Arsenal: Waiting for Lucas Torreira not as stressful as expected

Lucas Torreir is heading into the last of a three-match ban, but Arsenal has been surprisingly well-equipped to deal with life without him.

Arsenal‘s marquee signing of the summer was the player we’ve been dreaming of having for a decade, Lucas Torreira. And for the most part, he’s been living up to what we’ve wanted from him, with a few noticeable zones for improvement.

Going into Everton, I’m sure we’d have liked to have him. Hell, I wanted to have him so much that I initially slotted him into the Predicted XI, but I blame that on the fact that it’s ridiculous that he’s serving a three-match ban for what Danny Rose got a yellow card for. But alas, nothing we can do now.

The fact that I haven’t even noticed Torreira’s absence, to the point that I assumed he’d picked up a knock or something (I’m a bit scatter-brained sometimes), just goes to show that the Gunners midfield has been so well-equipped that even without the marauding young Uruguayan, they could hardly be troubled.

They haven’t lost a match with Torreira out of the club, and not only have they not lost, but they’ve been doing rather swimmingly, with Matteo Guendouzi more than picking up the slack and Aaron Ramsey doing his usual Welsh magic to ensure that nothing has been lost in Torreira’s absence.

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Not only that, but when Granit Xhaka was also missing, we suffered even less, with Guendouzi, the 19-year-old phenom, and Ramsey patrolling the midfield just as well as any other combination might have.

Which was the point all along, I guess. When Guendouzi first hit the first team in those opening matches, we began to wonder if he wasn’t the marquee, and Torreira was the man playing catch up, but all in all, they’ve been fairly interchangeable throughout the season, with very little drop off depending on who’s selected.

The re-emergence of Ramsey, while partially heartbreaking, has been nothing short of a miracle as well, as he’s been killing it in a traditional central midfield role.

That’s a way to endear yourself to the fans, as a new manager – beef up what was once the weakest part of the team with the exact kind of player we’ve been dying to have.

We’ll see just how fired up Torreira will be from this unjust suspension when we face Napoli, but I think we should be pretty excited about it.