Arsenal Vs Liverpool: The Joe Willock bounceback?

Joe Willock was hauled off at half-time in his last two starts and wasn’t even named in the squad at the weekend. Can the Arsenal youngster bounce back against Liverpool on Wednesday night?

It was quite the start to the season for Joe Willock. After a bright preseason in which he displayed a growing aptitude for central midfield play, the 20-year-old, entrusted by his manager in the biggest matches, started the first three games of Arsenal’s Premier League campaign, including a daunting trip to Anfield.

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The Gunners now travel to Anfield for their fourth-round Carabao Cup contest against league-leading Liverpool. And for the squad as a whole, as well as Willock himself, there is a very different feel. The same burgeoning brightness and confidence of the early weeks have subsided; a more menacing, nervous atmosphere now presides in north London.

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For Willock, this diminishing sense of hope for a prosperous season and future has been more pertinent. The central midfielder has struggled of late. He was hauled off at half-time against Sheffield United after making just nine passes in 45 minutes, despite playing the linking attacking midfield role; three days later, after a formless first-half performance against Vitoria SC, he was again sacrificed at half-time, Emery striving for some tactical balance in central midfield.

And then, at the weekend, Willock was omitted from the matchday squad altogether, not even named to the bench for Crystal Palace’s trip to the Emirates. The lack of attacking options on the bench was evident. A usually aggressive Emery made only two substitutions. One of them was switching left-backs, an ostensibly pre-planned substitution given Kieran Tierney’s lack of match fitness.

It has been a sour fortnight for Willock, and suddenly, he looks sapped of confidence and clarity, confused in how to approach the varying positions he is being asked to play. And his early substitutions and absence from squads are not exactly going to encourage a quick resurgence. He could do with a bounceback game.

Perhaps, then, when Arsenal play Liverpool on Wednesday with nothing to lose, in a competition that they do not really care about, against a team they are inferior to, Willock can embrace the freedom that comes with a lack of expectation and pressure and get back to what he does best, playing with expression, creativity and, crucially, joy.

Willock is a maverick footballer. His surges forward are wonderfully haphazard. They break down the normal rhythms of play. They brilliantly represent his overall style, a slightly chaotic, unbridled, but ultimately extremely effective one. If he is curtailed, either by tactical restraint or a lack of confidence and conviction in his decision-making, his greatest asset, his unpredictability, will only diminish.

Willock needs to be encouraged, let free, allowed to flourish. Recently, he has been curtailed, cut off, and ultimately criticised. He needs a bounceback. Hopefully he will find precisely that against Liverpool on Wednesday.