The Expert: Are Arsenal really a better team without Coquelin?

Anybody can make a mistake. Any goalkeeper can fumble a shot, any defender can miscue a clearance, any striker can fire over an open goal. Usually it’s a momentary lapse of concentration or an error of judgement. They happen and in time, after the initial anger has passed, most fans tend to be sympathetic. Anybody can slip or stumble, but these are momentary things where the instinct lets the player down. Far rarer are the errors of thought. When Arjen Robben started to cut infield 12 minutes into Bayern Munich’s 5-1 win over Arsenal last Wednesday, was there anybody in the world other than Francis Coquelin who thought it was a good idea to show him onto his left foot? 

This wasn’t about Robben being a bit quicker or a bit sharper than Coquelin. It wasn’t a moment when a winger tricks a defender in a blur of feet. Coquelin skipped to his left. He didn’t just open the door to Robben, he laid down a strip of carpet and marked out his path with velvet guard-ropes. If he had consciously tried to make it easy for Robben to score, there is nothing more he could have done. That is a bizarre error. 

The question then is why. What makes a player make such an error of thought as that? Perhaps the fault lies with Arsene Wenger for a lack of preparation, but then a player should hardly need to be told what Robben likes to do. Perhaps it speaks of a more general culture of confusion at the club. 

But there’s also a more basic point, which is that Coquelin is not the player it looked like he might be when he was unexpectedly thrust into action against Manchester City two years ago. Playing alongside Santi Cazorla, he excelled in that game as Arsenal won 2-0. The absence of Cazorla has been a major problem for everybody at Arsenal, but Coquelin seems to have felt it most cruelly. The stats are cruel. This season Coquelin has played in 24 games in all competitions, winning 10 and drawing seven. Arsenal have won all 13 of the games in which he has not played. 

The comparison is not entirely fair. Many of the games Coquelin has missed have been against lesser sides, but the point remains that he has not developed as many at Arsenal hoped he would. His tackles per game have remained roughly constant over the two years in which he’s been a regular but what is striking his how his interceptions have dipped from 3.7 per game in the 2014/15 campaign to 3.0 last season to 2.3 this. That’s still a perfectly respectable figure, and must always be considered in the context of the role the player plays, but the fall is significant, suggesting his reading of the game has somehow diminished, or that he perhaps lacks the confidence or incisiveness to intervene in opposition attacks. 

Perhaps the return of Cazorla will reenergise Coquelin. Of the 10 games Arsenal played this season with the Spaniard in the side they won eight and drawn two. Last season the win percentage with Cazorla was 57% as opposed to 48% without him. Last season with Coquelin it was 50% with him and 54% without. But when both played the win percentage was 59%. The season before when both played the win percentage was 73%. 

To blame Coquelin for Arsenal’s woes - beyond the Robben goal - is perhaps unfair. Interceptions aside, his individual stats hold up fairly well. But the stats also suggests Arsenal are a more successful team without him. And, perhaps more pressingly, that they desperately need Cazorla back.