Arsenal: Well, the Henrikh Mkhitaryan question was answered

Henrikh Mkhitaryan was not able to make it back for Arsenal in the first leg, and that was seen as a major question, but the answer is actually a positive one.

Arsenal’s 1-1 draw against Atletico Madrid in the first leg at the Emirates was frustrating, to say the least. But buried in what is an unfortunately negative result was a lot of positive takeaways.

One takeaway, that I don’t think many expected to be positive, comes in the form of an answer to a question that was posed before the match. That question being – just how much would the Gunners miss Henrikh Mkhitaryan as they desperately tried to pick the lock to this disciplined Atletico Madrid defense?

One could be forgiven for expecting this answer to be something along the lines of “gobs” given the general understanding of how this game was going to go, but seeing as how this is filed under “positive,” that is not the case at all.

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The answer, instead, was “not at all.” Mkhitaryan would not have made a shred of difference and I will even argue later on that he would have made things worse.

Yes, this was helped on by a cloistered defense becoming even more cloistered after the 9th minute second yellow to Vrsaljko, but even still, the Gunners showed no problem whatsoever in creating chances.

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All in all, they created a mammoth 25 chances. The only guy who didn’t create a chance was David Ospina, and his laser pass to Danny Welbeck may have turned into one had things gone just a bit differently.

The problem wasn’t chances at all. The problem was chances not being taken, which was helped on by Jan Oblak being Jan Oblak.

Mkhitaryan is another guy who does have a tendency to squander chances, and he certainly isn’t as quick or imminently deadly as Danny Welbeck suddenly is, which is, in short, why I think we were actually better off without Mkhitaryan.

Having a speedy outlet on that side in Welbeck provided so much joy for the Gunners midfield that I don’t think we would have found in Mkhitaryan, who would have floated central, as he tends to do.

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All that said, in the second leg, Mkhitaryan would figure to be a massive help, depending on if there is another 9th minute ejection or not. I’m kind of leaning towards that there won’t be.