Arsenal: Matteo Guendouzi due for a swap

Arsenal’s upcoming match against FC Vorskla has a lot of personnel questions, one of which involves Matte Guendouzi, who is due for a swap of sorts.

Arsenal‘s midfield is actually in a pretty exciting place. They have Granit Xhaka, just 25 years old, who is actually starting to win some approval from even the most embittered Gooners out there. We have Lucas Torreira, just 22 years old, who hasn’t even begun to show us how special he can be. And we have Matteo Guendouzi, just 19, who was the sole bright spot in the first two losses of the season.

All three have their present and future merits and it has to be a tough decision for Unai Emery to decide on his best pairing among the three. Thus far, he has exclusively started Xhaka with Guendouzi, but in recent weeks, he has been yanking Guendouzi at half to let Torreira on the pitch.

The results have been so conclusive that there is a near-unanimous call to get Torreira into the starting XI in favor of Guendouzi who, while promising and enthusiastic, needs a bit more grilling on the finer points of the game, like how to stay in your position.

With the kick-off of the mid-week competitions, Emery is going to have a lot more flexibility to move players around. Gone are the days when he had to worry about getting everyone playing time because there is about to be an excess of it. Which is beneficial in cases like Guendouzi’s because, assuming the swap is made, he doesn’t actually lose out on any crucial playing time. He just gets it in competitions other than the Premier League.

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Which, let’s be honest, may be even more important than the Premier League itself, at this point. No one expects the club to win the Premier League this year, but the Europa League? Yeah we should probably win that one.

It’s time to swap out Guendouzi for Torreira. The partnership of Xhaka and Torreira is just too delectable to only see for 45 minutes at a time. They need more opportunity to build their rapport so that, when it’s time to compete for the League title like, next year, they’ll be amply equipped to anchor the club.

Meanwhile, Guendouzi needs to have the pressure lifted a bit, because he has been in a massive struggle ever since those first two matches, mainly because he can’t seem to grasp the positional restrictions that are required of someone playing next to Granit Xhaka.

It’s not a demotion, just a changing of roles. But it needs to happen and it needs to happen now.