Exploring the right-sided defensive options
Breaking down the stats on Konsa, Koundé, and Quansah as Arsenal explore right sided defender options.
When William Saliba went down injured in the World Cup, I argued against Arsenal panic-buying cover just to have a body. You can’t replace someone as good as Saliba, and Arsenal have internal options.
Unless this turns out much worse than expected, I don’t anticipate that Arsenal panic-buying a defender. In soccer it is tough to go out and look at a short term fix, if you make a transfer the team is making a multi-year commitment and that is a mismatch to provide coverage to an injury that would be months long.
One of the foundations of this was that Arsenal would have those internal options available. It would be tight but Arsenal would have Cristhian Mosquera, Jurriën Timber, and Ben White who could all share the time on the right side of defense. Marli Salmon has been a standout performer in the friendlies but he is just shy of his 17th birthday and has not yet made his League debut. Throwing him into pressure cooker League matches where dropped points feel like an existential crisis would be a major risk.
Normally I’d say roll with that but the player that played the majority of Arsenal’s right back minutes is yet to come back from his own injury that kept him out for most of the second half and the World Cup. Arteta has ruled Timber out for the start of the season and gave a pretty vague response to reporters asking for updates.
‘No, I cannot be very precise with that,' he said when asked for a [return to play] time frame. 'Jurrien is progressing really well. He's on the pitch, he's doing quite a lot right now, but it's still weeks away. I cannot tell you how much.'
That leaves Arsenal with just two senior right footed defenders for at least the short term (including one who is coming off of his own MCL injury). Even when Timber returns, his groin injury will probably need to continue to be managed and it would be unrealistic to expect him to be able to return to playing 180 minutes a week.
This leaves Arsenal in an unenviable spot, they face a number of trade-offs here that aren’t all that great.
Gamble on the internal depth being able to make it through, risking that you leave yourself short and have to cobble together something from youth and players playing out of position.
Pay more than you are comfortable on a player that isn’t going to be better than the incumbents when they return. Filling what should be a short term issue with a long term commitment.
If I had more trust that White could withstand playing 180 minutes a week without breaking down. If Timber had been able to feature in the preseason. If Salmon was 3-4 years older and had played more senior minutes. There are so many ifs here that I wish were true and would make me more comfortable choosing that internal option, yet here we are.
Lets break down the latest links.
Ezri Konsa
I have held off writing about Konsa because he’s just not that exciting of a player. That is just the unfortunate reality of the situation given his age and who he is going to be compared against.
