Arteta’s left wing woes halted Arsenal against Fulham

We all should be used to the 4–2–3–1 formation that Mikel Arteta likes to set up his team in, but there has been a change recently; due to Kieran Tierney’s injury, Sead Kolasinac out on loan to Schalke and failure to address the latter’s departure in the winter transfer market, Arsenal have been left light at the left back position. Cedric Soares has been played there, but wasn’t really progressing as well as the other left backs (mainly because he’s right footed). So Arteta came up with a solution. Enter Granit Xhaka as a left back.

Today, he started against Fulham in the same position once again (where he played against Sheffield United and Slavia Prague). To fit him into the team this way, Arteta slightly changed his 4–2–3–1 to make it asymmetric and at times it looked like a back 3. For this to work, you need to balance it correctly by assigning individual player roles, movements and strategies. Since Xhaka has a tendency to play in more narrow, you need someone to occupy the wing zone, which Martinelli did. Occasionally, Dani Ceballos dropped wide too while Mohammed Elneny was holding the pivot space in front of the pseudo back 3. Hector Bellerin pushed up high and positioned himself wide on the right constantly so Bukayo Saka could drop into the half space. Emile Smith Rowe’s job was to overload the ball-sided half space. This structure also helped Arsenal’s restraumverteidigung in a 3+1 or even a 3+2.