Arsenal: That wasn’t all Matteo Guendouzi, was it?

Arsenal lacked something against Everton, something crucial. But Matteo Guendouzi was the only one missing. Was it all him, or is that thinking too simply?

Arsenal‘s win over Everton was almost a howling loss. And by howling, I mean a “dear Lord why is this happening to us again” kind of loss. Time and again, particularly early on, the Gunners left themselves gashed open, flat-footed, and looking pathetic.

And that’s me being nice (while also not cursing, as I’m not allowed to).

Both announcers kept returning to one word that they felt was missing against the Toffees: “Energy.” Over and over, it was “this club looks to be lacking energy.” And it did look like they were. There was a lacking midfield presence and an overall slowness to them.

The only thing that changed between this week and last was the swap of Lucas Torreira and Matteo Guendouzi.

It may not be any coincidence, then, that the No. 1 word that most would use to associate with Guendouzi is the same word that the commentators were saying the Gunners were lacking: Energy.

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As such, would it be too simple of us to think that the missing energy was all down to Guendouzi not being in the starting XI for the first time?

It would certainly make sense to think that way. After all, Guendouzi is a ball of energy. he covers to much ground that it’s scary and it was most certainly missing against Everton. But it does the club a bit of a disservice to pin it all on the missing presence of one particular young man. Sure, it didn’t help, but there was a bigger problem here.

Torreira is energy too. And he showed that energy quite well. But that early yellow card clearly hampered his ability to settle in. So much so that the energy that he was providing was significantly dulled from the 14th minute on.

I was actually quite surprised that Torreira wasn’t taken off for Guendouzi in an effort to solidify the midfield a bit and give the club that all-important e-word. It would have been a very Emery thing to do.

That said, it didn’t come back to bite us or anything, so all is well.

Torreira just needs to find his footing a bit more and then we will see him settling in more and providing the same energy that Guendouzi has. In the meantime, I still love seeing the Uruguayan wreck people without a care in the world.