Arsenal have been poor this season under Unai Emery, and those struggles are seeping to the players. While most of them have truthfully been poor, there have been a few good performers.
We knew heading into the season that Manchester United would be poor. We also thought that Chelsea would be – as well, following a transfer ban and the hiring of a relatively inexperienced manager. There were also hints prior to the season of Spurs potentially doing poorly, which has now certainly been confirmed, with the team struggling mightily towards the end of the 2018-19 season in the league. What I’m trying to say is, a top 4 finish looked relatively straight-forward for Arsenal this season, especially after some excellent transfer business in the summer.
Yet, just 12 matches into the season the Gunners are already a whopping 8 points out of the top 4, even with Manchester United and Spurs doing poorly and sitting in 7th and 14th respectively. All of the blame has now fallen upon Unai Emery, who’s confusing tactics, bland football, and lack of personality and control both on and off the pitch has caused most Arsenal fans to abandon their support of the Spaniard.
Along with the team as a whole struggling to get results, a few individual players have also been failing to make the impact we expected. This comes down to poor management and a rather negative style of football, which compresses the control of creative, technical talents. For that reason alone, the players that actually have performed well for the Gunners this season deserve some credit, which I will aim to give them in this article, of the top 5 players for Arsenal so far in 2019-20:
5. Bernd Leno – Goalkeeper
As dependable as they come, German goalkeeper Bernd Leno must be drenched in sweat after every single match, based on the sheer volume of shots he tends to face.
He currently leads the Premier League in saves, which is actually a bad thing, since the other top 5 save-makers in the league play for Bournemouth, Norwich, Newcastle, and Watford. This means that Leno is facing far too many shots, and you obviously can’t expect him to save them all.
His leaky defence is to blame of course, and as is his manager, who has failed to tighten up the – in over a year as manager. In fact, Arsenal are actually conceding more goals now than they were in Wenger’s final season.
Leno however, is an excellent goalkeeper, and his reliability between the sticks alone earns him this #5 spot.