Arsenal: Lucas Torreira injury has minimal repercussions

Arsenal have yet to start to start Lucas Torreira, and it will have to wait longer due to his injury. Overall, though, this means very little. Thankfully.

Arsenal‘s midfield will likely be without the services of Lucas Torreira come the trip to Newcastle United. The Uruguayan midfielder was seen nursing an injury while on international duty and immediately, the speculation ran wild.

While no official club statement has been issued, the general consensus is that he will miss the Newcastle match and return for the start of the Europa League.

It’s certainly never a good time to lose a player, especially someone that just about every fan has been pining for, but overall, the repercussions of this injury should be very minimal, if there are any at all.

Torreira and Granit Xhaka does seem to be the best pairing as of right now. Matteo Guendouzi has been fantastic, but the way he plays just doesn’t quite jive with the system that Unai Emery is setting up just yet. He has very little positional awareness and, as such, it usually falls on Xhaka to stick to his position, which isn’t the best idea, seeing as how he can’t defend.

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Torreira allows Xhaka the freedom he needs, while also providing the defensive cover that we so crave out of a midfielder. Hence why everyone is so excited to see him start (even if most probably want him to start instead of Xhaka, which I’ll address later).

The reason why this should have little repercussions is because of the general state of the club, and the relative short layoff that is expected. If he misses one match, and granted it’s never easy to go into St. Jame’s Park, then let that one miss come when the club is in a position to cope in other ways.

And right now, the club can cope with an overpowered attack that is looking capable of scoring three goals or more fairly reliably. That is, assuming everyone that should start does start.

Besides, even if Guendouzi doesn’t have much positional awareness, he still has then engine and the ball-winning prowess to be an appropriate fill-in for the time being. Heck, the guy should be starting, we just need to figure out the best way to utilize him.

In the end, there isn’t going to be much of a hiccup from this brief absence. At least there shouldn’t be, if everyone else does their job.