It has now been three straight fun matches for the gunners as Arsenal easily handled Leeds United 4-1. This has been a great bounce-back especially after two very disappointing away defeats where Arsenal could not keep their leads. Arsenal’s attack seems to be picking up steam as well scoring 9 in the last three to put them at a positive point differential for the first time this season and in fourth place with no matches to make up like their competitor’s Spurs and Manchester United for the Champions League positions. A big part of this attacking revival has been the reemergence of Gabriel Martinelli, he now has 6 G/A in the last 6 matches and has been on fire lately since coming into the starting XI for an injured Emile Smith Rowe. Martin Odegaard has been on a hot streak as well for the gunners scoring three goals in three games against United, Everton, and Southampton, and gets his first assist of the season for Smith Rowe’s substitute goal to finish the match at Leeds. Saka has also put on some strong performances, with three straight games with a goal or an assist. Finally, Smith Rowe has now scored two goals as a sub in two matches.
This form is obviously great for Arsenal, but it does ask a question. How does Arsenal fit these four players in the starting XI? This is a great problem to have for Mikel Arteta and for the last three matches he has used the same starting XI with Smith Rowe coming back from his injury, The Smith is very much back though but due to the other three player’s form, he doesn’t exactly walk back into the starting lineup. Emile has been one of Arsenal’s best performers of the season so far so how does Mikel Arteta rectify this issue of four players in three positions?
The first solution has been the one that has been employed over the past two matches, start Saka, Odegaard, and Gabi and have Smith Rowe be the ‘finisher’ off the bench. This has been a good plan against West Ham and Leeds, but all these players deserve to be starting. The other option to cater to these young talents is to do something that some Arsenal fans have been dying to see. Martinelli in the center forward position.
Martinelli started one game at striker earlier this season against Chelsea, where he was unable to get a single shot off and only registered 13 touches. Martinelli is an unbelievably talented player with the ball on his feet and only having it 13 times is obviously not enough to be effective. This was not all his fault however, this was at a time where Gabi was forced into this position due to the positive COVID tests of Aubameyang, Lacazette, and Nketiah. Arsenal were completely outclassed by Chelsea that day and I don’t think that it was a great time for Gabi to show what he can do leading the line. Back in late July, I wrote a thread discussing this very topic, what is Gabriel Martinelli’s best position? During Martinelli’s breakout season in 19/20, he scored 3 goals from 2.1 xG on the left and 7 goals from 2.4 xG up top. He massively overperformed up top for Arsenal that season and so a regression in that position would obviously come if he continued to play there, but from some of the incredible goals Gabi has scored in his very short Arsenal career (goal vs Newcastle last month and Chelsea a few years ago come to mind) he is very clearly an abundantly talented finisher in front of goal. In that thread, I talk about how the left-wing position has been more of an inside forward position with the LB in Arsenal’s system often overlapping pushing the player on the left to find themselves operating the left half-space and sometimes as a second striker. On Odegaard’s goal against Southampton, you can see Gabi working a bit as that second striker to create space by boxing out the defender to give Odegaard space to score a rare header.
In his second goal vs Leeds United, Gabi runs on the shoulder of the Leeds defender until Granit Xhaka sends him in with a perfect through ball in the space created for Gabi to run onto with a composed chip finish for his first-ever Premier League brace.
Gabi has also shown to have prowess in winning headers and scoring some as well. His work rate has been recently praised by Mikel Arteta saying: “He’s able to put some gears into his play sometimes instead of doing everything 100 miles per hour. But the energy and the quality he shows up front is top.” Arteta has previously praised Aubameyang’s work rate with his pressing off the ball from the striker position. It is something Lacazette has excelled at and something Gabi also has shown to be very effective at when deployed on the flank.
One criticism I have seen from this potential change is that he is less effective with his back to goal. I do think this is fair to say. He operates well when he has the space on the wings or in the half-spaces and doesn’t have the upper body strength that Laca has which makes him very good at holding up the ball allowing for the other attackers to run beyond him. Gabi in that position would be very much more like Auba than Laca when playing as a center forward, looking more to be given space to beat defenders one on one. Something that goes along with this criticism is that Arsenal seems to be more balanced in attack with a striker like Lacazette, he brings veteran leadership to Arsenal’s attack along with being what seems to be the right profile for what an Arsenal striker should be. That being said, Lacazette struggles with fitness for a whole 90 minutes consistently, and with matches coming more and more often in the festive period and the futures of Nketiah and Aubameyang hanging in the balance, Arteta might benefit from seeing what the talented, young Brazilian can do leading the attacking line.
Arsenal has a good problem. They have four extremely talented players that play behind the striker. If Mikel could figure out a way to have them all play together, Arsenal could have a very lethal front line, but he could be content with what’s working, no lineup changes in that last 3 matches might indicate that Emile Smith Rowe might just have to keep taking advantage of his super-sub role in the meantime. One thing is for sure, all four of them are fighting for their time. If Martin Odegaard’s reaction from the bench to Smith Rowe’s goal against West Ham is any indication, the boys want to play, and they want to do it well.
What do you think? Could Gabriel Martinelli be the striker Arsenal needs? Or should Mikel stick with what’s working? Let me know!
Thank you so much for reading! Please drop me a follow on Twitter @mitchpeotter and let me know what you think Arsenal should do in this selection conundrum.