Arsenal: Kieran Tierney brings life to a numb position

Arsenal will be adding Kieran Tierney to their mix soon, but it’s hard to even begin to anticipate the impact he will have given the situation.

Nicolas Pepe obviously ranks as the signing of the summer, if not simply because of the price alone. But Arsenal also showed perseverance in their pursuit of Kieran Tierney and got over the finish line just in time, fixing the leftback situation before it could truly become a problem.

Of all the signings we made this summer, Tierney strikes me as the one that Arsene Wenger absolutely wouldn’t have made, and that’s what makes his situation so unique, and so hard to quantify or anticipate.

We already have Nacho Monreal, a career leftback, and we already have Sead Kolasinac, a left-sided midfielder who also happens to play fullback, but mostly wingback.

Wenger would have let those two duke it out until Monreal retired a Gunner, perhaps at the age of 42. He wouldn’t have forked out on Kieran Tierney.

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And yet, despite the bodies already occupying the position, Tierney figures to have a clear and unabated path into the starting XI because he’s one of the first preemptive signings we’ve had in quite some time. He is here because Monreal is almost done in North London and Kolasinac is unreliable.

Even still, leftback has been kind of a numb position for the club. There isn’t a lot coming out of the role, but there isn’t a lot to look forward to either. Tierney brings life to an essentially dead position, but in a different way then Nicolas Pepe, who walked into a void and can fill it however he wants because there’s no one else there to stop him, barring Reiss Nelson.

Tierney is walking into a position that has a presence, but a presence in desperate need of an upgrade, and he is that upgrade. But he also has fantastic guidance there in Monreal, and an truly useful alternative in Kolasinac.

Tierney is supposed to be returning to training soon, but even from there, with the lack of acclimatizing, he’s going to need some time to get settled, so the leftback situation isn’t going to be solved by him any time soon, but that’s okay. We have nothing but time.

In the mean time, these other two options (whenever Kolasinac returns) will have their chance to stake their own claim to a position that they essentially lost.