“...when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth” - Sherlock Holmes
Since the day Arsenal announced the 33-man squad that would be flying to America for the preseason games, the whole of the Arsenal fandom has been trying to decipher why Arteta would choose to leave all but one of the academy players back in London while taking the likes of Torreira, Bellerin, Maitland-Niles, and a total of five goalkeepers.
That number of keepers was especially perplexing. With only 3 games to play, even if you gave each of the other keepers one half to play, that would leave Ramsdale with only 90 minutes of total game time. Surely you would want to give your assumed #1 more time than that to get him match-ready before the start of the season.
There have been a few popular theories thrown around. Maybe we’re keeping more players than we had hoped because there are no further signings planned. We could also be putting some of them in the shop window, hoping to get better prices for them. Or perhaps we’re actually giving these players a second chance. However, after watching all of the training videos and seeing how Arteta used the players in the preseason games, I think we can eliminate some of the options and come to a likely conclusion.
The first option we can eliminate fairly easily. We ended up signing Zinchenko during the tour and he has come straight into the team for the Chelsea game. And I don’t think many people think we’re done signing players. There’s still a strong link to Youri Tielemans and the potential to sign yet another player depending on how our outgoing business plays out. I don’t doubt that it will be difficult to offload everyone we want, but I don’t think we’ll be bolstering our squad with too many wantaway players.
In the beginning, the second option seemed like the most plausible. Arsenal have had a reputation over the past few years of letting our players go for little-to-nothing; even to the point of canceling contracts to allow players to move away immediately at no cost to their new club. In that case, it makes sense that we would want to showcase some of the players that we don’t want to keep around.
However, this theory starts to fall apart a bit when you look at how the games played out. Sure, we gave some minutes to the “second team” players, but that could have well been to rest our primary players more than anything. Players like Gabriel Jesus, Partey, Saka, etc. went from getting 45 minutes or less at the start to playing 60+ minutes towards the end of the tour. We also have to remember that there are a few key players still missing with injuries who would have also likely taken minutes the likely outgoing squad members. Lastly, only Ramsdale and Turner have been given minutes in goal with Leno and Runarsson not even making the bench in any of the three games. If we were trying to put our outgoing players in the shop window, we’re doing a terrible job of it.
So, that leaves just one remaining likely option: everyone is getting a second chance. Could it be that Mikel Arteta wasn’t lying when we said that, “The message is: this is a different season and everybody has a clean start… you have a chance to be here.” Now, Arteta has never really been an open book when it comes to internal matters, so it could be easy to dismiss this as him just being diplomatic and not wanting to throw his players under the bus. But, the more I think about it, the more I start to believe he was telling a fuller truth than I initially expected.
It does start to make sense when you consider that, while we want our academy players to be given a chance to show what they can do in the first team, they aren’t likely going anywhere and will have plenty of time throughout the season to show what they can do. But as for the fringe senior players, Arteta needs to decide whether they should be kept around or sold this summer. So, if he really does believe that everyone has a “clean start”, then he would want to see as much from them as he can, not just during the 270 minutes of game time, but also in the week’s worth of training.
The players that we didn’t see on the field for these last 3 games? Probably didn’t give enough of a reason in training for Arteta to think he needs to keep them around, whether it’s their attitude, physical capabilities, or tactical fit. Could some of the fringe players have done enough to change Arteta’s mind? Possible, but unlikely.
Either way, it’s now up to Edu to start moving players on as the team boards the Emirates jet and returns to London to get prepared for the last preseason game. But, with what they have (or haven’t) shown us on the field, it will be anything but “elementary”.
