Assessing the left wing options for Arsenal
The dream, the fit, the wish-cast, and the fallbacks. A realistic tour of the market at Arsenal's most important position to address this summer.
Going into the summer, the number one position to strengthen on most if not every Arsenal fan’s wish list was left wing. I think that we would have liked to have seen (and still hope for) strengthening in other areas of the pitch but if there was one position where the club could sign a player and expect an improvement over what they got last season it was this spot.
The internal options weren’t bad and it obviously didn’t put too great of a limit on Arsenal with the team winning the Premier League and just missing adding the Champions League due to a few penalty kicks.
Leandro Trossard who started the most at left wing has left the club. He has been replaced by Christos Tzolis, this is an exciting player but it would be a big bet to have him thrust into the starting role. Gabriel Martinelli started the next most for Arsenal and while he works hard, he has been stuck in the “good” player zone now for a while and had a cold finishing season in the Premier League that hurt his overall end product. Eberechi Eze was bought last summer and he might have been seen as a player that could take over off the left but it just wasn’t something that we saw, with him playing through the middle.
Arsenal’s apparent first option (it’s always tough to tell here) this summer was Morgan Rogers but the team balked at the asking price that Aston Villa put on him and that left Chelsea able to swoop in and sign him. I really liked the player but at the price (which looks like it has some swap shenanigan inflation) I was in agreement with the club that walking away was the smart option.
That leaves the position still wide open and the club still needing to get the business done. There is an interview with Arteta on Arsenal.com that is more direct than I can remember seeing from a coach on the need to address this, it isn’t directly about the left wing but it doesn’t take too much reading between the lines to see that this is something on his mind.
"We all know about the context of this transfer window. From ownership to the board, the sporting director and myself, we know that we want to take this club to a different level. That is going to require a better squad, better individuals. We have identified where we have opportunities to grow and to improve and to evolve our game and what is going to be needed to achieve that. Hopefully very soon we can start to put things in a very concrete way.”
In this post I want to explore some of the names that are floating around in my head. This won’t be a rehash of the list that Adam made here but that is a great starting point for getting an idea of where the different wide attackers rank compared to each other.
This isn’t a pure ranking of the best players but rather one that is shaded towards players that could be realistically transferred and favors younger up and coming players over ones that are more established.
My short list here will focus a bit more on players that primarily play off of the left (or are right footed) to try and get the lay of the land and the options that are out there for Arsenal as they look at how they can try and address the biggest weakness in the starting eleven.
The dream signing: Vinicius Junior
This is the type of signing that would be a pretty seismic event, not just for Arsenal but for the whole Premier League. Vinicius is one of the biggest stars in the world and has backed that up with a track record of excellent performance.
Adam has already gone pretty deep on this one so I won’t go too long on this one but if you want a deeper look at if this is a good idea, this is the place to go.
The only slight reservation I’d hold here is that while Vinicius views himself as the best player in his position, and he has been a bit off that level lately. The major thorn in his side is his teammate Kylian Mbappe, who wants to take up many of the same positions and eclipses him for the total production.
If he came to Arsenal that wouldn’t be a problem for him and while this is currently Saka’s team (and maybe still would be given that he is an academy product), I think that if he came to Arsenal he would be the biggest star instantly.
Whether this deal happens is heavily dependent on what Vinicius wants. You don’t see players leave Real Madrid in their prime by choice very often because it is the biggest and richest club in the world but it does seem that he is asking them to break their normal contract rules while also being in the shadow of Mbappe. Arsenal seem willing to break their own salary rules to accommodate him and while they don’t have the same commercial cachet as Madrid, the club is on an upward trajectory.
I think that the most likely outcome is that he plays in Madrid next season but I don’t think that I am 100% certain of that and Arsenal present a plausible landing spot.
