Arsenal: Lucas Torreira is why Wenger clung to Santi Cazorla

Arsenal’s midfield looks to be solved, and it’s a beautiful thing. It’s all thanks to Lucas Torreira, who is a spitting image of why Wenger clung to Cazorla.

Arsenal have had midfield problems for something like a decade. Arsene Wenger was never able to replicate what Patrick Vieira and Gilberto Silva brought to the club because he was intent on having players that weren’t as one-dimensional as a simple defensive midfielder.

He wanted dynamism from every player. He wanted guys that could do it all. And that is one reason why Santi Cazorla was able to flourish so much in a deep role for the club – because he literally could do it all.

Nowadays, a new partnership is developing under Unai Emery, and it’s a partnership that showcases exactly what Wenger was looking for. The partnership of Lucas Torreira and Granit Xhaka looks damn-near perfect for their intelligence, positional awareness, and versatility.

They really make each other pop. Xhaka has been waiting two years to find someone like Torreira, and Torreira is only going to get better because of the charge that Xhaka is taking to control games and monitor the spotlight.

Meanwhile, we are seeing exactly why Wenger held onto Cazorla for so long in the hopes that he would return. No, Torreira and Cazorla aren’t the same player. They have similarities, but they also have key differences.

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It’s what was going to be expected of them that makes them the same.

As Wenger never wanted a straight defensive midfielder, he saw in Cazorla the next best thing. Here was a guy who could win the ball back and slip away from the opposition, driving forward from deep positions and starting an attack – the part of the game that Wenger truly lived for.

Torreira does the same thing, with a bigger focus on the defensive side, which is why he is settling so well next to Xhaka. He doesn’t just win the ball back though, he does the Cazorla thing, driving forward, passing forward, and forcing the theater of play to change from defense to attack.

Without Cazorla, Wenger was at a loss regarding how to fix this midfield, because he had guys like Ramsey, who you couldn’t count on to stay at home, and he had guys like Coquelin, who had zero attacking acumen. Elneny was versatile, but flat-footed and, in the meantime, Xhaka was getting exposed left and right.

Wenger needed Cazorla, but he never got him back. Unai Emery has gotten him back, in the form of Lucas Torreira, the perfect next step for the club. And it’s going quite well.