‘Create chaos’: Leandro Trossard is delivering Arsenal’s Plan B in title bid

W hen Mikel Arteta moved for Leandro Trossard in January he knew Arsenal would be getting more than a winger. Trossard has spent much of his career drifting in off the left flank but that was never the full story: only a month previously he had lined up against his future employers as a nominal centre-forward and his versatility, at a time when Arteta’s options in that area were limited, was a crucial part of the package.

Nonetheless it still felt bold when Arteta selected Trossard as a drifting false 9 for the trip to Leicester last week. Arsenal had blazed a trail through this season’s Premier League with the help of specialist attacking spearheads, first Gabriel Jesus then the Brazilian’s understudy, Eddie Nketiah. Although both are mobile, intense, clever players who know how to create space for others, neither shares Trossard’s creativity or polyvalence. Playing Trossard where one of that pair had once operated meant recalibrating Arsenal’s attack midway through a title race that will be decided on tweaks, details and fine margins.

Two games, and two wins, against a bland Leicester and a stuffy Everton are not evidence of a revolution; not that Arteta has gone that far. But Trossard’s role, and its impact on his fellow attackers, had a big influence in the details behind both victories. Gabriel Martinelli’s winner at the King Power Stadium was a case in point, the scorer foraging inside to take an assist from Trossard, who had drifted out to the left.

When Bukayo Saka broke Everton’s resistance he did so from the right inside-forward position; Trossard had again moved to the left and Martinelli had made a crossfield run to the right wing, which distracted Vitalii Mykolenko enough for Saka to be given a vital