It’s time for Mikel Arteta to end his left-back experiment

On the whole Mikel Arteta front, Arsenal fans have had little to complain about this season.

Okay, he might’ve panicked at Old Trafford with a triple substitution that turned a 2-1 deficit into an inevitable defeat, but that’s just about it when it comes to gripes. Arteta is facilitating a brand of football synonymous with the club’s contemporary culture. The Gunners are winning in style again, but they’ve shown in 2022/23 that they’re more than capable of triumphing in the face of adversity.

Arteta’s side are evolving in front of our eyes and they’re well on course to complete the objectives they set out before the start of the season.

Statement victories have been aplenty through 11 Premier League games, but none more so than the 3-2 win over Liverpool earlier this month. The Reds have persistently brushed the Gunners aside since Jurgen Klopp took the reins in 2015, but Arsenal’s recent victory over the Merseyside outfit had a feeling that the guard was changing in the English top flight. Perhaps Arteta’s young Gunners were now the best-placed team to challenge Manchester City for the title, not the 2019/20 champions.

Anyway, key to that rare triumph over the Reds was Arteta’s utilisation of Takehiro Tomiyasu at left-back. The Japanese international’s instructions were clear: don’t give Mohamed Salah an inch. It was a tactical ploy that certainly raised a few eyebrows an hour before kick-off, but Arteta’s decision was emphatically vindicated when the Egyptian, so rarely substituted, was hauled off in the second half having barely got a whiff of Aaron Ramsdale’s goal. Tomiyasu was superb.

It’s time for Mikel Arteta to end his left-back experiment

Arteta has since retained Tomiyasu in an unfamiliar left-back function in Oleksandr Zinchenko’s frustratingly prolonged absence with Kieran Tierney typically utilised as a substitute.

Now, Tomiyasu’s two-footedness means he’s well-equipped to play on the other side and the former Bologna defender has hardly been pitiful in Arsenal’s recent Premier League games against Leeds United and Southampton.

In this role, Tomiyasu rarely overlaps – leaving Gabriel Martinelli isolated higher up (a purposeful ploy) – and he instead performs an inverted function. However, while Zinchenko and Tierney have more leeway in terms of their positioning, Tomiyasu rarely drifts from his more central position. The benefits of the inverted full-back are well-documented (overload in the build-up, protection against transitions, blah, blah, blah) and it’s not an easy one for the Japanese international to perform.

Nevertheless, Tomiyasu has been typically secure with the ball at his feet and robust defensively. What’s not to like? Well, especially against Southampton, it felt like Arsenal were missing a spark down the left-hand side. With Tomiyasu rarely venturing forward, the Gunners have lost a bit of dynamism and fluidity down this flank. What was once a three-headed beast with Zinchenko in the side has evolved into a double-edged sword with Martinelli and Granit Xhaka forced to combine between themselves.

On Sunday against Southampton amid a tired second-half showing, the introduction of Tierney down the left ignited the Gunners for a brief period. The Scot has impressed throughout Arsenal’s Europa League campaign thus far and he looks to have regained the athleticism that helped him evolve into one of Europe’s premier left-backs.

Tierney deserves a Premier League start, and that should arrive against the low block of Nottingham Forest on Sunday. The interchanges down the left that Tierney’s inclusion would facilitate will be key to disrupting the visitors’ deep-lying defence.

Being a Pep Guardiola disciple, Arteta has prioritised technical security in the build-up and greater security against the counter-attack in recent weeks, but an argument could be made that this has hampered Arsenal only ever so slightly.

While Zinchenko should be regarded as the first-choice left-back, Tierney’s form warrants a run in the side until the Ukrainian returns (but who knows when that will be?!)