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Football London
Football London
Sport
Kaya Kaynak

Mikel Arteta has Emile Smith Rowe dilemma at Arsenal amid latest Nicolas Pepe decision

Sunday's North London Derby victory over Tottenham was filled with brilliant individual performances from Arsenal players, but perhaps best of all was that of Emile Smith Rowe.

The 21-year-old was brilliant throughout, opening the scoring by getting on the end of Bukayo Saka's cross before assisting Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang's second in a scintillating counter-attack.

With an international break coming up soon, it was the kind of performance that would surely have had him banging on the door of Gareth Southgate's squad for the first time.

Key to the impressive display though was a subtle tweak made in the Gunners team by Mikel Arteta.

In the matches building up to the win over Spurs, the Spaniard has shifted his side to playing a 4-3-3 formation. In that system, Thomas Partey operated as the sole pivot with Martin Odegaard and Smith Rowe either side of him as 'free eights'.

Interestingly, though, Odegaard was tasked with operating in the left half-spaces, while Smith Rowe was played on the right. This is the opposite to how the two have generally played when fielded together.

The thinking behind this was to get the Norwegian dropping deep to pick the ball off the defence in the role usually played Granit Xhaka, while the England Under-21 international would combine with Nicolas Pepe so that the Ivorian wasn't isolated on the right in the manner that Odegaard normally does.

With Xhaka back in the side on Sunday, though, normal service was resumed.

Smith Rowe went over to the left-wing where he excelled combining with Kieran Tierney, while Odegaard was back in his usual more right-leaning number 10 slot. This led Saka - who has spent most of the season on the left - to be shifted over to the right with Pepe the unlucky one to miss out as Arsenal produced their best attacking play of the season so far.

As is often the case with the Gunners though, that high was quickly followed by a fall with Xhaka being ruled out for three months due to a knee injury.

This creates a dilemma for Arteta.

Mikel Arteta during the Premier League match against Burnley (Photo by Robbie Jay Barratt - AMA/Getty Images)

Does he go back to the 4-3-3 and swap Odegaard and Smith Rowe over again, allowing Pepe to come back into the team, or does he stick with the 4-2-3-1 that worked so well in the derby?

There is, of course, a third way that could see Smith Rowe play on the left-wing, with Odegaard operating on the right of the midfield three and one of Albert Sambi Lokonga or Ainsley Maitland-Niles coming in on the left.

This, however, would considerably reduce Arsenal's goal threat through the middle.

Having just found a winning formula, Arteta may be loathed to change things, but at the same time, the Spaniard has said his preferred formation is a 4-3-3.

It's not necessarily a critical problem going into Saturday's match with Brighton, but watching how he fields Smith Rowe, Odegaard and Saka, and whether or not he decides to bring back Pepe to complement them or not will be intriguing.

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