Arsenal: Henrikh Mkhitaryan not missed, but not the problem

Arsenal had to sacrifice someone in the attack, and they chose Henrikh Mkhitaryan. He wasn’t missed, but that doesn’t mean he’s been the problem.

Arsenal had their best attack against Cardiff City and sure, they were helped in the slightest by the hosts lacking quality, but over all, Cardiff played them really well and brought their best out onto the pitch and took the fight to their guests.

That may be because Unai Emery changed things up in the attack. But not in the way we might have expected things to change. Emery didn’t drop Mesut Ozil and he didn’t even uphold his previous statements about not starting Alexandre Lacazette and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang together.

Instead, he dropped Henrikh Mkitaryan, our leading goal contributor.

You can’t argue with the results. The attack was potent against Cardiff, it was the defense that was the problem. And it was because of the changes. Lacazette put in a man of the match performance and Aubameyang threw in his contributions.

Aaron Ramsey was a fantastic, reliable font of creativity and innovation, which was clear from the start.

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All in all, Mkhitaryan was not missed in the slightest. The attack was cohesive and everyone was able to utilize their strengths and the Armenian wouldn’t have made it any better. But that doesn’t mean that Mkhitaryan has been the problem with the attack.

The problem with the attack has been that Lacazette hasn’t been starting. The French striker is such a necessary part of this attack and it showed by how much he was able to make a difference against Cardiff City.

Here’s the deal, though. You substitute Mesut Ozil with Mkhitaryan and you come out with the same result. All this game needed was someone to stay out of the way of the striking combo and let Ramsey do his thing. Whatever happened outside of that was inconsequential. Ozil didn’t do anything fantastic that couldn’t have been replaced by Mkhitaryan. He helped build a couple of chances, but Mkhitaryan would have done the exact same.

I only point this out because it’s interesting that our two creative attackers have become a bit of an afterthought in the grand scheme of this attack’s early successes. Which is a good thing, really, that this attack is able to find the assistance they need in different positions on the pitch.

Now we just have to stick to this plan and not deviate from what is working. Can we focus on the defense now?