Arsenal has had a difficult time of late and they are now on a three-game losing streak.
Other than the recent 2-0 FA Cup loss to Liverpool, they’ve lost two league derby games in a row against West Ham United and Fulham.
As a result, they have been eliminated from the FA Cup and are currently fourth in the league standings.
Although they are only five points behind league leaders Liverpool, their recent struggles have revealed flaws in their squad.
If Zinchenko is injured, one obvious weakness is the lack of a reliable left back to replace him. Even when the Ukrainian international is fit, he has struggled and may benefit from some talented competition. Arsenal might benefit from adding a left-back with overlapping potential and good defensive ability.
Antonee Robinson of Fulham has emerged as a potential solution, with SciSports (as shown below) saying that a move to Arsenal would fit him better if he doesn’t move to West Ham or Manchester United, who I don’t believe are as anxious to sign a left back as Arsenal are.
Robinson, one of the most prized American players, has an estimated transfer value of €32.3 million and is a player I’d advise Edu and Arteta to aim to sign. The Fulham player has been in excellent form this season and appears to be ready for a move to a bigger team.
The Arsenal left wing has looked dead this season, but Robinson and Martinelli’s pace might turn it into a weapon once again.
When Zinchenko is on the field, Arteta can use the inverted full-back role; when he’s not and Robinson is part of his squad, he can turn to the full-back overlapping style. This may help Arsenal to be less predictable.
Daniel O
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Yes he looks great, I’d be very happy if we got him.
Once Timber is fit his skillset looks perfect to play in the midfield. From the moment I saw Timber I though Rice and himself in the midfield would be a potent combination.
I recommended Robinson last week but given our Manager’s obsession with invertion I doubt if he will admit the error of his tactics by signing a fine conventional left back who is very much in the mould of KT.Robinson has the edge on KT in that he is rarely injured.
Yes, you did, fine call. As before, I am in full agreement and believe as Daniel O that he and Martinelli could be a formidable force.
You say error in tactics regarding the fullback role, but that’s very presumptuous – the inverted fullback tactics did give us relative success last season. It could be that teams have caught on to the extent that it’s now a detriment, possibly, but I’d say we’ve changed in other areas that have had a far bigger effect – e.g. we’re shifting the ball wide far more often and basically relying on saka and martinelli to make the breakthrough individually (which I understand may due to be tactical errors, but considering we played with an inverted fullback last season, it can’t be directly related). We’re also moving the ball slower and White is far less prominent. Probably the biggest underlying issue imo is that we’re missing our starting central midfielders from last season (both of whom were significantly better passers than their replacements, as much as I like rice) – that’s bound to change how we play. To me, these seem far more significant factors to our drop in form than us continuing to play the same left back we had playing the same, largely successful, role as last season.
I do think there’s a lot of confirmation bias going on – people love Tierney and I feel have been waiting to say how wrong the manager was to push him out. Couldn’t say it loudly when the team was doing well, but every time zinchenko makes a mistake or the team as a whole plays badly, it must be because of the inverted left back?
Tierney is a standard left back player in Arteta’s Aesenal team. And who plays the traditional kept back overlapping game.
But Arteta looks to preferred the inverted left back game over the overlapping left back game.
Hence was his loaning to RSO and staying with Zinchenko the inverted left back gamer.
But I think the problem with Zinchenko is he’s not all round top qualify left back kind of a player. As he is reportedly not top notch in left back defending job. But a very good midfielder. And besides, he looks to be suspect to injury picking which can see him miss couple of matches for Arsenal.
But let us exercise patience to see what will at the end become the result of Arteta converting Kiwior ti a ledtback back will pan out. It may work.
A good left back but doubt he’s the gaffer type of player
A midfielder? Agreed
Tierney is a standard left back player in Arteta’s Aesenal team. And who plays the traditional left back overlapping game.
But Arteta looks to preferred the inverted left back game over the overlapping left back game.
Hence was his loaning to RSO and staying with Zinchenko the inverted left back gamer.
But I think the problem with Zinchenko is he’s not all round top qualify left back kind of a player. As he is reportedly not top notch in left back defending job. But a very good midfielder. And besides, he looks to be suspect to injury picking which can see him miss couple of matches for Arsenal.
But let us exercise patience to see what will at the end becomes the result of Arteta converting Kiwior to a ledtback back will pan out to. It may work.
I do think arteta was planning to start timber at lb this season, and it appeared to me Tomi was starting to take over that spot before his injury earlier in the season. I think this shows that arteta wants a better defender for the lb position than zinchenko (on that basis, he could have been third choice by now!), so long as they have enough ability with the ball (I guess he doesn’t think kiwior has quite enough of that). Imo zinchenko simply managed to be fit more often than Tomi and obviously the unfortunate timber so far this season, otherwise something would have changed.
ZENCHIKO IS AVERAGE PLAYER IN LEFT BACK HE IS BETTER IN MIDFIELD SO ARSENAL SHOULD LOOK FOR A GOOD LEFT BACK