Torreira is the missing link for Unai
THE FIRST chant from the away end started within sixty seconds and before 20 minutes were up, we had heard it three times. In Lucas Torreira, Arsenal have an emerging talent to admire. It has been a while. On TV on Sunday, former Arsenal centre forward Ian Wright said his club had waited five years for a holding midfielder of quality. For once, the excitable Wright was underselling things. It’s actually 10 years since the Brazilian Gilberto Silva played for Arsenal. The cynical may say that the longer you wait for something good to come along, the quicker you are to rush to judgement. There may be something in that. It is only early December of Torreira’s first Premier League season, after all. Nevertheless, the signs have been promising for Arsenal and their new manager Unai Emery. Against Tottenham at the weekend, Torreira was excellent not just in terms of stopping the traffic, but also assisting with the flow of Arsenal’s football. He had been at Bournemouth a week earlier too, Arsenal’s authority noticeably diminishing when he was taken off late in the game. Of the teams that have won the Premier League in recent memory, all have had one of sorts. Fernandinho (Manchester City), N’Golo Kante (Chelsea and Leicester) and Nemanja Matic (then of Chelsea) take the pattern all the way back to Manchester United’s Michael Carrick and before that City’s duo of Yaya Toure and Nigel de Jong. Not all these players fit the classic mould, of course. Football and its formational shifts are too fluid to pigeon hole players these days. However, Arsenal suffered for a lack of authority in the centre of their team during the back end of Arsene Wenger’s years. Here at Old Trafford, Torreira was not at his most impressive. It was actually his midfield partner Matteo Guendouzi who influenced the game more once he had recovered from an uncertain start. They say that Torreira has that priceless knack of reading play, of seeing situations unfolding before those around him. Here, his radar was not switched on early as United pressed a hesitant Arsenal feverishly and had the better of the early football. Torreira is only 22 and this is his first year in England. Here there was a clumsy foul on Ander Herrera and later in the first half, as United recovered some early impetus, there was another rather more ugly foul on Matic. One of the things Torreira is supposed to possess is a sureness in the challenge, but here it took him a while to find it. At times, there was perhaps a surplus of effort. The slight injury he sustained before the hour came from what looked like a foul on Martial and then he brought Matic to earth after hounding him with such enthusiasm that he took his heels. Torreira will have better evenings, but at least the young South American had been involved in a game between these clubs that was worthy of the fixture’s history... and he even had a late chance to win it!