Arsenal: The primary Alexandre Lacazette as number 10 issue

Alexandre Lacazette was fielded in a number 10 position in Arsenal’s win over Fiorentina. The biggest issue with this ploy is clear: he is not a midfielder.

Arsenal head coah Unai Emery obviously wants to primarily play with a back four. It is his preferred system. But he also recognises that his two best players are both centre-forwards and playing with a back four and two strikers is very difficult to do in the modern game. So how does he amalgamate these two tactical problems?

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Well, it seems as though Emery is considering playing a 4-4-1-1 with one of the two centre-forwards dropping in behind the other. He used this shape against the Colorado Rapids, Eddie Nketiah playing off Tyreece John-Jules. He then replicated it in the second half of Saturday’s win over Fiorentina, this time Nketiah leading the line and Alexandre Lacazette dropping deeper.

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If Emery is to use this shape in the regular season with Lacazette and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, it will be the former who drops into the hole, his greater touch and awareness essential to playing in tighter spaces while Aubameyang can stretch the pitch with his speed and movement off the ball. It could work. There are reasons to believe in this type of system. But there is one major issue I have with it: Lacazette is not a midfielder.

Let me explain. Traditionally, the number 10 position stemmed from strikers dropping deep. Think Diego Maradona or Eric Cantona or Dennis Bergkamp. This is the typical 4-4-1-1 formation. Arsene Wenger’s Arsenal were supremely successful with it. But as the game has evolved and a greater onus on possession and controlling the midfield has developed, number 10s have been comprised of midfielders pushing forwards. David Silva, Mesut Ozil, Christian Eriksen. They play the same position, but do so from a different starting space.

This has become even more evident in the past two or three years as some managers have abandoned the number 10-orientated 4-2-3-1 for a 4-3-3 that features two box-to-box midfielders flanking a holding midfielder; Pep Guardiola describes Kevin de Bruyne and Silva, two traditional number 10s, as half-eights, as they fly up and down the pitch either side of the anchoring Fernandinho.

The point is this: Arsenal need to control the midfield to win football matches. And for that, they need three mobile, creative, commanding central midfielders. This is why, incidentally, Ozil struggles. The number 10 position is dying out.

So when it comes to fielding a centre-forward as one of the three central midfielders behind a front three that features two wide players and a central striker, I have my doubts. Bergkamp and Cantona may have changed the landscape of the Premier League entirely, but football has since changed. And Arsenal must change with it.

I am not saying that Lacazette as a deeper-lying forward would not work. There are some reasons to support the idea. But football has proven time and time again that three central midfielders, not two central midfielders and a deep-lying striker is the best way to structure the spine of the team, and Lacazette does not fit.