Arsenal: Jorginho the Santi Cazorla heir apparent

Thanks to crippling injuries, Arsenal need to find a long-term replacement for Santi Cazorla. Napoli’s Jorginho is the Spaniard’s perfect heir apparent.

The absence of Santi Cazorla is a damaging one. The midfielder has been injured for over a year after a series of surgeries on his right ankle that he has failed to recover from. It is hoped that he will be able to return to the first team squad in the new year and begin featuring soon after that. Arsenal need him.

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Since the start of the 2013 season up until October 2016, when Cazorla first suffered the ankle injury, the Gunners averaged 2.15 points per game with the Spaniard at the heart of their midfield. Without him, for the same period, that figure dropped to 1.70 points per game. That is a substantial difference.

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And the impact that he has on the team is noticeable in his absence. Arsenal are far less fluid in possession, passing the ball without the same gumption and pace. They are slow, lethargic, sluggish. They lack direction and purpose. They fail to shift the ball in and out of the midfield with pace and precision, meaning that the opposing defence can simply sit deep, remain disciplined and regimented, stiffening their resilience to the waves of blunt and aimless attacks.

Usually, the solution would be to be nothing more than just wait. Wait for Cazorla to return. But this is a player with a long injury history. He has missed many games. Waiting for him to return with the expectation that he will be able to play consistently again is a little naive. And Cazorla is not young. He will turn 33 in December, and with his slight stature and sharp balance, does take many knocks throughout a season. Re-injury is almost inevitable.

And so, Arsenal are in need of replacing Cazorla. For all of his talents and his influence, he is no longer a reliable option to depend upon. They need to find a successor to feature at the heart of the midfield, as the metronome, the tempo-setter, the attack-instigator, the possession-starter. And they are being linked to exactly the right player.

Jorginho has mastered a Napoli midfield that currently sits atop Serie A with wonderful guile, control, and creativity. The 25-year-old has completed 103.71 passes per 90 minutes of league football played. The only midfielder in Europe’s to five leagues to better that figure is Ilkay Gundogan of Manchester City, who has featured in only 85 minutes of football is benefitting from the anomaly that a small sample size can produce.

He has also maintained a pass accuracy of 93%, which is better than the likes of Marco Verratti, Thiago Alcantara and Jean-Michael Seri, and he is making 1.22 key passes per game also, meaning that he is not simply playing the safe and conservative passes, but has been instigating attacks and commencing attacking moves.

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Jorginho is a wonderfully gifted passer. He is smart and intelligent. He controls the game through his awareness of space and execution of distribution. He has a very similar impact on Napoli as what Cazorla has on Arsenal. He is the Spaniard’s heir apparent, and he would be a truly terrific addition.