Arsenal: Sead Kolasinac has Maitland-Niles to thank as well

Arsenal’s dueling wingbacks have made the team selection dilemma a lot more level, and Sead Kolasinac has Ainsley Maitland-Niles to thank for that.

My latest obsession has been Arsenal‘s wingback situation, in case you haven’t noticed. There’s a perfectly reasonable explanation for this. For starters, we haven’t had consistent attacking from width all season, and the wingbacks provide that. But it also plays to the strength of two players that need their strengths played to.

I’ve spent a lot of time talking about how Ainsley Maitland-Niles should be grateful to Sead Kolasinac for the Bosnian establishing the wingback as a viable position that Unai Emery has to consider in every single match, even though the back three has been flimsy whenever called upon.

But it goes the other way too. Sead Kolasinac’s biggest problem was that he had no one that could provide what he provided on the opposite side of the pitch. For as fantastic as he was, it was always a bit lopsided to employ the back three just to bring out the best in Kolasinac.

Now that Maitland-Niles is establishing that he can bring the exact same things that Kolasinac brings, just on the other side of the pitch, Unai Emery has even more to consider when selecting a team, because unlike any other formational choice, the back three with wingbacks provides a depth to attacking that he doesn’t have.

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With the back four and no proper wingers, a 4-2-3-1 or 4-3-3 is always going to be limited out wide because Alex Iwobi, Henrikh Mkhitaryan, or whoever else you want to put out wide, aren’t wingers, and they don’t play the position like wingers.

And if you put Kolasinac and Maitland-Niles as fullbacks, the flimsiness offsets the attacking power that they boast.

As wingbacks, they allow greater attacking balance. Correction: the greatest attacking balance. Because, as we’ve seen, with Mesut Ozil filling those acres of open space in the middle, created explicitly by having two wing backs, this attack is a powerful thing.

Even when Hector Bellerin started opposite Kolasinac, it didn’t work the same as Maitland-Niles. These guys are attackers first and foremost, and together, they can make a case for the back three being the preferred formation.

It’s quite the symbiotic relationship. So long as they are both healthy, I don’t think there is another attacking set up that boasts the capabilities of this one right here.