Leno, Lacazette, Cedric, Pepe, Sambi Lokonga, Martinelli, Oulad M’Hand, Swanson, Patino. That was Arsenal’s substitute bench when they lost 2-0 at Newcastle in May and the Gunners’ Champions League qualification fell apart. Nuno Tavares and Mohamed Elneny were headlines that day; Ben White and Gabriel were out of shape, but were withdrawn due to a lack of alternative options.
Arsenal did not join their squad last January and tried to keep what they had. Nor did they have the added complication of the Europa League at the time. In the end, it wasn’t enough, injuries to Kieran Tierney and Thomas Partey, followed by bumps and bruises to White, Gabriel and Tomiyasu ended Arsenal’s season.
It wasn’t just the drop in quality in replacements that hurt the team, although that was a big factor. At Spurs, Cedric conceded a penalty and Rob Holding was sent off and those actions cost Arsenal the game. But games at that point in the season are a different temperature, they just do.
In April 1998, an Arsenal team in the midst of a ten-game winning run beat Derby 1-0 at Highbury in one of the most tense games I can remember at the old ground. In April 2002 Arsenal were absolutely flying but needed a late penalty to defeat Spurs and more late goals to beat West Ham and Ipswich at home.
Neither of those teams were especially dangerous and the team came into them in great shape, but the pressure changed the face of each of those games. That is a reality that awaits Arsenal. In April the temperature does not rise only due to seasonal factors, we saw that last April when the Gunners lost three in a row in the Premier League.
This January, Arsenal found themselves in a position even they didn’t expect to be in. They tried to build on the momentum of their unexpected title charge with big signings like Mudryk and Caicedo. Those are tough deals to make in January. During the summer, it was the first eleven that Arteta and Edu really sought to improve.
Zinchenko and Jesús were the first eleven signings, Saliba’s return impacted the starting eleven. It was more or less the same in the summer of 2021, Ramsdale, White, Odegaard and Tomiyasu were starting players. With Tavares and Sambi Lokonga in the summer of 2021 and Fabio Vieira in the summer of 2022, the club tried to look a little into the future and build the second layer of the squad.
Circumstances have dictated that this January be the second layer of the squad that Arsenal is building again. Teams don’t get better with players who “could do a job.” Players who take the field smiling in tracksuits after big wins, happy enough to be at a club like Arsenal not to worry about lack of playing time.
The first principle of squad building is that you buy players who can, at the very least, compete for a starting position. With those deep players, always ask yourself, ‘if the main player is out for six months, am I happy with him playing for an extended period?’ Once you introduce that level of competition, your main men become your second layer.
The arrivals of Saliba and Zinchenko have pushed Tierney and Tomiyasu, previously indispensable starters, into that second layer of the team. Tierney and Tomiyasu are better than Tavares and Cedric, the safety players from last season. Had Mudryk arrived, maybe Martinelli becomes the second layer player, maybe Caicedo makes Xhaka a second layer player?
That’s what Arsenal tried to do, that was their main goal for January. However, as Mick Jagger once said, you can’t always get what you want. Given the circumstances, Edu and Arteta pivoted and thickened that second layer of onion. Right now, if they are all fit, Leandro Trossard, Jorginho and Jakub Kiwior would not start at Arsenal.
If the Europa League final was tomorrow and everyone was fit, those three players would be on the bench. However, if there was an injury and one or more of them had to start, you won’t flinch like you did when Tavares, Cedric, Holding and Elneny were all in the same starting lineup when the pressure was applied last spring.
Unlike last season, Arsenal is in Europe this spring. They could get fully into the Europa League. It strikes me that in Tomiyasu, Tierney, Kiwior, Jorginho, Trossard, Smith Rowe and Nketiah, the squad has a safety net that it didn’t have a year ago. It would have been better to buy players who can improve the first eleven, but given the circumstances, depth needed to be addressed.
Of course, in some areas of a team, it’s just not possible to have similar replacements unless you have a nation state funding you. Liverpool have never had a good alternative for Salah or van Dijk. Arsenal have never had a good analogue for Saka and they have also struggled to find a good back-up for Thomas Partey.
One determination I have come to is that being the alternative to Thomas Partey is not a role for a young man. Positions in the backbone of the team require regularity and rhythm. I think you can flesh out Martinelli, Smith Rowe, Nketiah and even Saka with cameos and rotational appearances initially, the attack is more fluid and more given to flow states. Midfielder, midfielder and goalkeeper are not the same.
In my opinion, the main reason why Sambi Lokonga did not develop at Arsenal is playing time. When Partey is fit, Partey plays and plays the full 90 minutes. William Saliba developed on loan, where he could play week in and week out in Ligue 1. Young central defenders and central midfielders don’t develop as substitutes, ask Rob Holding and Calum Chambers.
It’s part of the reason Arteta opted to use Mohamed Elneny as Partey’s understudy, it’s a role for a more experienced player. In general, I think Partey’s role is that of a more experienced campaigner, but the club must also consider that if the Ghanaian stays fit, his substitute will not play and that has more impact for 23-year-old Lokonga than for him. It’s Jorginho, 31 years old.
However, I think Jorginho can certainly play the Europa League knockout matches, perhaps ahead of Partey, without anyone pulling his forehead. Jorginho has potential as a ‘finisher’ of games too, in my opinion, perhaps if Arsenal have a narrow lead in a big game and want someone to help the ‘300,000 passes in the opposing third’ that Arteta wants to keep control of the games. .
The appeal of Caicedo, from my point of view, was that he could potentially replace Partey and Xhaka in the short term and, in the long term, take over from one of those players. Jorginho won’t perform the last of those roles, but he can do the first and understands the temperature of an away game at Manchester City in April.
They’re Plan B stuff, to be sure, but I don’t think they undermine Plan A. I remember the days of Arsene Wenger when not doing Plan A often meant doing nothing at all and while not signing is better than doing a bad one, that Lack of the contingency often stung Arsenal late in the season. I’m glad the club has become less risk-averse in that sense, but without panicking largesse.
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