Since Arsenal lost Tomiyasu to injury just after the New Year, and our other full-back Kieran Tierney, it caused a bit of a crisis to Arsenal’s starting line-up for a while. The worst example being when Arteta made the clear error of playing Granit Xhaka at left back even with Thomas Partey unavailable as well.
Cedric Soares was not trusted by Arsenal fans to fill in for Tomi, and despite some pretty good performances, the Portugese still divides the fanbase and is not considered to be a patch on our young Japanese. But there is now hope on the horizon, with Tomi coming back for a 4 minute cameo at the end of our win over Man United.
Now, according to the Arsenal expert Charlie Watts, we could see the 23 year-old back in the starting line-up at the London Stadium. “Takehiro Tomiyasu came back and got a really good reception against Man United at the weekend,” Watts said on his podcast.
“Fantastic to see him back. Loved that little movement down the right to draw Cristiano Ronaldo in and get Ronaldo a booking as well. It’s brilliant news that he’s back.
“Cedric has done very, very well in his absence, fair play to him but Tomiyasu, if he’s fully fit, plays 100%. He’ll have another week of training this week and I think he starts against West Ham. I’ll be very, very surprised if he doesn’t.
“You have the option of playing him left back. He did that a lot in Italy, he’s very, very two-footed. There is the option there, I know Nuno has been erratic. Potentially Cedric could keep his place but I’m not sure that’ll happen. Tomiyasu, if he’s fully fit, he plays right back on Sunday.”
This could happen of course, but Mikel Arteta is well aware of the dangers of bring our star defender back too soon. Maybe he could play 45 minutes and see how he goes? We certainly don’t want to see him break down again…