The great Arsenal striker crisis in 2025 focused on Mickel Merino, which has been spotlighted as an emergency striker. I can’t remember the period of life that supports my Arsenal who left the squad without the available striker. In January 2000, I remember that I have to go to Old Trafford and use Freddie Ljungberg as the second striker.
Kanu was in AFCON, suker was suspended, and Bergkamp was injured. Thierry Henry was still suitable for that game. The question was simply a second striker in 442. Similarly, in January 2004, Arsene Wenger took a few weeks to Thierry Henry.
Wiltord and Kanu were injured, so they were once again ahead of Dennis Bergkamp. As a result, Freddie Ljungberg and Robert Pires played alternating false 9. I think this is a kind of model that Gabriel Martinelli returns to the team and prefers.
Arsenal’s striker crisis is completely complicated by Sakawa Mati Nelly’s injuries, and this team is an idea that three fronts of Sterling, Merino, and Tieri are completely impossible for the Champions League. I now prefer the flavor of Martinelli and Trossard, which rotates between the left wing and the center forward.
Merino first played a prepaid because he had a similar frame similar to Kai Harverts and had a similar tendency to win the duel. He was broken for the physical aspects of the central forward. Second, he does not yet have a fixed place elsewhere in the team, so he did not remove the key works elsewhere to play him with a central forward.
The problem is that as you can fully understand, Merino has no choreography. The sixth sense is to go to the channel and connect it with a wide player or make yourself a soundboard like HAVERTZ. Merino helped him to create a zinchenko goal for PSV by acquiring a movie on Wednesday evening Raya Long Pass, and Mikel Arteta is thankful.
After two goals on Leicester’s bench, Merino rarely provided a direct threat. His goal threat of midfield relies late to arrive late to the penalty area running from behind. In fact, his goal for Leicester seems to have scored an aggressive midfielder.
The first is the goal of being aimed at scoring in the natural left eight positions. The second afternoon comes from running from the counter in the counter. This season’s average XG is 0.24. In his last five appearances, all of them fell to 0.14 per 90 people. He is reducing individual goal threats.
Obviously, however, many of his things are to create a being that helps others create a goal threat. Arsenal have been more aggressive with fullback in recent weeks, and when Riccardo Calafiori played, he has a very free jazz interpretation of his left role, and Arteta has broken down to interpret him in half.
The last five performances of Calafiori uploaded a shot every 48 minutes. Merino has an average shot every 69 minutes in the same five game sub -sets. But Calafiori is not just Calafiori that invades the opponent’s penalty area and travels around Merino.
Declan Rice scored in his last two games and is not a coincidence. Last week, after the demolition of PSV in the Netherlands, I saw highlights about whether rice is in the central forward position for many Arsenal goals by default. I took the screen cap.
From Tuesday, we went back to our goals, and many of them saw the high -end positions of many of them.
-Tim Stillman (@TIM-Stillman.bsky.social)) March 7, 2025 7:14 am
You can see that rice has been summarized much more in the Great Arsenal striker famine. Last season, DECLAN managed seven and eight assists in the Premier League, which is a very powerful attack for a player who is famous for his own ownership.
In Old Trafford, he got a strong support and rashed a home cutback inside the box. On Wednesday, in a confrontation with the PSV, he once again got a late support to head the Raheem Sterling Cross home. He is currently doing a great way to delete Lampard / Gerrard / David Plat / Bryan Robson.
This work In the ALI TWEEDALE in OPTA, it actually set it. ALI has completed more passes in one -third (36) of Martin øDegaard (38) for RICE performance in Old Trafford, and RICE led the way for touching in the opposition box 6. A total of 16 progressive carriers (moving more than five meters to the opposition’s goal) were the highest players of all of the pitches. ‘
Later in this work, Ali wrote: In the long run, I think that the role of ‘left 8’ is the best role for rice in the long run because it uses his extensive technology more completely. I think he can play with six people, but I think that’s a limited role for a true box to box player who threatens a lot of box collisions.
But it is a question that can wait for summer. Arsenal currently have a model for Merino’s briefings to capture defenders and sometimes lack and allow runners to pass him. Rice and Calafiori become two at the motorcycle speed toward Merino, while ODEGAARD and Nwaneri are considered a little more on the right.
The disappointing thing to analyze this incarnation of the Arsenal attack is that it does not have a long -term future. We are creating and modifying territory. Merino will never play again in this role in the club after May, and Tierney and Sterling will disappear. Zinchenko is probably about placing him in a midfielder to fill the blank than a truly experiment recently.
But in the debate about what the declan Rice is or what it has found in the team, this spell has some use for the administrator beyond defending the warm body. Rice looks more and more like a box midfielder in a true box.
The necessity has been found to be the mother of Mikel Arteta’s invention in recent weeks, but we know that Gafffer tape is not a long -term construction solution. But the Renaissance of DECLAN RICE can have a long -term impact as Arteta designs the next step of his arsenal team.
