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Big Gabi on his own turf

Suburban Gooners Logo Suburban Gooners Logo With Jurrien Timber the only concern for us last night in terms of injury worries, today becomes a bit of a quiet one, with a number of players playing today, including Big Gabi I suspect at The Emirates stadium, as we host the Selecao against Senegal. It’s a bit of a Big Gabi fest in these two friendlies, with the Brazilian playing at his current home ground tonight, as well as his former home at Lille next week. I wonder if he’ll be all like “Nah Vini Jr, that’s MY peg there – move your stuff somewhere else, man”. I’d like to think that he would.

He’s such a colossus, isn’t he, eh? I remember when we signed him in September of 2020. I, like you I’m sure, Googled and YouTubed a bit of this young lad we were just bringing in for something around the £23million mark plus add-ons. I don’t scour the French league, I don’t watch any matches, so this had to be a bit of a punt on a guy who himself had only been in Lille for a couple of season’s and before that spent time on a number of loans in France and Croatia. One of the things I read about him at the time that I absolutely loved was that he wins a lot of ground duels. The prevailing narrative was that he doesn’t go to ground too often and prefers to stay on his feet, but he wins a lot of ground duels standing up, which was what we needed in a recent era of Mustafi and David Luiz’s.

In fact, Luiz acted as a bit of a mentor for him in that first season, with the two often playing together and having a fellow Brazilian at the back must have been beneficial for him in those early months. He played 32 times in that first season and racked up 2,807 minutes in a decent opening season, although I remember him not being 100% the rock he is today. In fact, I seem to recall a couple of iffy moments and a red card in the Premier League there somewhere, such was a slightly erratic, but younger version of Big Gabi that had the inevitable young defender mistake in him.

But for every season he’s been at The Arsenal, he’s been every bit the ‘monster’ David Luiz described him as back then. He has grown in stature year-on-year and when Saliba broke through, Big Gabi was already established. I’ve read a few things from Arsenal fans, listened to a few pods, talking about how he has probably even surpassed Saliba in terms of his importance and as much as I absolutely adore Big Bill, I have to agree to that. When Saliba broke on to the scene he was flavour of the month. His following season he was seen as the cool, calm and collected cultured centre half, whereas Big Gabi was the roaring lion. Fire and Ice, if you will. But particularly this season and I’d probably say for the end of last season when he was out injured for so long, his presence has been felt more keenly than anyone else I think. He’s a defender first and foremost and we all love his chest-thumping tackles or gee’ing up the crowd at times at The Emirates, but his prowess in the box is crazy now. Every time we get a corner the cameras pan to where he is. He’s become an unstoppable force and his reputation is becoming such that people think he scores every game. But he’s only (HA! ‘ONLY!) got two goals so far this season. That’s in 17 games and 1,300+minutes. So it’s not as if he’s always on the scoresheet.

But that doesn’t matter. If the reputation that surrounds him means that more attention is placed on him more than the other players for set pieces, then it gives other players the opportunity to make an impact, whether that’s Big Vik, Saliba or Calafiori. It doesn’t matter to him who scores, it doesn’t matter to us who scores, as long as we keep getting those corner goals and clean sheets (minus last weekend, obviously). It’s kind of the same with Saka too. Teams double up on him in that right wing spot, so that means that’s one less player on another part of the pitch and it frees up more space for our other attackers which, if we move the ball quickly enough then it can be another way in which we can fashion chances by occupying left backs and central midfielders in our right wing position. If Big Gabi can take a couple of defenders with him on a corner, there’s other spaces for other players to hopefully profit from.

We just need him to stay fit all season and I do wonder if that means Arteta needs to think about a little more rotation with him over the coming months. There are some players he just does not rotate much at all – Raya, Saka, Odegaard (when fit) and Big Gabi. We do need to think of a solution in that regard and I do wonder whether we need to see more of Hincapie and Calafiori there. Both have played in that central position before – albeit nominally as left centre-backs in a three – and even yesterday against Canada Hincapie started as a left back. I do think they’ll both be fighting for spots in that left back slot, but we do need to also protect Big Gabi by managing his minutes I think. He had a pretty big injury last season that kept him out for a long time, we don’t want that happening again this season. I’m not sure whether we can afford it to be honest.

But that sounds like I’m tiptoeing into ‘worry’ territory, whereas today is about giving our Number six and King of Brazil some flowers.

Keep at it Big Gabi. Have a good game on your own pitch tonight – but stay fresh and don’t get injured.

Back tomorrow with some more musings.

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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.