“He always wants the ball, he always does stuff on the ball and you think ‘that’s brilliant’ but the burning question comes back every time I think of him. Every time I’ve got this niggling thing in the back of my mind, can they win the league with him as a central midfield player?” – Gary Neville
He may not be the best coach out there, but Neville rarely goes too far off the mark when assessing the situation on the pitch sitting in a TV studio. Widely regarded as the best pundit on Television, Neville last year was typically blunt in his assessment of the diminutive Spaniard Santi Cazorla and it was a sentiment that was shared by many -
He's great on the ball, but is he good enough off the ball? Can he really stand up and do it against the best in England, and more particularly, the best in Europe?
That for some reason seems to be the general consensus - Cazorla is great, but he isn't what Arsenal need to take them to the next level; to win what they covet most – trophies, both in England and Europe.
Is the collective right?
The evolution of Santiago 'Santi' Cazorla Gonzalez
Cazorla has always had something magical about him.
Ruud van Nistelrooy - retiring in quiet peace on the serene yellow-sand beaches of Málaga - couldn't stop raving about him during the one season they had together
“What a player Santi is!” – Ruud van Nistelrooy
Xavi Hernandez once said “Have you seen Santi Cazorla? You think I'm small? He's up to here on me and he's brilliant”. Coming from the undoubted King of Spanish midfield maestros, that is quite the compliment.
He's a complete midfielder – he's got the ability to thread the ball through the eye of a needle, twinkle-toed dribbling ability and the vision to play the role of puppeteer. He's always been able to do it with either foot – left or right. Arguably the most comfortably ambidextrous midfielder in the game right now, Joan Capdevilla put it best when he said
“I played with him for five years and I still don't know if he is right footed or left footed, even from corners and free-kicks: it's insane."
Arsene Wenger hasn't stopped swooning over him ever since he signed the diminutive Spaniard, calling him a role model for young wannabe midfielders across the nation. He's been so impressed with him that over the course of the four years the Spaniard been there that's he's played him across the midfield – as a winger, as traditional trequartista behind the striker, and more commonly these days as a part of a deep lying midfield two.
And that's when the questions started. For most people, it's unthinkable, this whole concept of playing a guy who even Xavi calls small in the most physically demanding role in the world's most relentlessly physical league. It just doesn't make sense.
Try telling that to Arsenal's forwards and attacking midfielders. He might have just got 35 assists in his time with the Gunners, and scored just 25 times, but no one in football epitomises Benjamin Disraeli's famous line “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics”, quite like the Spaniard.
Sitting deep has allowed Cazorla to unleash the full extent of his supreme vision on the ball. Allying that with his ball-stuck-to-the-laces control in tight spaces, Cazorla has played the role of puppet master to perfection. He may not have gotten the final pass in, but many of those flowing Arsenal goals have their origins at the twinkling feet of the little magician. Pushing the ball forward into dangerous areas, controlling the tempo, getting that much-praised passing game going – no one does it with as much consistency as Cazorla.
Also read – Arsenal's midfield is currently their biggest weakness, not the defence
He can’t bully people off the ball, but on it, his unquestioned skill can make him run rings around anyone. But the fact remains that he does not have the presence nor brute strength to handle an opposition hell bent on physically (and aerially) bullying Arsenal – as is so often the case in the Premier League.
This is where the identity of who he plays next to becomes so very important.
The multi-million dollar question - Who can partner Cazorla?
Each of Granit Xhaka, Francis Coquelin, and Mohammed Elneny have their own unique set of attributes. Coquelin is the most physically dominant, Elneny the most dynamic and Xhaka the most complete of the lot (but comes with the disadvantage of being new, and everyone and their father know how Wenger likes to blood in his new signings slowly)
The simple option here would be to play two of the above three in the middle – all of them are bigger and can handle themselves better than Cazorla – and we all know just how important being big is in the league, don't we? Sure, N'Golo Kante is just four centimetres taller but he brims with a hostile energy that you just can't see Cazorla replicating. Nor should he. That isn't his brief, that isn't what makes him such a brilliant player.
You could put him on the bench, and use him as a replacement for Mesut Özil – that's exactly the kind of high-class quality on the bench that Arsenal have lacked in recent seasons. But the major drawback to not starting him is that without Cazorla to kickstart the engine, all the attacking brilliance of Özil, Alexis Sanchez, Theo Walcott, Alex Iwobi and co. may not fire on all cylinders as no one else in the Arsenal squad can provide them the kind of service that they yearn from the middle of the park. It's when Santi is sitting and distributing the ball in his own inimitable way that Arsenal are at their absolute best. And with rivals going from strength to strength, they need to be at their very best to win trophies.
Xhaka looks to be the ideal foil, but it's how Wenger solves this conundrum that will decide the fate of the Arsenal season, and whether the great Frenchman can finally get back to the trophy-harvesting ways that he, his team, and the Gunners' fans so desperately crave.
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