Arsenal boss Arsene Wenger needs to turn to Granit Xhaka now Santi Cazorla is ageing and his fitness can’t be relied on
Gunners blogger Le Grove says Frenchman needs to make a bolder choice in central midfield
Arsene Wenger is a greedy manager. He picks his teams in the moment, he wants all the best talent on show at once.
This approach has led to a pretty impressive start to the season - Arsenal are floating in the top four after some tough games and they’re sitting pretty in the Champions League.
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But as with most seasons, this has come at a cost that was very predictable.
Santi Cazorla is 31-years-old, 32 on December 13.
He’s been at the heart of Arsenal’s midfield for a number of years now, but his body isn’t up to the rigours of top class football three times a week. That’s a fact.
Not only that, Arsenal’s campaign crashed last season when he picked up a serious knee injury that ruled him out of first-team contention for 98 days.
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Wenger knew going into this year his diminutive Spaniard couldn’t be central to his plans, but he ploughed on anyway and played him in as many games a possible, resulting in an inflammation of his Achilles on October 30.
We’re now past mid-November and the prognosis from the manager today wasn’t good, saying about Cazorla's fitness: "At the moment I’ve given up on that."
This is bad news for a midfield that’s struggling for balance.
Wenger unbelievably doesn’t have a solution for a problem that dogged him for three months last season, and this is already affecting our performances.
Francis Coquelin is a very good defensive midfielder, but he has his limitations on the ball that affect the teams passing movement and ability to break the lines.
Wenger has a solution to this - a midfield combination of Granit Xhaka, his £35million summer signing and Aaron Ramsey, superstar of Euro 2016.
For some reason, the manager doesn’t trust Xhaka at the base of our midfield, despite his superior range of passing and solid defensive performances.
He instead said he could become a box-to-box player, despite him being one of the best in a modern defensive midfield role.
But he also doesn’t trust Aaron Ramsey in the centre of midfield, possibly because of discipline issues we’ve seen in the past.
Instead he's been deployed as a left and right sided midfielder, where he hasn’t impressed.
This lack of ambition in midfield has led to drab draws against Tottenham and Manchester United teams that were there for the taking.
It’s also led to Arsenal creating fewer chances, and it’s had the knock-on effect of isolating Mesut Ozil - the German is creating half as many chances as he was at the same time last season.
Arsene Wenger needs to make some tough decisions in midfield.
His square pegs in round holes isn’t working and his reluctance to make bold attacking decisions, like dropping Coquelin for Xhaka, will continue to hamper our ability to make a difference in the big games.
PSG is a must-not-lose game, so I don’t expect anything bold in the selection as a draw will suffice.
But if Arsenal want to blow PSG out of the water and qualify with a win on Wednesday night, they’ll need to find a more interesting solution in midfield.