And despite this new investment in a Swede who’s netted 100 times in the past two years – and against the backdrop of the Premier League’s opening weekend – the obvious deficiency in Mikel Arteta’s Arsenal is what Matheus Cunha and Bryan Mbeumo so readily showed.
Up until now, the Gunners haven’t had a creative maverick they can rely on to break through central areas and disrupt defences with unpredictability. They don’t have a Cunha, they weren’t in for Joao Pedro or Florian Wirtz – or even for Rayan Cherki or Mohammed Kudus. It looks like they’re now missing out on Eberechi Eze.
Yet Arsenal had one of these players before everyone did, in Gabriel Jesus.
The Brazilian was essentially Arteta’s perfect forward. He got the best out of everyone around him – whether that was through his creativity, his rotations with Gabriel Martinelli and his positionally fluidity to overload in areas where Arsenal needed him to be.
Jesus had the lethal combination of being a big-game player capable of stepping up under the lights and the work ethic to press like a dog, too. The Gunners were virtually unstoppable for the first half of the 2022/23 season, thanks to their new no.9 – with his importance indicated by Arteta naming him vice-captain to Martin Odegaard.
Yet after repeated injuries, he still hasn’t been replaced. That could suggest that Arteta still sees a return for him in this side – yet reports suggest otherwise. The problem for Arsenal lies in the fact that this team is essentially built for a forward like Jesus.
Arteta has a box-crashing no.8 in Declan Rice and a steady metronome in Odegaard: he fields two wingers who remain wide, and generally, the four players behind the striker are predictable, providing a solid out-of-possession shape, rather than doing anything too chaotic.
That’s what Jesus offers. The idea was even that he would play alongside Havertz: in preseason this time last year, the Brazilian featured up front with Havertz behind as the box-crasher and Leandro Trossard rotating from the left wing.
After such lengthy injury issues, it’s more likely that Jesus will never regain his spot up front again, with two options now ahead of him.
For now, at least, that leaves Arsenal in the rock and the hard place of choosing between Havertz and Gyokeres, while placing almost all the creative burden on the right-hand side, as Odegaard and Saka are tasked with providing the spark of chaos to find gaps through low blocks.
Yet Mikel Arteta may well have suggested that he feels the answer to this problem is Ethan Nwaneri, who signed a new contract this month.
The clues are there that Nwaneri is the long-term successor to Jesus: Arteta even suggested in December last year that the Hale End graduate could adapt to a false nine role – but even if Nwaneri doesn’t replace Jesus positionally, he offers plenty of similar attributes.
He has a similar frame, carries the ball with the same low-gravity gait, and forces defences to make decisions with dribbling. Like Jesus, Nwaneri is intelligent enough to adapt to different zones on the pitch, with just his physicality the last piece in the puzzle: he struggled centrally last term, often playing out wide.
Nwaneri is also a very good reason that Arsenal haven’t followed up on their Eze interest – and with Max Dowman next in line, too, there seems to be a depth of ‘maverick forward’ options at the Emirates Stadium.
Arteta’s in a strange position, where he has seven versatile, A-list players – Havertz, Gyokeres, Odegaard, Saka, Martinelli, Rice and Martin Zubimendi – to play in the six positions ahead of his back four.
One of them will have to drop out every week. That was Havertz against Manchester United, but some weeks it could be Martinelli (with Gyokeres crowbarred out left in his place), or even Zubimendi (with Rice anchoring in midfield and Havertz as the box-crashing no.8).
Perhaps Nwaneri will force himself into Arteta’s thinking and make that eight first-choice players across the six positions. There’s certainly an opening for someone who offers something different.
