Early days, but Oleksandr Zinchenko is already looking like an awesome addition at Arsenal.
After raiding his former club Manchester City for Gabriel Jesus during the summer, Mikel Arteta went back and lured the Ukraine international to the Emirates Stadium, too.
And by virtue of the fact that Zinchenko has immediately displaced a player like Kieran Tierney at left-back, you could say that the former Citizen is enjoying an excellent start to life at Arsenal.
However, the player himself has eyes on a different role under Arteta long term.
According to journalist Dean Jones, Zinchenko wants to be deployed in midfield for Arsenal going forward.
He told Give Me Sport: “He’s desperate for the opportunity to play there. We know that in his latter days at Man City, he was pushing for a midfield role permanently and just wasn’t going to get it.”
This could potentially have some legs.
Arteta obviously knows the player extremely well, having coached him at City, and the Spanish manager probably wouldn’t have been able to sign him unless giving Zinchenko assurances that there was a potential for this new venture to materialise – providing, of course, that he does genuinely have ambition to play in midfield.
And with Tierney being an excellent left-back, and the North Londoners needing another midfielder too, it wouldn’t be detrimental for Arsenal to experiment with this.
However, for the moment Arteta must not be tempted to fix something that isn’t broken and with the Emirates Stadium outfit winning six of their first six games across all competitions this season, Zinchenko, when he’s fully fit, will be returning to left back.
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