Martin Zubimendi’s arrival at Arsenal has generated considerable excitement, with the midfielder joining the club following interest from high-profile teams such as Liverpool and Real Madrid. Ultimately, he chose to make the move to the Emirates, where he is reunited with Martin Odegaard and is expected to become an integral part of Mikel Arteta’s plans.
Zubimendi arrives with a strong reputation, having been widely regarded as one of the standout midfielders in La Liga. His performances in Spain attracted significant attention, and Arsenal fans are hopeful he will bring the same level of composure and consistency to the Premier League. With a reputation for intelligence on the ball and positional discipline, he is seen as a valuable addition to the Gunners’ midfield.
Concerns Raised Over Attacking Contribution
However, pundit Stewart Robson, who has covered La Liga extensively, has offered a more measured assessment of Zubimendi’s style of play. As cited by Metro Sport, Robson commented on the midfielder’s perceived limitations, particularly in terms of his forward passing and attacking contributions.
“He’s not dynamic. He plays the holding role, and he’ll keep the ball quite nicely, but I’ve done commentary on La Liga and I’ll have a little joke about how many times he’s going to pass it forward. He hardly ever passes it forward, there’s no penetrative or goalscoring passes, he just keeps the thing flowing,” Robson stated.
A New Challenge in the Premier League
While this critique may temper some expectations, it does not diminish the qualities Zubimendi brings to Arsenal. His reliability in possession, tactical awareness and ability to control the tempo of a match are qualities that align well with the demands of Premier League football. Moreover, his familiarity with Odegaard could help him settle quickly both on and off the pitch.
Although experienced, Zubimendi still has room to grow, and there is optimism within the club that he will develop further under Arteta’s guidance. The midfielder is fully aware that the expectations at Arsenal differ from those in La Liga, and this new challenge may be the catalyst for further evolution in his game.
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Since Stewart Robson left Arsenal he has never had a good word to about them .
Big big boots too fill. Must improve on what he has done so far. And in a rough and tumble prem.
Poor old Stewart still can’t handle Arsenal’s rejection.
The only commentator more dull than him is Jim Beglin.
This portion of a BBC article would seem to rather strongly counter Robson’s claim…
“In La Liga in 2024-25, he ranked in the top five of central midfielders for successful passes, successful long passes, progressive passes, touches, tackles, interceptions, aerial duels won and distance of completed upfield passes (8.5km)”
His job is to protect the back four and dictate the pace as a deep lying playmaker. He is not there to score goals nor create chances. Arsenal have people who do that. All these criticisms come as a result of hate. When you don’t like a club nothing ever seems valuable to you including their players no matter how good they are.
And yet the statistics show that he was one of the most progressive passers in La Liga last season. Read somewhere that Zubimendi was second only to Pedri in La Liga for line-breaking passes,for players who attempted at least 250.
Also worth noting is that the club one plays for influences how they play. Real Sociedad is not an elite team. If you want to see how effective Zubimendi is, watch his matches for Spain, where he’s surrounded by good players in a good tactical set up.
Hopefully what Robson is spouting is rubbish, otherwise we are in for even more crablike, side to side football.
There’s a good comparison with jorginho I found (I see them as quite similar players) and you can see zubi is much better in duels overall and runs more with the ball – he has more progressive passes (which surprised me) but in every other aspect of passing, jorginho was better last season (total passes, pass accuracy, “dangerous” passes). Looked you said, different teams, but to my understanding sociedad do play a possession based game (4th highest in the league last season) – so it is surprising he didn’t pass and receive the ball more. Not sure what to make of that tbh. Can only think sociedad bypassed him a lot for some reason. Maybe it was a common tactic to mark him very closely?
@Onyango
He’s not a volume passer like Jorginho and like you have rightly observed, he can carry/run with the ball which is something almost nonexistent in Jorginho’s game. This means that when he receives the ball, he can decide to run with it rather than just recycle it through passing which reduces the total number of passes he has to make.
This ability to carry the ball is something that excites me because Rice is also good at it and they can do it in turns. If one joins the attack, one can stay back, making our midfield more unpredictable, fluid and dynamic- like the three PSG lads. This is as opposed to Partey/Jorginho who typically just sat in front of the back four partly because because the legs were gone and partly because running with the ball just isn’t a natural part of their game. Zubimendi is a passer but he can run with the ball as well.
The fact that Zubimendi also tends to join the attack means he’s not scared to try the risky passes near the edge of the box. Naturally,passing accuracy goes down when you play these kind of passes as opposed to safe passes. Overall, I think Spain provides a better template of how he’ll be used at Arsenal, as opposed to Real Sociedad.
While I thought partey was the better individual, I really thought jorginho formed a brilliant partnership with rice (23/24 season), and our midfield was arguably better with those two – it just seemed to work, which I think was down to jorginho’s intelligence as a player. In that regard I do think zubimendi is of a similar mould. You can see in his comments, he’s very very team focused, which gives me confidence something similar and maybe better will happen.
Yes, Jorginho with Rice worked better than Rice with Partey. In the 3-1 win over Liverpool that season, it was hard to decide who was man of the match between Rice and Jorginho. I think Rice will flourish alongside Zubimendi.
Only time will tell. I think we can assume that Arsenal did their homework thoroughly, so they’ll be fully aware of what kind of player they’re getting for the money. Whether that’s the player Robson describes is yet to be seen.
Given the analysis above, I think we’re going to miss Partey terribly. His pinpoint passes forward; his penetrative moves and pots hots at goal.
So what do we have in Zubemendi exactly. Someone who’s going to turn our strike force into spectators?