Arsenal: I give up trying to make sense of Denis Suarez

Denis Suarez is here, he’s at Arsenal, but no matter how much we talk about him, nothing is making sense about what the plan here is.

I thought we were onto something. Unai Emery said before the Newcastle match that Denis Suarez was ready for the Arsenal starting XI. Now granted, I didn’t think that meant he would start, but I did think it meant that he was going to be given a higher priority to prove himself before the season is up.

I was wrong. Not only was I wrong, but I was way wrong, because not only did Suarez not feature in the match for a single minute, he was passed over by Unai Emery for Mohamed Elneny and Henrikh Mkhitaryan, both of whom could have been Suarez instead.

When Mohamed Elneny stepped up to come in for Aaron Ramsey, I accepted that, well, we would probably prefer a defensive midfielder in there to secure the match, but with Matteo Guendouzi already in there, it wouldn’t have been a horrible misstep to put Suarez in instead.

That said, I get that one. I do. I won’t argue with it. We needed to protect that lead and Elneny was a better defender than Suarez.

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Then the second goal goes in, we are all set for the three points, and Emery is preparing to sub off a highly-effective Mesut Ozil. This was no doubt going to be Suarez’s chance to get into the match, even for ten minutes. Suarez played an effective 90 minutes in Dubai and Emery had vouched for him, so let’s get it on!

Nope.

Henrikh Mkhitaryan came on instead. And again, I’m not complaining. I love Mkhitaryan and have been dying for him to get involved again, ever since he had those four magical matches in a row. He deserves to be in there.

But at that point in the match, and at that point in the season, I feel like it’s more imperative to figure Suarez out more. For instance, I have to believe that Emery already has a good sense of if he is keeping Mkhitaryan or not, but there’s no way he could have any idea what he’s going to do with Suarez, because how could he? The lad doesn’t play.

So here we have another match passing us by, a match that was always in our control, where we don’t see Suarez. Maybe, just maybe, that’s why Emery didn’t want to put Suarez in, because he knows he would have done fine, and wants to confine him to matches where he may struggle. I don’t know, I’m making things up now. I have no idea what the plan is with Suarez anymore.