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The rebalancing of The Arsenal squad

Suburban Gooners Logo Suburban Gooners Logo As you’d expect it’s a wee bit quiet out there on the Arsenal front, save for the odd spurious transfer rumour, although I have to say my thinking has been dominated by the potential absence of Declan Rice for this weekend.

Having been pretty clear of most of the Champions League chasing pack all season, we suddenly find ourselves in a position where defeat to Newcastle on our own turf would mean that they leapfrog us in to second spot and would probably pip us to it on the final day. As I’ve mentioned and I’m sure you know too, second, third, fourth or fifth doesn’t really make a lot of different in terms of Champions League qualification these days; there’s no qualifying rounds and all you really get is a few extra million for finishing higher up the league table. But with Arsenal getting to the semi final of the Champions League, any position inside the top five doesn’t really matter because most of the money they get in prize winnings will be more significant for reaching the top four.

So it’s probably really for pride more than anything else that the players are playing this weekend. Our form of late has been patchy to say the least, in fact that’s probably quite generous. We haven’t won a game at home in all competitions since the Real Madrid tie on 8th April and in the Premier League we’re going back to the narrow 2-1 win over Fulham on 1st April to see us pick up all three points. When you couple with that the fact that Newcastle are in good form and will be buoyed with their form and a League Cup trophy making their season come across as very successful indeed, it makes for a somewhat worrisome fixture on Sunday.

That’s made even more concerning when you think that our midfield is going to have to be pretty makeshift for the game. No Merino through suspension, no Jorginho through injury, then news has been emerging since the Liverpool game that Rice might be out with a suspected hamstring injury. It’s not surprising; the guy basically plays every single game and with the injury issues we’ve had this season, the club a) can’t really afford to take too many gambles because knowing our luck we’ll fall on the wrong side of it, and b) because of the volume of injuries and therefore reliance on players to play more regularly, you’re going to put too much strain on certain players.

I certainly think this is something Arteta and his coaching staff are going to have to look at over the summer. This season has been crazy and with the extra games in the Champions League, the League Cup semi final and then getting to the same round of the competition for the Champions League, we have so many players who have not lasted the pace. I don’t know what ‘perfect rotation’ is, but Arsenal and Arteta need to think about upping the volume of rotation for next season I think.

Is that through getting better players in more positions that he trusts and will use? Maybe. There are players who it does feel like they’ve been criminally underused this season though. KT, when he’s played, has more than shown himself to be capable. Zinchenko has just 719 minutes and Jorginho has 1,453 across the whole season. Raheem Sterling we quickly learned was a busted flush in attack and he’s pieced together just over 1,000 minutes across the season. Then you have the likes of injury prone players like Tomiyasu (SIX minutes all season!) and Gabriel Jesus (1,200), which perhaps tells a bit of a story in itself around reliance on certain players that we probably shouldn’t have. Timber has been over played, but I think that is because of the Ben White injury and us finding MLS may have been a superb bit of fortune (and great work by Hale End to produce this kid) of timing, Calafiori getting injured a fair bit has been mitigated somewhat.

So I think for me our squad imbalance that I’ve heard people rightly talk about at times this season, has more to do with an expectation that some injury-prone players will actually play significant minutes. Personally I think you have to look for a Tomiyasu replacement in defence, a Gabriel Jesus replacement in attack and maybe you could argue that the Sterling replacement is Nwaneri. But even that feels like we’re still one or two names short of Arteta being more confident to undertake rotation.

The summer has to be a reflection point and a cold, hard, look at what went wrong this season. We’re a good team, well-coached, we have a good base of players, but aside from some of the cursed luck (Saka and Ben White hardly ever get injured, yet have missed a minimum of a third of a season) on injuries that we wouldn’t expect, as well as a few dodgy red cards (not this past weekend, mind), there has been something a little off all season. In the way in which we play in an attacking sense I certainly think Arteta will be looking to try to innovate in the summer. He sacrificed quite a lot for defensive stability over the last couple of season’s, but I think now is the time to rebalance the side’s impetus from defending to a balance of defensive solidity with risk-taking in attack. That’s my hopes for the summer, anyway, so let’s see what happens. Plenty more to be asid about that over time.

For now though I’m going to clock off and I’ll catch you all tomorrow. Be well.

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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.