24/25 Postmortem: Did Arsenal have enough midfield depth?

Looking at how the team came into the season set up and if they should have done anything different

As we end the season, it is time to look at some of the decisions that the team made last season and see if there are lessons to be learned for the coming summer.

I am going to go through each of the three main groups here, looking at the depth that Arsenal had and where it was sufficient and where it was lacking. Ultimately ending with building out and prioritizing what Arsenal should do this summer.

I started with the attacking depth. If you haven’t read that one, check it out and come back to this one.

Today, we start with the attacking unit.

Overall Midfield Depth

Left Midfield

Arsenal’s options: Declan Rice, Mikel Merino, and Kai Havertz

Right Midfield

Arsenal’s options: Martin Ødegaard, Ethan Nwaneri, and Kai Havertz

Defensive Midfield

Arsenal’s options: Thomas Partey, Jorginho, and Declan Rice

This feels like another section where many of the items from the attacking section can be copied and pasted over.

On paper, each position isn’t too bad on a depth chart. That is the beauty of Arsenal prioritizing versatility in recruitment over the last few years. For each one of these positions, it is possible to list out at least three names for the spot as viable options.

Once you realize that a lot of the depth comes at the expense of moving a player from another position, it starts getting a bit illusionary, and you feel the pinch once some injuries start happening.

One of the things that I notice looking here at the team and this is something that was seen even before the season, is that while this group is solid, with five senior players plus Nwaneri and Havertz to cover the three positons there is really just one player that you would look at as an option as a creative option here and that is Ødegaard.

He is also the player who was struck by a nasty injury that kept him out for 2.5 months, and his ankle injury has pretty clearly lingered on like these types can even after he has come back into the team.

Lessons Learned

1. Sometimes, a single point of failure is a necessary risk, but that doesn’t make it any less painful when it is exposed. The club certainly had this in Ødegaard this season and even went and took away some of the potential cover with the loan of Fabio Viera to Porto at the end of the transfer window. This isn’t to say that Viera would have adequately fixed the problem, but he was one of the players in the squad that you’d point to and say that has something close to the creativity from a similar position. The team made the tough choice to favor him getting minutes on loan and opening up more of a path for Nwaneri at the expense of more depth, even if it might have just been a “body” type depth.

2. Arsenal need to mitigate the downside in the case that Odegaard doesn’t fully bounce back to his previous level. The actual downfall of the player has been overstated (and very much tied to the expectation that he still had more room to get better), but there has been a step back from him being one of the best in his position to just a good player this season. It was justifiable to go in with him being one of the players that you expected 50+ high-level matches for last season but that is probably not a realistic expectation again. It could even be the internal option of Nwaneri but whatever the team does, it has be a player that they would be comfortable starting 20-30% of the time in the Premier League and Champions League.

3. We learned that it looks like Rice is going to be more than just a DM, and that he will be freed to be Arsenal’s box-to-box midfielder. He will still have times where he needs to play that deeper role, but he has really grown into the role, and the summer will be about adding more to the team that allows him to stay there.

4. Arsenal have lots of promising youth coming through and it is exciting. Myles Lewis-Skelly isn’t mentioned here but he is a player that I expect to have midfield type impact even if he’s starting from left back. Nwaneri has gotten his first major taste of senior football and has flashed the incredible ceiling he possesses. Max Dowman is a player that didn’t feature but is the next one up coming up from Hale End. It will be a good problem to have to have the squad supplemented by home-grown talent.