Arsenal: Has everyone underrated importance of good full backs?

In two Premier League games thus far, Arsenal have come up against four excellent full backs. Has the club underrated the importance of the position?

Arsenal have played two difficult games so far this season. Hosting last season’s champions and then travelling to the FA Cup victors is tough. Losing both of them is a shame, but it was not necessarily surprising. That said, there was an unusual development in the positions that were crucial in both matches.

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The Gunners were consistently opened up by the pair of full backs that they faced on both occasions: Kyle Walker and Benjamin Mendy for Manchester City; Cesar Azpilicueta and Marcos Alonso, who scored the winner in the 3-2 victory, for Chelsea.

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Both Mendy and Walker were excellent on the opening weekend. Mendy provided two assists, the second of which came from a bursting run to the by-line and cutback, while dominating Henrikh Mkhitaryan in defensive zones, and Walker was a consistent presence on the opposite flank with his combination of pace and power far too much for Mesut Ozil to handle at both ends of the pitch.

And then, a week later, Alonso was a wrecking ball down the Chelsea left flank, providing the assist for the opening goal with a surging burst from deep in his own half, holding off the lapse and lethargic challenge of Henrikh Mkhitaryan, while Azpilicueta provided the assist for the second goal, clipping a through pass for Alvaro Morata to latch onto, and was a solid and sound defensive presence for throughout.

In the modern game of high pressing, playing out from the back, the utility of full backs has only become more accentuated. And it was made evident in these games how much Arsenal struggled to play out from the back without good outlets from the full-back positions and in how they failed to deal with the threat that the opposing full backs posed in from wide areas.

Contrast the collective influence of Walker, Mendy, Azpilicueta and Alonso to what Unai Emery has selected at the right and left back, Hector Bellerin in the former role and a hodgepodge of Stephan Lichtsteiner, Ainsley Maitland-Niles and Nacho Monreal on the opposite flank. It is a major issue. But it is also one that everyone, myself included, has perhaps underrated and overlooked.

Entering the summer window, such were the needs of the squad in other areas, investment in the full-back positions was somewhat ignored. Yes, Lichtsteiner is another right back, but he is at the club purely in a reserve, experienced role, not as a genuine starter barring a drastic loss of form or injury. Arsenal, like many others, chose to focus on other positions.

I am not saying that that was the wrong decision. The deficiencies at centre-half, goalkeeper and midfield demanded investment. But in these two games, the importance of two good full backs was illustrated perfectly, an importance may well have been underrated.