As fans, we watch our team every week and we want it to be perfect. We want every player to be world class. Of course we do, because we want to win over and over again, and having a perfect team, with perfect players, is the only way to ensure that.
But the perfect team obviously doesn’t exist. We can see the flaws in our players and we can expect them to work on them, or someone else to come in who doesn’t have the same flaws. There is always someone better.
So as we search for the perfect solutions, the perfect players to replace the imperfect ones, we spend so much time thinking and talking about what players can’t do, that we end up ignoring what they can do, what they bring to a team. .
Enter George.
Now, Arseblog is, for obvious reasons, the last place regular readers would have expected to find an article praising Jorginho. But as January progressed, Arsenal needed a midfielder and he’s the one we managed to sign. He’s slow, he’s not a physical player and his passing range can be a bit limited. There they are, the things he can’t do. The things that became the focus of many fans when the January transfer window closed.
At Villa Park on Saturday, he showed us why Arsenal saw value in bringing him on. It’s a bit wordy, but here’s the fbref definition of a progressive pass:
Basically, a pass that ends up in the box or brings you closer to the goal by at least 10 yards. Unsurprisingly, Thomas Partey ranks just behind Oleksandr Zinchenko and Ben White (and just ahead of Martin Odegaard) as the Arsenal player with the most progressive passes per 90 minutes in the Premier League this season.
Partey’s personal season high from his midfielder position is 14 progressive passes in a game, a tally he reached in games against Nottingham Forest, West Ham and Brentford.
On Saturday at Villa Park, in just his second start for Arsenal, Jorginho racked up 15 progressive passes, including three completions into the box, equaling Partey’s most in a single game this season.
If he’s happy, just for a moment, to put his frustration away at the things Jorginho can’t do, it’s already obvious that his move could turn out to be crucial for an Arsenal side that has struggled to break through stubborn defenses of late, and which is why he was signed. . After a frustrating half of football that saw the team trail at Villa, Arsenal dominated the second half and Jorginho, in combination with the overlaps from right-back, was crucial.
One of the keys for Arsenal to break the defensive full-backs this season has been the incorporation of a sixth player, coming from the full-back, in the first line. Usually this has been Ben White, overlapping on the right to free Bukayo Saka from having to deal with two defenders, giving the winger a chance to push further inside or pick up the ball there. It is something that has not been seen enough in recent games, with the wingers isolated and only able to receive the ball on the wing.
There were flashes of Arsenal trying to use White like this before the break at Villa, with Jorginho passing the ball down the flank or inside to Saka. With Villa’s left-back Alex Moreno looking out for the whites, the gap opens up on the inside for Saka to get closer to the center-backs and get closer to the goal.
This one did not go well, with Saka hot on his heels and the pass finished off, but the signs were there that Arsenal could exploit that space as long as Ben White or, when he came on, Takehiro Tomiyasu offered an option on the overlap.
And that’s exactly what happened in the second half, when Arsenal pushed Villa more and more into their half and really dictated things. This pass from Jorginho, played into the path of White as he has ventured forward, leads to Nketiah’s header hitting the bar…
… and the next pass in a similar area leads to the corner kick that scores Arsenal’s second equalizing goal. With White again high up the pitch, he attracts the attention of the opposing left-back and creates space for Saka to run up behind.
Jorginho’s clipped pass sent Saka into the box, where he eventually earned Arsenal a corner.
At 2-2, the drive on the right continued and the flexibility of the team came to the fore. As Saka lost possession, bringing with him substitute left-back Lucas Digne, it was Takehiro Tomiyasu’s turn to break in behind for another pass from Jorginho.
And Digne is once again undecided when Tomiyasu puts the pressure on again a few minutes later, almost giving Saka the space to spin brilliantly off Jorginho’s fired pass to the feet.
Saka misses his shot after spinning magnificently, but it was encouraging that Arsenal managed to consistently channel the ball forward without reaching the touchline and it was particularly good to see our January signing playing aggressive and ambitious passes to move the team upfield. .
The Italian finished the game with five shot creation actions, an action with the ball that is the last or penultimate action before a shot, all of them passes. That element of Partey’s game was something Arsenal would have missed sorely before with the Ghanaian sidelined.
Jorginho has a bit of a reputation for being a safe passer, one of those deep midfielders that people think complete 150 short passes in a game without any of them making a difference, but he’s much more creative than that. In his first season at Chelsea (2018/19) he played the most progressive passes and the most final third passes of any player in the Premier League. He completed the most passes to the final third again the following season. We saw that ability in Villa and it was crucial to retain them and create chances before the pressure finally did and we won the game.
That mounting pressure also played a role there. For Jorginho’s ‘goal’, or I guess the shot that led to Emi Martínez’s goal, nine of Villa’s 10 outfield players were in their own area trying to defend themselves from the onslaught. That’s probably why Jorginho took the shot, he didn’t have much of a choice, and it’s fitting that it was a product of his passing and the more aggressive approach from Arsenal’s right-backs.
We shouldn’t expect any more breakthrough moments – since the start of 2019/20 Jorginho has taken just 22 shots from outside the box in 109 Premier League appearances and hasn’t scored a single one – but this was an excellent performance from Jorginho. and a great reminder that as much as a player may be limited, there’s always a lot of value in seeing what they’re good at.
