Arsenal: N’Golo Kante a bit of a low mark for Lucas Torreira long-term

Lucas Torreira has been touted as the next N’Golo Kante since the link began, and that’s great, but shouldn’t Arsenal want more?

Arsenal have spent the last decade carefully tip-toeing around actually replacing Patrick Vieira. Names have been tossed around and players have fallen short and eventually, people realized that you don’t just replace Patrick Vieira.

At least I hope people have realized that by now. Eventually, maybe we find someone that can be a superstar like him, but for now, the most we can ask for is a ball-winner with upside. That seems realistic.

Francis Coquelin was the former, but never the latter. And boy, did we give him plenty of opportunities to develop into more.

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N’Golo Kante’s name was then tossed around because he was, like Vieira, such a strong ball-winner with so much athleticism. But, while he was arguably the best at what he did, he had no offensive upside. None whatsoever.

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Still, there’s no denying it would have been nice to have him. And it would still be nice to have him. he is hitting his prime now at 27 years old, and it’s pretty obvious that the product that he is now is who he is going to be long-term.

And now we have Lucas Torreira. 22-years-old, five years Kante’s junior, and he is already at Arsenal, while Kante, at 22, was still at Caen in France. His true magic was seen when he came to Leicester City, then on to Chelsea.

Torreira and Kante are following very similar paths, and that’s why it’s realistic to expect him to be another Kante. We would all be happy if he reached that level. But this is where I get a bit far-fetched.

Why stop there? Doesn’t Torreira have offensive abilities that you won’t see from Kante? Doesn’t he have a pretty solid shot? I like to believe that with the right training, Torreira can take his already-stoic ball-winning abilities and fine-tune his attacking skills to.

So that, by the time he is 27 as Kante is now, he is able to not just win balls back, but transition into an effective attacker as well.

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That, to me, seems wholly realistic, and not “far-fetched” at all. It’s not unrealistic to think that a player can do the anti-Coquelin and develop some semblance of offensive ability.