst he gets into good positions in the box, he hasn’t had enough about him from a goalscoring perspective to solve a problem we have. Maitland-Niles is your classix ‘on paper’ guy. To me he should have it; he is strong, athletic, has pace, the right physicality, it feels like he has the energy that could cover ground, but have we really seen enough of his passing range to be that guy? Have we really seen enough of him carrying the ball in central areas?
The challenge with seeing him out wide is that you get much more space out wide and so carrying the ball is a little easier than it is through the middle. It’s statistics, right? I mean I don’t have the numbers but we all know that statistically the middle of the park is where teams view risk, which is why football has always been a sport where teams playing narrow and flooding the centre spine of the pitch reduces their risk. So many teams are happy to concede possession out wide and so when you have a ball carrier out wide who is good, it doesn’t mean they’ll thrive in the centre.
That’s also why I’m not sure if Saka is ‘the guy’ through the middle either. We can all see his talent; he can beat a man, he’s good with his crossing, he’s a goalscorer, so for me out wide is where we need him to be. But that still doesn’t solve our creative midfield issue and as we’ve also seen this season, Dani Ceballos doesn’t quite fit that mould, despite the fact he’s been impressive of late.
That’s why last night I started looking at Emile Smith Rowe and how he’s got on at Huddersfield. It turns out….quite well. I saw his message he put on Twitter about how much he’s enjoyed his loan spell and is happy to have helped play his part in them staying up. A good end to the season for him, I thought, but then I started to look at some of the responses because quite often the responses of people on Twitter will give you an indication on how he’s got on. And it’s clear to me that the Huddersfield fans loved him. I struggled to find anything remotely negative about him and amongst the praise were comments about fans just being glad that they could see him in the flesh and how great a future he’s got, about how he has been such an important part of their team and how he’s been integral in them staying up. Quite literally, in fact, as he got the winner in a 2-1 win over promoted West Brom at home last week.
I started doing a little more reading up on how he’s done and at the beginning of July there was another match report about how he bossed the game against Birmingham City. Huddersfield boss Danny Cowley has had high praise for him indeed and I’ve read a few articles where he talks about booing himself when Smith-Rowe is brought off as a sub, as well as the impact he’s had in between the lines and when Emile is fed the ball between the midfield and attack.
By all accounts this is sounding rather promising, eh? And I’m reminded of the loan spell Jack Wilshere had. They loved him at Bolton and he kicked on a gear, whereby the Bolton fans waxed lyrical before he came back to us and established himself as a first team regular the season after, which was also the season he had his seminal game against Barcelona in which he bossed the midfield with Cesc. If this loan has had the same impact on Smith Rowe then Arteta must surely be looking at him with a view that his Arsenal future in the first team is fast approaching.
But let’s not forget that he’s only just turned 20. As Saka’s performance against Villa showed, if he comes back to Arsenal next season and is in the squad fighting for a first team place, then he will have bouts of indifferent form. That’s understandable at such a young age and it’s important we don’t crucify him. But I also think it is important on Arsenal to do the right thing and not put too much pressure on him. If Ozil truly has no place next season – which looks the case at the moment – then we need more creativity being packed into our midfield options. Smith-Rowe will provide one option, but for 60 – 70% of the games next season we may need an established name to come in. If that happens and we can ease Smith-Rowe into a more regular starting slot, then in two to three year’s time we could have a superstar on our hands.
Catch you tomorrow.
i have been saying for ages way before smith-rowe broke into the first team and then went on loan. That the guy is different class. I would go as far to say he is likened to bergkamp in many many ways. He can hold the ball up take on players ghost past players and see that eye through a needle pass. The guy has eyes in the back of his head and an old head on young shoulders, which is needed to be a play maker but also the boy can finish give half a chance. but like all young players he needs a run of games in the team to get to know players styles and movement.The main problem we have at Arsenal is we havent a striker capable to make the runs needed to open up defenses. In Laca we have a striker that doesnt even know what his own game is. In that i mean he doesnt play on the shoulder of the defender looking to work the channels. He doesnt run at players and ask the questions. he doesnt offer a target striker someone to aim for. He simply doesnt have a game. He runs around the park like a headless chicken and is never upfront when we need him to be when we have the ball. Until we have a striker that actuallu plays as a striker we wont make opportunities. If Abua played upfront then we would have a real striker someone that can play on the shoulder and work the channels but unfortunately arteta sees him out wide. Which i cannot for the life of me see why. When we have two guys that can play there in Saka and Martinelli.
Smith-Rowe is a class act and capable of playing in the first 11 right now. Personally i wouldnt have sent him out on loan. I would have just played him this season along with the other youngsters played to give him that experience and got him ready for this season. I reasoning of sending him out on loan baffles me, Arteta obviously wasnt going to use Ozil. So the obvious thing was to use Smith -Rowe. Arteta as much as i respect him has made some really wierd decisions this season one being loaning smith -rowe when we had no obvious play maker in the team and secondly playing Koslainac at all.He also changed the midfield for the aston villa game a game we needed 3 point in and played Torriera with Ceballos instead of Xhaka and Cellabos which confused me as torriera and ceballos havent played together before.. Strange decisions that have cost us a place in a european comp this year !!
Ii have heard the old saying he rested players for the final which i disagree with as they all came on as subs during the villa game. Personally i think if you got something to play for then you play for it until its gone and we had something to play for. if we had won the villa game then we would have gone into the watford game with a chance for getting past the spuds for european football now we have very little chance as playing chelsea is no easy game and personally i dont think we can beat them at the moment.
Of course i respect Arteta but he has to stop making strange decisions like changing a winning team thats exactly what the last manager did and it killed them team !!
Can play a role off the bench, but still not strong or robust enough.