Arsenal: Sead Kolasinac is a viable winger, get over it

Arsenal went a bit off script, starting Sead Kolasinac on the wings against Manchester City, but for all the things that didn’t work, that wasn’t one of them.

I get it. Arsenal lost, and they looked flat in the process, so therefore everything must have went wrong. Every single thing. But that’s dumb. There were plenty of positive takeaways from the Manchester City loss, despite the fact that it was a loss.

Chance creation was not one of those positive takeaways, and thus it is incredibly easy to hurl the blame at the wide midfielders – Sead Kolasinac and Alex Iwobi.

I have no pity for Iwobi. He gave away the first goal and was a serious liability around the City box. But the man opposite him, the bruising Bosnian, while kinda, sorta out of position, was not part of the problem. No, he isn’t the ideal winger, but he did a damn fine job convincing me that he could be part of a temporary solution.

You have to keep in him, this was Kolasinac’s first time as a straight winger. He has only played wingback and leftback. Thus, we can’t go too hard on him.

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But we really don’t have to go hard on him at all, because he was a solid contributor to an otherwise dead attack. There were several times when he led the attack into the City danger area, and with how rarely we were in that danger area, you can be sure that a lot of the time, it was Kolasinac getting us there.

A couple times in particular stand out in my mind, the first being when he sent a low cross to the near post, but all three of Arsenal’s attackers were stationary in the box, and the cross went wasted.

Another time, he played his usual cut-back and created what might have been a chance, but it was defended well.

He even rocketed a shot at goal off of a rebound, all because he was in the right place at the right time.

There wasn’t much to speak of in the chances department, but Kolasinac did his part. If you put enough around him, either centrally or opposite his position, you will see better results than what we saw against City.

Kolasinac has the speed, he has the creative instincts, he has the rocket shot. Ideally, we want him to be deeper in the formation, and when we finally have wingers, that can be the case, but for now, why not Kolasinac?