Out with the old in with the…old?

During pre-season, I think most fans are looking for what is new about their team, especially when you have a coach like Mikel Arteta who has shown a penchant for tactical tinkering. We also look for new players, of course, but the sole signing of the summer to this point, Riccardo Calafiori, has yet to play during the pre-season schedule.

During the second half of last season, we saw Arteta reinvent Arsenal slightly again and surmount an exceptional number of points during the run-in. The mid-season break in Dubai saw Arsenal make a couple of nips and tucks to the team- Havertz became the de facto striker (this was largely forced by an injury to Gabriel Jesus), which meant that Declan Rice moved into more of a box-to-box role in midfield.

 

In turn, that meant either Jorginho or Thomas Partey anchoring the midfield and the primacy of Oleksandr Zinchenko eased as Arteta prized greater solidity at left-back, with Jakub Kiwior or Takehiro Tomiyasu manning that station. Many of us, myself included, probably felt there was a sense of permanency about some of these changes.

Just four weeks ago, I wrote, rather definitively, that I felt Declan Rice had effectively become the replacement for Granit Xhaka and that Arsenal ought to prioritise a younger deep lying playmaker to play next to him. Yet as I settled into my seat for the Bayer Leverkusen game on Wednesday night, looking for some of the next tactical evolutions for 2024-25, I was struck by a sense of what I had come to regard as ‘the old.’

Zinchenko inverting from left-back. Kai Havertz playing in midfield with Gabriel Jesus upfront. Arsenal are heavily linked with Mikel Merino, who is very much not a deep lying playmaker which means Rice is far from done as a number six. Some of this will likely be down to timing. Calafiori and Timber were not available on Wednesday, so Zinchenko played at left-back. At this stage, no other signings have materialised.

And yet, it made me wonder whether some of these…

Source link : https://arseblog.com/2024/08/out-with-the-old-in-with-the-old/

Author : Tim Stillman

Publish date : 2024-08-08 12:00:43

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