Arsenal: I like Lucas Torreira, but…

Lucas Torreira is a good player. He has proven himself valuable throughout his first season at Arsenal. But is there anything more to the scrappy Uruguayan?

What exactly is Lucas Torreira? Is he a regular in the Arsenal starting XI? Is he a utility player? Is he a player capable of playing as a regular for a top six team? Is he the long-term answer or just a stop-gap?

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I know he’s considered a defensive midfielder, and I like a lot about him.

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He is dogged in hounding an opposing forward, like a dog on a bone he just never gives up. He works hard but is also smart. He is one of the best I’ve seen at anticipating an opponent’s pass and breaking up the play. If he misses breaking up that pass, though, he does get caught out. He just doesn’t have the strength or the stature to shoulder players off the ball or make up ground on long-legged strikers, whereas a player like Ainsley Maitland-Niles has proven fantastic at recovery runs.

Torreira came on like gangbusters for the first couple of months of the season after Unai Emery finally eased him into the line-up. But then he seemed to tail off and almost disappear. Then the dreaded red card that keeps him out for three games. And so now, I’m left trying to decide where he really fits into this Arsenal line-up going forward into next season. And with the ever-present rumour of Éver Banega signing, and Banega being a player who can play as a deep-lying playmaker or an attacking midfielder, just where Torreira fits in is debatable.

I watched him play during the World Cup last summer and I wasn’t buying into all the hype. I did think he would be a good addition, maybe not a regular, but a good option to have coming off the bench. Some said he was brought in to address the defending deficiency of Granit Xhaka and that a combination of Torreira and Xhaka would form a formidable partnership in midfield.

To some extent, that has proven correct, but wouldn’t it be more beneficial to sign two midfielders with equal superior qualities that challenge each other, that are not necessarily there to ‘prop’ each other up? I mean, this is Arsenal, a club that has self-professed goals of challenging for the Premier League.

Maybe I’m just longing for that big strong competitive box-to-box midfielder that every team is looking for, but one that seemed to be ever-present in an Arsenal team of the past. Maybe I’m just looking for that ‘Patrick Viera’ type of player. And who wouldn’t be! But there is something missing from Torreira’s game that I just cannot pinpoint.

I like Lucas Torreira. I really do. I just don’t know if he is the answer, the type of player that will be in the starting XI when Arsenal once again prove to be a serious contender for the Premier League title.