In 2023-24, Arsenal Women toiled against low blocks. They lost games they shouldn’t have lost away at Spurs and West Ham and at home to Liverpool. In the bigger games they performed well, doing the double over Manchester City, taking four points off Manchester United and thumping Chelsea 4-1 at home. This was largely because Jonas Eidevall’s team was very well structured but the scales were tipped too far in favour of structure and ensuring everyone was in position to prevent counter attacks. Hopefully you understand the context of this introduction in a column about the men’s team because it should sound familiar. In the summer of 2024, Arsenal signed Mariona Caldentey from Barcelona, one of the foremost creators in women’s football. They lacked creativity and fluidity so they bought a player that embodied those qualities better than any other player on the market. It actually quite a long time to settle Mariona into a specific position on the pitch. She flitted between the left wing, the right wing and being a pure number 10 before she dropped into a deeper midfield role. Where to start her was a minor headache for Eidevall and then Renee Slegers- but it was the epitome of a luxury issue. Mariona won the WSL and PFA Players’ Player of the Year and was voted as Arsenal’s Player of the Season by the Arsenal Women Supporters Club and the readers of Arsenal.com and Mariona won the Champions League for the third consecutive season. Creative players sit at the crux of one of football’s great paradoxes, creative players are difficult to accommodate in the purely tactical sense. This is precisely because, to break other team’s structures, you have to be prepared to break your own. Robert Pires did not score 84 goals for Arsenal because he was glued to the left touchline. Creators need to break things to create things. Mariona’s journey mirrors the journey of her compatriot and predecessor on the men’s team, Santi Cazorla. It actually took a few seasons for Santi to find a regular tactical home. He never quite ‘popped’ as a 10, then he played as an inverting left winger for a few seasons before Arsene Wenger dropped him into a slightly deeper role. Mesut Ozil played plenty of games on the left and right wings. I often lie awake at night wondering which position Dennis Bergkamp would play in this day and age with the 4411 formations of his era largely consigned to the past (for now). All of which brings me on to Eberechi Eze. Now, my personal opinion is that he will play on (or start from) the left wing. That is where the gap is in the Arsenal team and I think that quite often informs where a player ends up. Playing Bukayo Saka as an inverting right winger makes a lot of sense now but when Arteta first put his prodigious young talent there during lockdown in 2020, eyebrows were raised. I am certain Arteta and the staff assessed his qualities and felt it to be a good fit. But I am also pretty certain that the decision was expedited by the fact that Arsenal’s contemporary right-wing options, Nico Pepe and Willian, were not performing. Arsenal had a big talent and a big hole in their attack. I think there are worlds where Saka grew into a more interior position or else became a left-winger too. Players and teams tend to take a step towards one another. While Eze was not an outright left winger at Crystal Palace, I think some of that was circumstance. Oliver Glasner plays a wing-back system with dual 10s and you’re hardly going to play Eze at wing-back in that scenario. I also think flexibility has defined Mikel Arteta’s recruitment. Jurrien Timber and Ben White weren’t predominantly right-backs when they joined but that is where their qualities best fit, so that’s where they ended up. Calafiori wasn’t predominantly a left-back for Bologna or Italy but that is where the gap was in the Arsenal team so that’s where he has been used. Declan Rice and Kai Havertz were both ‘hybrid players’ who have probably not settled into the positions we expected them to. Sometimes you have to throw your cards on the table and see where they fall and this is what Arteta usually does in his recruitment and application of players. When Leandro Trossard plays as a left winger, he is not really a touchline hugger. In fact, Trossard might be the archetypal Arteta player, he plays in areas as opposed to positions. All of which is why I am not hugely worried about how Arsenal accommodate Eberechi Eze. I suspect he will play from the left because I just can’t see him taking Rice or Odegaard’s positions (though you never know!) I suspect he will largely operate from the left and Arsenal will make adjustments to get the best from him there. It might even take a little while and a little tinkering but the beauty of accommodating elite creators is that they still tend to produce even when you’re working out the finer details. When Arsenal fans pause to consider Cazorla’s legacy, nobody pontificates on which positions Santi flitted between, when Arsenal Women were working out where to sit Mariona on their formation graphic, she was still pulling opposition defences apart. You tolerate a bit of disruption and some sawdust in your kitchen if you know the end result is going to be a lovely little tiling job and a granite work surface the envy of the whole street. I would wager two things. It will take Arteta and Arsenal a little time to work out how to best accommodate Eze. And he will produce while those wrinkles are ironed out. The post Colouring outside the lines appeared first on Arseblog ... an Arsenal blog.