Arsenal: One easy way to gauge Lucas Torreira impact

Arsenal are brewing a special one in Lucas Torreira, such that it’s hard to quantify just how impactful he has been. But there is one way.

There is no understating just how amazing Lucas Torreira is. In like… every regard. Arsenal brought him in to be their N’Golo Kante, after having missed out on the actual Kante years ago, but what has come of Torreira, who is only 22-years-old, is so much more.

He has put a vice grip on this midfield position, allowed Granit Xhaka to be himself, and turned the pairing into the gold standard of this club. No matter what the attack or defense does, you know you can rely on the midfield because Torreira is on patrol.

It’s been such a meteoric rise, with so much more rising action yet to come, that it has actually gotten quite hard to quantify just how important he has been. You can start throwing around phrases like “player of the season,” and that does a good job with it, but there is another easy way to see just how massive Torreira has been.

Early in the year, in those first two matches (also the only two losses of the season), it was Matteo Guendouzi who was starting ahead of Torreira, the latter of whom was coming back from the World Cup.

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Guendouzi was so good that fans were starting to believe that he was the true find. That he was keeping Torreira out of the XI based on skill alone, and that whatever Torreira ended up doing, it would be a bonus, because Guendouzi was already doing everything we could have ever wanted.

We also had Ainsley Maitland-Niles on the up-and-up, and, as the midfield scrambled to find consistency after years of being malnourished, it seemed that Torreira was an outsider to that scheme.

Fast forward a few months and Torreira has made us realize that everything that Guendouzi did was just the appetizer. He’s fantastic in his own right, but Torreira has been so good that we rarely even talk about Guendouzi outside of the context of his performances midweek.

Same goes with Maitland-Niles. We’re all excited about him, same as always, but Torreira’s dynamic appearance in the midfield, partnering with a rejuvenated Xhaka, has put such a lock down on the role, and the both of them are still so young, that anyone else is just picking at the scraps.

That’s how good Torreira is. He’s so good that he makes you forget how good other players are.