Arsenal: The brilliance and boorishness of Sead Kolasinac

Sead Kolasinac returned to the Arsenal starting line-up in Thursday night’s 3-0 Europa League win over FK Qarabag. He once again showed the two sides of his game, his brilliance and his boorishness.

It was nice to see the brutish force of Sead Kolasinac back on the pitch. The Arsenal left back truly is a rare breed, a barreling, bounding, bullying bruiser with all of the physical assets that would rarely take to the pitch in the Gunners red under Arsene Wenger, even if it was Wenger that brought him to the Emirates a year ago.

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And upon his return to the line-up in Thursday night’s 3-0 win over FK Qarabag, Kolasinac showcased his athletic skill set completely. His surging runs to the by-line, his bundling challenges, his aerial dominance. They were all wonderfully present.

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In the first half, Unai Emery surprisingly used a 3-4-3 system, rather than the 4-3-3 that he has almost exclusively employed since the summer. That saw Kolasinac inserted at left wing-back, rather than in a traditional left-back role. This is much his better position. The Bosnian is afforded the greater attacking freedom with the cover that a third centre-half provides and he has the license to bombard his way to the byline and provide service from out wide.

No player on the pitch created more chances than Kolasinac, who provided three opportunities for his teammates, all of which came in the first 37 minutes. In fact, he created more chances in the first half than any other Arsenal player did in the whole 90 minutes, such was his attacking threat while playing at left wing-back. That is his brilliance. And he is brilliant at it.

But it would be remiss of me to merely focus on the positive influence that he has on the team’s structure and performance. While he may provide a striding, creative, precise outlet down the left flank in an offensive sense, at the other end, he is a liability, both due to his physical qualities that are so dangerous in the final third and his lack of understanding and positional poise.

Kolasinac’s astounding momentum that he garners when striding forward is extremely difficult to contain. It shows on the pitch. But it also means that he struggles to turn in short and sharp spaces, which completely undermines his defensive efficacy. Quicker, more agile attackers can spin past Kolasinac with absolute ease. It is a problem.

It is only accentuated when allied with his boorishness and complacency. He does not have a natural sense of danger, like almost every Arsenal defender of the past decade, he reads the game slowly, not seeing attacking moves develop and anticipating where the threat may come from, and he gets caught out by opposing runs off the ball time and time again.

Both sides of Kolasinac were illustrated against Qarabag. His attacking threat, his surprising finesse in the final third, his athletic, surging style. But also his defensive vulnerabilities, his lack of balance and clunky movement, his numbness to danger. It is the brilliance and boorishness of Sead Kolasinac. It’s just who he is.