Arsenal: Denis Suarez turning into a bit of a red herring

Arsenal’s creative midfield is getting better and better, but Denis Suarez remains irrelevant. Is Rennes an opportunity to start him or is it all for naught?

As I was writing the pre-match build-up to the first leg against Rennes, I twice caught myself in a familiar situation. In writing about Arsenal‘s five key players, I nearly slipped Denis Suarez in there, saying “well, he has to start sometime, doesn’t he?”

The same happened when I was outlining the predicted starting XI. With the need to preserve weary legs for the upcoming match against Manchester United, I asked myself – “well, Denis Suarez has to start sometime, doesn’t he?”

But no, he doesn’t. I went with Henrikh Mkhitaryan instead, with the belief that Suarez would come on as a sub at some point, but only if the match was in our grasp and we didn’t actually need any help, because then we would call on an actual helper and not Suarez, who is turning out to be one of the most misleading signings I can recall.

At first, I was worried about it. Then I got kind of annoyed. But now it’s just amusing. Usually when you have a deficiency at the club and you sign a player who is pre-ordained to fix that deficiency, he is given a chance to be the solution.

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Before Suarez had that chance. Mesut Ozil and Henrikh Mkhitaryan both decided that they were, in fact, the world class players that they had been in the past and suddenly, the impetus to start Suarez went further down the tubes, if in fact he didn’t already start there.

What if Suarez was only brought in to ruffle some feathers? I know that’s highly illogical, since Suarez and Unai Emery go way back, but what if that was the primary drive behind the move, and the secondary drive was, “if that doesn’t work, maybe he can actually play.”

I get that there are still a couple months of the season left, and that, after United, we have mostly tame matches, but there will never be a good time to let Suarez run around the pitch and act like he belongs here because all the good times are essentially passed.

Rennes would be the last “good” time, and I have a hard time even saying that, simply because it’s clear that Suarez is taking some time to settle in.

I will say that he looked pretty good last time out. I was happy with his effort and his drive to get involved. Maybe that’s a sign of things to come. But if not, call Suarez the greatest red herring of all time, because he is catching a lot of people off guard.