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Eze’s England goal shows how he can carve out his own niche at The Arsenal

Suburban Gooners Logo Suburban Gooners Logo So the Arsenal boys did the business last night for England. Not that I was watching. Now that England are qualified these matches become nothing more than glorified friendlies and all that leaves me thinking is:

Why the HELL is Saka playing the full 90?

Rice was taken off on 65 minutes, so that’s good, plus Ebs got on and scored a pretty decent goal from that left forward position (more on that in a sec), but Saka shouldn’t be knocking down 90s in a game like this. I hope on the game on Sunday he’s given rest time.

I will say that Tuchel appears to be more mindful of the players and their minutes compared to the horror that was Gareth Southgate. He’d give Saka the full 90 in an international friendly against Gibraltar, was such his ego needing stroking (funny how he has taken no managerial opportunities and instead is just content on releasing a new book, eh?), but at least Tuchel thinks and acts like an elite manager and is mindful of loading minutes of players. That’s my hope anyway when it comes to Saka, because he’s clearly decided that Rice can have an earlier sit down last night.

Gattuso and the Italy coaching staff are doing the same with Calafiori, who was left out of the team to face Moldova but might be in the squad when they play over the weekend. There’s apparently nothing to worry about, but that’s a clear sign that they know that he has a chequered injury history, that he’s played a lot of football this season and if he can have a few extra days off whilst still training (albeit alone) with the Italian National Team, then that is something. In a weird way, if he plays over the weekend that might be a good thing, because it shows that he’s ok. Italy play Norway on Sunday evening and if he plays a part, then he’ll have from Sunday until Sunday to recover and that is hopefully enough time (assuming he doesn’t pick up an injury) to be ready for the North London Derby.

Saliba also played for France in a game in which he will have basically been a spectator in most parts given their dominance over a Ukraine side that had zero attempts on goal or on target and just 33% possession. Talk about dominance. I looked at his numbers in that game and it was 62 of 67 passes for France and 29 of those attempts were in the opposition half, so I think he’ll be feeling fine off the back of that win. He normally averages around 67 per game for Arsenal so this feels like a pretty standard Saliba outing, which is good news.

The rest of the players are action in their first matches either tonight and tomorrow and I do wish Brazil would have played their games a little earlier. Big Gabi is off with them and they don’t play until tomorrow and then on Tuesday, but here’s the good news:

It’s a friendly and so hopefully he’s rotated

It’s in Lille, France – the borders of Belgium

A quick check on Google tells me it is a one hour and 22 minute flight from London to Lille; that’s like taking the trip to Inverness in Scotland, so he’ll be back and hopefully wrapped up in cotton wool by Wednesday night, meaning Arteta can have a look at him on Thursday and by Friday he’ll have had three full training days before the North London Derby on Sunday. Great stuff. Providing he doesn’t pick up an injury, that is.

I mentioned I wanted to touch on Eze today and I wanted to have a little look at where he featured for England. He came on for Rashford on the left wing position and a look at his heatmap showed he very much occupied the kinds of positions you’d expect from that position. But in the 26 minutes on the pitch he was very much not playing like a winger who is hugging the touchline and asked to drive at his man. If we think about how Martinelli plays that role, Eze feels a lot more analogous to Trossard as more of an inside forward in that position and the superb goal he scored last night was scored from that sort of inside-left position too.

We haven’t seen too much of that this season due to the injury to Odegaard and Eze has been obviously asked to play a little more centrally, which I think a few Arsenal fans have been left feeling like there’s a little more that Eze could give us. But I think that’s in part due to the fact he plays the ‘Odegaard role’ different to Martin. Odegaard is a pressing trigger for us and he is quite an intense one; Eze presses, but not nearly as intensely as Odegaard – can you remember many times when you see him closing down the ‘keeper like Odegaard does when we are out of possession? I can’t. But in my mind I can visualise Odegaard doing that every game. Odegaard also drops deeper to receive the ball than Eze does, as well as picking it up in different positions too, so when we are missing Odegaard it’s great we have a player like Eze who can look to perform that role, but I wonder if he’s been the victim of the fact that expectations are that he would be similar to the Norwegian. That’s simply never going to be the case.

Eze has to carve out his own niche in this Arsenal team. That means from a central position when he’s playing in for an Odegaard, or maybe even if Rice or Merino aren’t available and he slots in at left eight, or even if Rice slots in to the six with Zubi out. We almost got to see that against West Ham but Odegaard’s injury reduced it to just a glimmer of a showing. So the return of Odegaard might see Eze put in positions more like he was in last night and if he delivers end product like that, I don’t think many of us will be complaining, that’s for sure.

The challenge Eze will have when Odegaard returns is the form of Trossard in that position, as well as the competition of Martinelli and Madueke as the rapid, touchline-hugging wingers to offer something different. I for one am glad we’ve had him and his contribution with all those attacking players out has been valuable at this time. But perhaps he needs to find a way how to do the different roles a little differently to the others, to absolutely cement his place as a regular in Arteta’s Arsenal first XI.

back tomorrow with some more thoughts.

**Quick Shakespearian ‘aside’ to give some props to Saka for his fantastic goal as well last night. Good work Starboy – keep on doing that for us when you get back!**

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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.