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Solving the Saka problem

Suburban Gooners Logo Suburban Gooners Logo Happy Christmas Eve y’all. Hope you’re enjoying the Christmas period and, like me, are already moving yourself in to Gorge Modelike I am. My normal approach the day after Mike Arteta has had his press conference is to pour over every word of his ahead of the game on 27th December, but given that yesterday we all got the news from Mikel that Saka would be out for “many weeks”, I think I’ll focus on that today, because it’s pretty big stuff from an Arsenal perspective.

Saka is our most influential player. He is an assist merchant, he bags important goals, he has such a big impact that often opposition teams double up on him to ensure that he doesn’t get the run on any full back. Losing him to another injury this season is a big blow to any lofty trophy ambitions we have and it’s yet another situation his squad is having to deal with. It seems like we are curse to miss key players for every game of this season.

Arsenal need to find a solution without Saka. And they’re going to have to do it for probably the same amount of time that we had to do without Ødegaard.

Apparently it’s a grade two tear and as a few people on BlueSky told me last night, that means he’s likely to be out for around eight weeks. That means we probably aren’t seeing Saka until March. That’s a hell of a lot of football to be played without your best player.

And with Sterling out too for “weeks” as Arteta said, the attacking options look light indeed going in to the new year. By my recollection, we have the following players who can play across the front three:

Havertz

Martinelli

Gabriel Jesus

Trossard

Nwaneri

That’s five players for three positions, with one of those players being a kid that we know we need to be easing in to game time. It’s also a kid who Arteta has preferred to play in the Ødegaard role as a back up. Arteta referenced yesterday that they knew that they had a thin squad going in to the season and I think at this stage, surely the club must be looking for another attacking option in January. You’d be mad not to.

The problem, as we all know, is that there isn’t value in January; teams don’t want to part with players unless you are willing to over pay and as we’ve seen from countless examples in recent transfer windows, Arsenal would sooner walk away from a deal than go that extra £10million to get it over the line. We did that with Mudryk versus Trossard (phew) and we did it last summer with Sesko; he signed a new deal at RB Leipzig and instead of going for somebody else we decided to keep the powder dry.

But now they have to be scouring the market for a deal. An Ødegaard-shaped one, a Trossard-flavoured one, a Jorginho-styled one – they have to try to find some solution because having four players plus a kid for the next few months won’t get us where we want to be I don’t think. If I was to have a punt as to what would happen if we don’t sign anyone, it would be that it’ll pan out like the Ødegaard injury; we’ll be fine for a few weeks, we’ll get a few results and as a fan base we’ll all have a collective sigh of relief. But there will come a time, a game, in which we need somebody to ‘unlock’ a team. Saka is an expert at that. For the Ødegaard situation the noises were “Martin finds that pass that puts the attacker in”, but for Saka it will be “ahh sh*t, Bukayo probably buries that”.

Arteta will be focused on finding solutions though. He won’t be moping about yet another injury to a team who seems to have crossed black cats’ paths, stepped on three drains, walked under ladders and opened umbrellas indoors. At Palace we saw Martinelli perform well on that right wing and perhaps that can be a short term solution, but I think longer term we’re going to see that being less effective as he’s a ‘head down, drive to byline’ kind of guy. On the left that means cut in and shoot, on the right that’ll mean he’s putting balls in. So the emphasis on end product if we go with that will need to be more from Havertz, Gabriel Jesus, but maybe also Merino? We saw in the Euro’s and we’ve also seen against Liverpool earlier in the season that he has a good header on him and if we’re going to be putting more balls in there then perhaps we’ll see more of that from Merino?

Perhaps we’ll also see more from Ødegaard popping up and having a go from that right half space just outside the box? We’ve become accustomed to him and Saka exchanging passes in that area and usually it ends up with Saka in behind or driving across the D to have a pop (think Forest at home this season for the first goal scored by Saka, as an example). Maybe Martin is taking on the shot there instead? Or perhaps there’s an opportunity to play Nwaneri in with him? If Sterling gets back within a couple of weeks, I could envisage him -laying in those small spaces, as he’s the kind of player who likes those quick one twos, but for now I suspect over this Christmas period Arteta will try to stick with the Martinelli wide right option, then see how we get on.

However Arteta decides we’re going to play, what we will need to do is to change it up a little more depending on the opponent. There will no longer be a look towards Saka to solve a stubborn opposition problem.

Other players need to be able to step up.

Will probably be back to you all on Boxing Day. If I can be bothered tomorrow I might pen something, but might have already started drinking by 9 so might be a bit of a delay.

Have yourselves a good one folks.

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Gooner born in 1982 from Harlow, Essex, now living in Uxbridge. I say what I see - frequently wrong, but hey, it's just an opinion piece, right? Leave a comment and let me know what you think.