Arsenal: Santi Cazorla-esque midfielder still needed

There were few midfielders who could evade pressure like Santi Cazorla. And even now, almost three years after he last made an appearance, Arsenal still need to find a replacement with the same pressure-relieving skill set.

Santi Cazorla is one of my favourite Arsenal players of the past decade. Always smiling, relentlessly positive, the sneaky Spaniard played with the same freedom and verve on the pitch that his personality carried off it.

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The slyness of his smile, the glint in his eye. Cazorla very much embodied the joy that football should instill in people. In the increasingly analytical, hard-nosed, critical world, throwbacks like Cazorla, who played as much for the happiness that it gave him as winning, are increasingly rare. And he certainly made me smile on more than one occasion.

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But there was more to the fleet-footed midfielder than just inspiration. He wasn’t just a jovial figure in the dressing room. He brought a rare quality to the Arsenal midfield that made him as valuable as he was vivacious. His twinkling toes, his range of passing, his craft and guile in the final third. Cazorla was the perfect possession-orientated midfielder, and he proved as much throughout his time in north London.

As the game has evolved, with a greater focus on pressing, possession and a balance throughout the team, with industrious centre-forwards and ball-playing centre-backs, players like Cazorla who could conduct a game from the middle of the midfield have only increased in efficacy. His ability to receive the ball calmly under pressure, his dribbling skill to spin away from one, two, three defenders and into space, his lovely passing and astute vision, his slippery balance, his two-footedness. These are all skills that every orchestrating central midfielder must now possess.

And they are skills that Arsenal have not been able to replace. It has been almost three years since Cazorla last made an appearance for the Gunners. 19th October 2016, to be precise. Although for some of that period there was still hope that he would be able to return to the line-up, thus negating a need to find a replacement, that is still a rather long period for a club to lack the wherewithal to succeed one of the most important positions on the pitch.

Granit Xhaka’s left-footedness and lack of agility with the ball make him painfully susceptible to high-pressing opponents, so much so that he will be targetted, with traps laid to pounce on his suspect touch; Lucas Torreira is sharper than his midfield mate, but his passing is far more limited, lacking both the technical range and the vision to progress play into advanced areas; Matteo Guendouzi is perhaps the best served to succeed Cazorla, but his youth and inexperience get the better of him at times.

All in all, the central midfielders that Unai Emery currently has at his disposal lack the rounded skill set of Cazorla-type conductor. This has been a major issue for this team ever since Cazorla suffered his gruesome ankle injury. It might be time for Emery and Raul Sanllehi to put an end to it this summer.

A Cazorla-esque midfielder is still high on my wishlist for Arsenal football club. Whether they agree and will oblige me the pleasure, I doubt it. But, in my opinion, it is a position of great need, one that still needs investment three years later. If only Santi was five years younger.