Arsenal: How Arsenal are surviving without a defensive midfielder

Arsenal’s fantastic streak is made even more fantastic when you consider that they aren’t utilizing a defensive midfielder. Here’s how they’re surviving.

If you had told us about a year ago that Arsenal would go on this conclusive, undefeated run full of excitement and whimsy and not giving up that many goals, just about every fan would assume it’s because we either maximized Lucas Torreira or found a stoic defensive midfielder.

It’s been the bane of fans for years, the lack of one, and something that we constantly pointed to as “fix that first, worry about other things later.”

Yet here we are, in the midst of our most impressive and exciting streak of the past two years (yes, even including Unai Emery’s 22-match unbeaten run) and we aren’t starting a defensive midfielder. Actually, when you look at the spine of this team, it looks, on paper, like it would turn to dust at the first sign of trouble.

Granit Xhaka, Dani Ceballos and Mesut Ozil round out the midfield with David Luiz and Shkodran Mustafi in behind. Literally, can you imagine Unai Emery deploying that? Vomit fest.

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But it’s working for Emery, and it’s working because personnel isn’t everything. Philosophy and determination are.

What we’re seeing from this midfield isn’t a defensive masterclass, it’s an understanding of a very specific game plan. Sure, both Ceballos and Xhaka (and Ozil, for that matter) are covering a ton of ground, and that helps. But they aren’t just running around aimlessly either. They are filling space, covering gaps, doing the dirty work that so often gets ignored.

I always point to Xhaka’s willingness to fill in behind Saka and allow the youngster to get forward. But Ceballos does similar work dropping all the way back to assist Mustafi and Luiz in their defense as well.

It reminds me of what so many managers preach, but so few can achieve—defending as a team.

If you see Saka and Bellerin assisting in the midfield, helping to snuff out a centralized attack, you know that Luiz and Mustafi are ready to slide wide on one side or the other to counter if the attack goes that route. It’s all about movement, anticipation, and trust.

There is such a clear structure to this defense that it doesn’t even matter who you have in that midfield from a defensive standpoint, as long as they have the wherewithal, composure and energy to cover their ground and fill the gaps they are responsible for. When you do it right, as Xhaka and Ceballos have been doing, it ends up looking remarkably easy.