Arsenal: Arsene Wenger taking least likely path with Ainsley Maitland-Niles

Arsene Wenger is known for his conservative approach to most Arsenal situations, but with Ainsley Maitland-Niles, he’s letting it all hang out.

Arsenal’s impending match against Liverpool has a lot of talking points. More than any match prior. But perhaps none are as pressing as who will get the start at leftback opposite Mo Salah.

Arsene Wenger has not shied away from the daunting prospect, though he is not openly admitting to how daunting it really is. Speaking before the match, he noted that he would have no reservations playing either Sead Kolasinac or AInsley Maitland-Niles there.

But he kept expanding on the latter’s prospects, and that’s where things got a bit weird.

“I believe he is the future. He can play left back, right back, central midfield,” he said, as quoted by the Evening Standard. “Of the three positions, maybe the least natural for him is left back, but he adapts very quickly and is a good defender.”

Of course, the main question I’m sitting here pondering is if his weakest position is leftback, then why is that the position he has been handed despite one of our best players being a left back?

One potential answer is simple enough – Wenger wants to make him versatile enough to play any of his main positions. But going beyond that, there isn’t a lot of sense to be found here. Not only is he playing his worst position, but he is playing it at the highest level, again, ahead of someone who deserves it.

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Instead of this method, he could have replaced Alex Iwobi or Hector Bellerin, neither of whom are having the year that Kolasinac is having. I have covered the other potential shifts before, so I won’t get into them much here, suffice to say that it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.

So we have a 20 year old who Wenger thinks it the future, and he is replacing the man least needing replacement and he is playing out of position and will surely continue to be played out of position.

Maybe, given the struggles to develop young talents in recent years, Wenger has simply thrown everything to the wind and, rather than follow the same methods he has always followed, is instead blasting the prescribed way and defying his traditional methods in order to try something new.

It sounds crazy, but this is Wenger, the philosopher manager. Is anything really out of his realm? Every time I think of that, I imagine Yaya Sanogo and the expectations that accompanied him.

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Maitland-Niles is doing well with his brief start to Premier League life, but there are so many questions that need to be asked regarding just what the hell Wenger has in mind.