Arseblog … an Arsenal blog

Morning all, and happy Friday to you.

I enjoyed Tim’s column this week on Gabriel Jesus. I should clarify, I enjoy Tim’s column every week but I especially enjoyed this one. Not just because the Brazilian is a player I like and am glad to have back, but that idea that as a fan you can make a connection – which exists only in your own head – about certain individuals.

Your favourite player doesn’t have to be the best player. Quite often those two things go hand in hand because we all love the guy who does something special on the ball, demonstrates skill and character and scores a brilliant goal that helps us win a game. But not always.

It’s probably a bit easier in this team because the level is so high, but my favourites are at the back. I love Gabriel for very obvious reasons, but my preference is William Saliba just because he ticks some boxes for me in terms of how he plays with a kind of reassuring elegance. I think Jurrien Timber is an exceptional player who has the potential to become one of the best right-backs in the world, but Ben White will always have a special place in my heart for the way he plays and comports himself on the pitch. When he’s at his very best, that combination of footballing quality and straight-faced wind-up merchant is hard to resist for me.

I also recognise that as a 50-something year old man the idea of a favourite player is a bit absurd, but that stuff gets hard-wired into you as a kid. You have to have a favourite team. You have to have a favourite player. I mean, you couldn’t even go to a movie with your mates without being quizzed immediately afterwards about what your favourite bit was. I remember years ago going to see Rocky III in the now defunct Green Cinema in Dublin. Such was our desire to talk about our favourite bits, and Rocky’s battle with Mr T, I shadow-boxed my way down the street talking about this scene and that scene, turned around and clattered myself off a lamppost. Forget the film, that was my friends’ favourite bit.

Back to Jesus, and there is something wildly romantic about the idea that as someone who helped push the team to a new level in those first few months of his Arsenal career, he might play a part in helping us push it over the line this season after such a difficult time with injury and everything else. It’s hard not to let yourself dream that he might score a goal in a tight game that ends up being decisive, not just in that match, but the title race itself. Maybe it’s a bit ludicrous, but then isn’t that just part of being a football fan? You have to accept how out of your hands all of it is, so letting your mind wander to scenarios which are unlikely but not impossible is par for the course.

Beyond that, I also wonder if an element of uncertainty about the ‘9’ in general plays a part in this week’s investment in Jesus. It’s not to say you wouldn’t want him to do well anyway, but it remains perhaps the only position in the team where we need still need to be convinced. And it’s such an iconic position too. I think there are probably some good reasons why Viktor Gyokeres hasn’t fully convinced yet. The fact he had a heavy burden placed on him straight away, which then resulted in an injury from which he’s making his way back, is not at all insignificant in my opinion.

Nevertheless, in a team replete with technicians of the highest quality, he looks a little industrial. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it requires both sides to find a way to make it work, and I don’t think that has fully happened yet. I’ve seen people point to the way Kai Havertz looked a bit square peg/round hole in his first few months at Arsenal before it all clicked in the second half of the season, and I think that’s fair, although that also came with a change of role which isn’t really applicable to Gyokeres. Let’s hope that improvement, on both sides of the fence, is the case with him though, but for now those slight doubts have begun to permeate.

Now, this is a crazy idea: imagine if Arsenal had three fully fit strikers. I know! I’m a mad man, but still. This is where I think it gets really interesting. It’s something we talked about on yesterday’s Arsecast, but how Mikel Arteta might use them is fascinating. In my opinion, I think Havertz is Arteta’s number 1 (his favourite?!), but I think there will be games where Gyokeres is probably the better option to start. This weekend against Wolves, for example, strikes me as the perfect game for the Swede, whereas if we’re playing a higher-level team the German would be a better fit. It sounds like I’m damning him with faint praise, but recognising a player’s strengths and weaknesses is a key part of how you build your squad and use it most effectively.

Then you add Jesus to the mix, with his technical ability and skills around the box, and it’s like a kind of wildcard. Hopefully one that can put his foot through the ball when he gets into the positions we saw him pop up in the other night. Is there scope, when needed, to play him off one of the big men to give defences something different to think about? Perhaps not from the start, but in games where that’s required, I can see it.

With a lot of football to play between now and May, I don’t think we have a 9 who will take that place as the unquestioned first choice, so it’s up to Arteta to get the best out of these guys on a timeshare basis. And if someone does hit a rich vein of form and becomes un-droppable, then that’s a scenario I can very happily live with too.

Right, I’ll leave it there for now. Join us later on Patreon for a Wolves preview podcast, and hopefully we have some good news from the press conference in terms of team news and injury.

Have a good one.