The Technical Area – Gunners’ New Signings At Wembley

The Technical Area makes a return for the new season and I’m delighted to have joined the Fantasy Football Scout writing team to bring this to you.

These articles will mainly be available for members following Gameweek 1 but, for my debut, I offer a preview of what is to come with some analysis of Sunday’s Wembley showpiece.

The final domestic appetiser to the upcoming season, Sunday’s Community Shield between champions Chelsea and FA Cup winners Arsenal proved a sedate affair that will perhaps be remembered more for the involvement of referee Bobby Madley than any single player’s contribution.

Nonetheless, as our last chance to observe two high-profile Premier League sides in action before the Gameweek 1 deadline – and with many popular FPL assets presumed to participate – interest from the Fantasy community was understandably high.

With only the one game to analyse this week, we’ll be focusing our attention on the performances of two newly-signed Arsenal players who put forward interesting, if very different, showings on the field.

Sead Kolašinac

We’ll start with Sead Kolašinac, whose afternoon threatened to be something of a non-event after he was named among the substitutes to open the match. A nasty head injury to Per Mertesacker on the half-hour mark, however, gave the Bosnian his chance to shine; an opportunity he seized with both hands.

Though pre-season projections had earmarked Kolašinac to compete for a spot as a left-wing back in Arsenal’s 3-4-2-1 system, Wenger’s substitution saw the Bosnian fielded as a left-sided central defender alongside Nacho Monreal and Rob Holding.

Typically, we would have expected this more defensive positioning to have impinged upon Kolašinac’s chances to get forward in support of the Arsenal attack. Yet analysing our game data, we can observe that Kolašinac was frequently occupying space upon the left-flank, consistently drifting out to the touchline to receive possession:

Kolasinac – Passes Received

This profile translates much more readily to the heatmap of a traditional left wing-back than that of a centre half. In fact, it is eerily reminiscent of the performance and positioning of another left-sided wide player participating in Sunday’s match:

Kolasinac vs Alonso – Touches

Given Alonso’s barnstorming FPL campaign in 2016/17, Kolašinac’s tendencies to occupy the same attacking space – even in spite of his ostensibly more defensive position – bodes well for his likelihood of producing attacking returns heading into the new season.

The defender also demonstrated an ability to pose a threat on the end of set-pieces, notching Arsenal’s equaliser by rising to divert Granit Xhaka’s cross into the net.

The underlying numbers for Kolašinac were promising too. Despite playing only limited minutes, the defender produced 17 passes in opposition territory (with a 100% success rate), including five in the final third. These compared favourably to those of Alonso (10, 5) and Victor Moses (12, 7).

It should be noted that Hector Bellerin – playing on the right-hand flank of Arsenal’s formation – outshone even Kolašinac in this regard, with 29 passes in the opposing half and 21 in the danger zone, while he created two excellent goalscoring opportunities in the process.

Such a performance demonstrates the attacking potential of the wing-back position within Arsenal’s current set-up and underlines the tantalising prospects of either player as an FPL asset moving forward.

Kolašinac also put in an impressive defensive performance, winning all three of his tackles and racking up five recoveries – traits which would translate well into FPL’s Bonus Point System (BPS).

Alexandre Lacazette

In contrast to Kolašinac’s impressive debut, Lacazette cut a significantly less imposing figure during Sunday’s match-up.

Often isolated in space against Chelsea’s trio of centre backs, Lacazette amassed just 24 touches during his disappointing 66-minute spell – fewer than any other starter. Of these, far too many were found by dropping deep into space ahead of Chelsea’s backline, from which he was quickly smothered by defensive pressure.

Lacazette – Touches

The Frenchmen displayed occasional glimpses of his attacking prowess. On two or three occasions, Lacazette found himself in dangerous positions; only for Chelsea’s defensive line to close on him before he had a chance to capitalise.

His brightest moment came in the first-half, when he was able to free himself on the edge of the penalty area and curl an early shot against the post. Yet this effort would prove to be Lacazette’s only goal attempt of the match and he would be replaced shortly after the hour mark by Olivier Giroud (who himself failed to make much of an impression, albeit in limited time).

The usual caveats apply here, of course – this was only a single match, and consequently it is certainly much too early for us to jump to any definitive conclusions about Lacazette’s Fantasy prospects for the coming year. For the record, I am optimistic of his season-long goalscoring potential, as are our Rate My Team projections.

It is similarly important to note that Arsenal were missing the combined creative impetus of Mesut Özil, Alexis Sanchez and Aaron Ramsey for this fixture – players who would have both demanded defensive attention and worked to produce more threatening through-balls to the striker.

Nonetheless, even after claiming his first trophy as a member of Arsene Wenger’s squad, this was likely not a match that Lacazette will want to remember.