Arsenal: Who needs wingers when you have wingbacks like that?

Arsenal are known to be on the hunt for wingers, but who needs them? Beef up the defense and let the wingbacks take the reigns.

Depending on which headline you catch on which day, Arsenal‘s top target is either going to be reported as a winger or a centerback. These two positions are so obviously the positions of most dire need that no one can possibly misconstrue it.

But that’s where the debate gets rich. Because if you go all in on a defender like Matthijs De Ligt, it is going to take up most of the limited transfer budget, but be totally worth it.

Meanwhile, if you want to truly buffer the wings you should probably aim to get one really good one and one decent one, which would also take up most of the transfer budget. There’s no hiding from that.

So what do you do, assuming you can only go all in on one or the other? That’s easy. You go all in on fixing this defense for the long run. Because there is no substitute for that. There is, however, a substitute for not having wingers. And we are seeing them pretty consistently – wingbacks.

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Not every club has the luxury of calling on wingbacks, but the Gunners don’t just have one, they have two, and they play opposite each other, with similar strengths and enough athleticism and youth to give people like me faith that they can be the solution for the long haul.

We saw it again against Rennes, same as we saw it against Manchester United. Not only do the wingbacks produce enough in their own right, but they free up our No. 10 to have the freedom and the space to truly be himself. And when you have the best No. 10 in the world, that means that the attack can be fed from touchline to touchline, with relative consistency.

Learn how to make the back three work and the last concern falls into place. Maybe you bolster the holding midfield a bit, to give Granit Xhaka a little support to roam, but the pieces are in place for that as well.

That isn’t to say we shouldn’t buy a winger or two. I love options. But if you have to choose one or the other, invest in the defense. We have the width if we utilize our strengths correctly, and it’s time to accept that our wingbacks are a massive strength that can be played to.