Arsenal: Shoutout to Henrikh Mkhitaryan for budding turnaround

Arsenal’s creative attacking midfield has fallen by the wayside a bit, but despite it, Henrikh Mkhitaryan deserves credit for his developing turnaround.

Arsenal’s “Fab Four” hasn’t really worked out the way many expected it to. Both Henrikh Mkhitaryan and Mesut Ozil have fallen from the ranks and are rarely even seen in starting XI’s anymore.

But the club keeps winning and drawing and, most importantly, not losing. They aren’t exactly suffering without their creative attacking duo’s best stuff, and that’s both a testament to how strong the club is otherwise, and how volatile Ozil and Mkhitaryan currently are. Nothing guarantees that they stay. Because neither is proving necessary.

And while Ozil has had bursts of brilliance this season, as he often does, Mkhitaryan really hasn’t. He had a lucky, bail-out goal against Wolverhampton and about 20 minutes of brilliance against Chelsea, but aside from that, he’s been awful.

Such that he got passed up by Alex Iwobi rather easily. All this despite that Mkhitaryan looked to be a much better fit for the Unai Emery system than Ozil.

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That said, Mkhitaryan is slowly (quite slowly), but surely turning things around. It all started with the first 45 against Manchester United. While he wasn’t a certified knock-out punch to the United defense, he ran the show, particularly early on. He was single-handedly leading the charge and, again, while it didn’t pay massive dividends, the change was clear.

Perhaps it was playing his old club, perhaps he just finally hit the bottom and picked himself up by the bootstraps.

Against Huddersfield, it was more of the same. He came on at half and, again, while he didn’t revolutionize the game, or do anything to directly ensure the win, we began to see the flashes of what makes Mkhitaryan so special.

It’s the combination of his intense work-rate and his accompanying creativity. It’s a dynamic one-two punch that, when he’s firing, is simply sumptuous. We might not be strictly missing it this year, but things would be a hell of a lot easier if his seemingly perfect-for-Emery skillset would come out to shine.

And that’s why I think he deserves a specific shoutout just for his persistence. He never slackened his work rate, and while he’s been frustrated at times, he’s kept at it, he doesn’t sulk or loaf.

It’s really turning around for him, and he deserves massive credit for sticking with it. Hopefully he will be back at his best soon.