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 approaches we had come to consider as relics- Zinchenko inverting, Havertz in midfield (in fairness, I did not expect that we had seen the last of that), Rice as the midfield anchor- really have been discarded or whether they remain tools that Arteta wants in his shed. The manager talks a lot about being unpredictable and I suspect that we will likely see more of those things than many thought we would, we just won’t see them every week anymore.

Broadly, Arsenal’s last three seasons have followed a bit of a pattern, where Arsenal hit upon something, find a rich vein of form which is enervated by a three-game sticky spell when opponents start to know what to expect. Arsenal tend to steer themselves away from their unwanted purple patch with another evolution and off they go again.

I suspect that Arteta wants to avoid the sort of troublesome patch that Arsenal hit during the festive period last year- a spell of three defeats that cost them the league title and saw them exit the FA Cup. My new working theory is that Arteta wants to mix and match approaches and some of the things we saw from summer 2022 to winter 2023 we will still see plenty of on occasion.

After all, he continually purchases multi-functional players and that has to be with a sense of unpredictability and a variety of approaches in mind. I suspect he wants to move more towards having a suite of approaches that he rotates between from game-to-game. Clearly, there is still some individual coaching required if Arsenal are to reprise some of these elements.

The fact that Zinchenko changed his squad number this week suggests that he is likely to stay at the club this season. The fact the change wasn’t announced sooner (Cedric was always going to leave so the availability of the number has been known for some time) implies that Arsenal would have been open to a sale (and probably still would be). Against Leverkusen, Myles Lewis-Skelly came on at left-back over Kiwior, which illustrates that Arteta is far from done with the inverting left-back model.

I was enthused by what I saw from Zinchenko against Leverkusen. Clearly, he is never going to be Defendy McTacklesalot but the real issue with Zinchenko was that the risk / reward dial on his passing was starting to stray too heavily towards the risk side. It was only one game and it was a friendly but he seemed a lot cleaner in his decision making on Wednesday and he strikes me as a determined type of player who will understand why his star has fallen recently.

I also think that last season Zinchenko started to look less like a left-back who inverted into midfield and more like a midfielder who occasionally turned up at left-back. Again, against Leverkusen that dial felt steadier and he held the width well when required. It was notable how much more fluid Arsenal’s approach was in general, especially in the first half, with Trossard, Havertz and Jesus operating more like an attacking carousel. Zinchenko supported that by being a little more judicious about when he strayed into central spaces and when he held width.

I have fewer concerns about Havertz starting in midfield. In reality, I think Havertz works as a kind of 8, 9 and 10 all at the same time wherever you play him. In midfield, he has more of a license to arrive late in the box and perhaps plough that channel we saw him in when he teed up Zinchenko’s goal on Wednesday. But I think his heatmaps look similar whether he is in midfield or upfront.

Enjoy the full match replay from Arsenal 4-1 Bayer Leverkusen

— Arsenal (@Arsenal) August 8, 2024

Arsenal also used the option of moving Havertz into that more advanced role in the second half when Gabriel Jesus came off and I imagine we will see that a lot this season and vice versa. His late winner against Brentford at the Emirates in March came when he moved back into midfield having started the game upfront. That is the kind of optionality Arsenal didn’t have with Granit Xhaka in that position- ultra reliable though he was.

As for Declan Rice, he would require some coaching if he really is to excel at all facets of the game as the deepest midfielder. I have always felt that Rice’s capacity to learn and add attributes to his game has been among his biggest strengths. Technically, he is a perfectly sound footballer, his touch is good, his passing is good.

I think he could do with some pointers on how to receive the ball and to move it on to really become that Rodri style all-rounder. A more open body position when he receives passes would help him. Rice likes to carry the ball to his teammates with his loping stride, maybe he could moderate that impulse by passing the ball instead on occasion- not least to save his own legs a little.

Partey and Jorginho are very good at adopting that open body position so they can swivel and pass all in one movement. Both also have a good sense of when the space just isn’t there to turn and they pop the ball back to where it came from and probe for a better angle. We are talking very fine lines on an already world class player here; but Rice doesn’t play for West Ham anymore.

He doesn’t need to wear the Superman cape with every action and try to Roy of the Rovers the ball away from danger and up the pitch every time he gets it. Don’t get me wrong, I am looking forward to seeing some new things too and suspect Jurrien Timber and Riccardo Calafiori will facilitate hitherto unseen tactical high jinx. Clearly there will be another new player or two yet to come but I suspect some of us have been a little hasty in entirely dismissing some of the old ways.

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