Arsenal: Might we finally see proper full-backs?

As modern football is continually proving, possessing two complementary and heavily involved full-backs is a major asset. In Kieran Tierney and Hector Bellerin, might Unai Emery finally unleash it at Arsenal?

On current form, Liverpool are the best team in world football. Jurgen Klopp has developed a brilliant system that perfectly suits the players’ specific roles. What he asks of his players is precisely what they can do; conversely, what they are not capable of, he does not ask it of them.

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Where Klopp’s system is so effective in the modern game is his use of full-backs. Andy Robertson and Trent Alexander-Arnold are the best possession-based full-backs in the world, and Klopp plays to their strengths brilliantly by providing them with the opportunity to push into advanced areas of the pitch and taking major roles in the team’s passing combinations.

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With the growing use of high-pressing strategies, full-backs have only grown in importance. They are often tasked with breaking opponents’ pressing with forward passes and progressive dribbles, they must protect against the counter-attack as their team pushes higher up the pitch when out of possession, and there is a greater onus on them to create in transition. Nowadays, full-backs in a back four play as much like a wing-back in a back five, and Liverpool’s duo is the best proponent of that.

Last season, newly hired Arsenal head coach Unai Emery struggled to impose his identity upon the squad, in large part, because of the limited options he dealt with at full-back. Injuries savaged the right-back position, while neither Nacho Monreal and Sead Kolasinac were capable of fulfilling the modern duties of a left-back on the opposite flank. As a result, Emery frequently shifted to a back-three system with wing-backs.

But this year, those same excuses are not relevant. While injuries scuppered the progress of the full-back positions at the start of the season, over the past month, Emery has had a fully fit squad, including two players perfectly suited to the Klopp-like, modernised full-back role, Kieran Tierney on the left side and Hector Bellerin on the right.

However, despite having these options available to him, Emery has been tentative to unleash them. The pair have started just three Premier League games between them. None of them overlapped. Oddly, Tierney made two successive league starts and then was dropped back to the Europa League squad just as Bellerin was introduced into the first XI.

In fact, Bellerin and Tierney have only started two games together. Arsenal won them both, a 4-0 thumping of Standard Liege in arguably their best performance of the season, and 3-2 win over Vitoria SC. So maybe, after another international break and with two more weeks removed from their respective injury problems, Saturday’s match against Southampton will see Emery finally unleash to his best and most modern full-backs.

Modern football is repeatedly proving that full-back is a vital position. Not just that, but having two, complementary options is a major advantage. Klopp has made the most of this at Liverpool. It is now time for Emery to do the same at Arsenal.