The Yellow Bib

There is an old adage that the star that burns twice as bright burns for half as long. This is an analogy often used for artists and musicians who die young due to their own excesses. Or sometimes musical phenomena that fizzles out quickly, the Sex Pistols only ever recorded one LP but their cultural impact was at once hugely significant but very punctuated.

In the football sense, maybe a player like Ronaldinho best encapsulates this adage. Between the ages of 22 and 26, his totally unrefined style of football expressionism made him the most captivating player in the world. But ultimately a lack of overall professional discipline meant that his peak was as brief as it was brilliant.

While I wouldn’t wish to directly compare Oleksandr Zinchenko to the Sex Pistols or Ronaldinho, the curve of his Arsenal career has demonstrated a similar trajectory defined by a steep incline and an almost instantaneous decline. When Zinchenko was signed in the summer of 2022 and he was very much Plan B for Arsenal in his position.

We have frequently seen the Arteta / Edu iteration of Arsenal willing to pivot to other targets when Plan A was not actionable. Not allowing the perfect to be the enemy of the good has been the strapline for the club’s transfer strategy. Arsenal initially wanted Lisandro Martinez, who opted to go to Manchester United (talk about being a poor judge of character) from Ajax before ripping open the envelope marked ‘Plan B’ to sign Zinchenko.

It was likely an expedient signing. Zinchenko had one year left on his City contract, at the time João Cancelo, whose City career ultimately took the same sharp incline followed by sharp decline trajectory we have seen from Zinchenko, was one of City’s star players. Arteta knew the player and had enough good will from his former employers to be able to gently prize Gabriel Jesus and Zinchenko away from them. His contractual situation made the asking price reasonable.

There is a small irony in the fact that both players, who initially transformed the team tactically, have both fallen drastically down the pecking order. The fact that Arteta knew Zinchenko so well from his time at City but still preferred Lisandro Martinez suggests that Arteta knew the player well enough to anticipate some of his flaws.

Initially, the tactic of inverting Zinchenko into midfield alongside Thomas Partey took teams by surprise and enabled Arsenal to strangle teams and dominate them through possession. Over time, teams adjusted to the tactic and not only that, they began to target the left-back area Zinchenko often vacated. Zinchenko’s history is not one of a defender but of a midfielder asked to play in defence.

In hindsight, that always made him a pretty unusual fit when you consider the other defenders Arteta has bought. Ben White, Gabriel, Takehiro Tomiyasu, Jurrien Timber and Riccardo Calafiori are all technically strong and capable of playing the ball in more advanced areas. However, they are all defenders first and foremost. And secondly, they are all significantly more physical than Zinchenko. Martinez, though slight in terms of height, is certainly a more physical player (bordering on violent a lot of the time).

But while, for example, Arsenal have taken a beat in the striker market and judged that Havertz and Jesus can fill that role for now until the Goldilocks striker comes along, Arteta likely felt he didn’t have that luxury in the summer of 2022 due to Kieran Tierney’s fitness record. Arsenal finished the 2021-22 season with Nuno Tavares or Granit Xhaka at left-back and that was not a solution that could endure.

In hindsight, I think we can probably say that Zinchenko was likely always considered a short-term signing. Jurrien Timber was added in the summer of 2023 and Riccardo Calafiori in 2024, with Jakub Kiwior also thrown into the mix in January 2023. They also extended Takehiro Tomiyasu’s contract last year. Pretty much every signal infers that Arteta never intended to rely on Zinchenko for the long haul.

The player has had a spotty fitness record, which he also had at Manchester City (probably another factor in him not being top of the shopping list when Arsenal bought him). Increasingly, the spectrum between ‘superior midfield ball control’ and ‘big space at left-back’ has settled at the wrong end as far as Arteta is concerned. The final straw for Arteta seems to have been the Aston Villa game in April, when even relative Zinchenko apologists like me were driven to distraction by his errant approach.

I’m a Zinchenko guy but that was a totally stupid risk in an area with very little upside. Lucky boy.

— Tim Stillman (@Stillmanator) April 14, 2024

As Lewis Ambrose noted, Zinchenko has been a peripheral figure ever since. It took Arsenal until 6 August to confirm that he had changed his squad number to 17, the number Cedric vacated. Cedric’s summer 2024 departure and vacation of that number has been anticipated since the day after he signed a permanent contract with Arsenal in the summer of 2020. If it took until 6 August to confirm it’s almost certainly because Arsenal’s preference was for a summer sale. The signing of Riccardo Calafiori also tells you that Arteta had no intention of counting on Zinchenko as an option this season

Yep, and Villa was a final straw: since then he’s started once in PL/CL, only made five sub appearances and been an unused sub 10 times. Arteta is done with him.

— Lewis (@lgambrose.bsky.social) November 20, 2024 at 11:16 AM

Many fans have criticised Zinchenko because they perceive him to suffer from ‘main character syndrome.’ Undeniably, you have to be a big character to take the (usually necessary) risks he takes with the ball and with his positioning. If you want to be a dominant team, your defenders can’t always be perched on the edge of their penalty area. Saliba and Gabriel are not cautious with their positioning. When Arsenal are at their best, those two are on the edge of the opposition area.

But again, I think it is fair to say that the scale between bravery and recklessness skewed too far into the latter category. When he attempted to form a huddle after Arsenal went 2-0 down to Southampton in April 2023, it strayed a little too far into the William Gallas school of performative leadership.

His decision to publish and promote a book that seems to reveal a lot of Arteta’s BTS tactics seems indiscrete at best. Even viewing Arteta from afar, he doesn’t exactly strike me as the type of guy that will consider Zinchenko’s imprudence lightly. I bet he is absolutely fucking furious and it just strikes me as a pretty reckless thing to do, all considered.

Unless there is a significant injury crisis at left-back (which we certainly cannot rule out), I would be enormously surprised if Zinchenko’s role now extends much beyond peeling the half-time oranges. He has already been replaced (several times over in truth) but his salary is probably going to be an obstacle in moving him on permanently.

I imagine this is going to be another ‘a couple of loan deals before contract expiry’ scenarios but there needn’t be a huge gnashing of teeth over that in my view. No company, or football squad, is 100% efficient and Zinchenko had a use for a while at least. His presence did not preclude Arsenal from replacing him before his Arsenal race was run. I suspect the reveal all book will see him move from ‘dispensable player we are keen to sell’ to ‘the yellow bib’, however.

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