Арсенал багийн зүүн жигүүрийн довтолгоог Кристос Цолис диагональ дамжуулалтаар хүчирхэгжүүлж байна

If Mikel Arteta thought winning the Premier League title would reduce the scrutiny on his tactical approach, the summer transfer window made it very clear he was wrong.

With ever-increasing frequency over the last few seasons, the left-hand side of Arsenal’s forward line has been the focus of much discussion. Where the club could boast of a wealth of attacking riches on the right, with Bukayo Saka, Martin Odegaard, and Ben White often found rotating and interchanging to pull opposition blocks apart around the edges to find routes into the penalty area, on the other side of the pitch things looked a little less sanguine.

Of course, there is no intrinsic need for a team to to structure their attacking play with a level of symmetry: almost every team will have a bias one way or another, depending on the tendencies of the players at their disposal. But as time went by, there was a growing consensus that Arsenal were too reliant on their right-hand side.

And then the Vinicius Junior rumours started to break. Here, finally, was Arsenal’s solution to the left-hand problem. With a world-class left-sided player, so the narratives went, the asymmetry of previous seasons would be fixed and Arsenal would be able to spread their threat across the front line, bringing a much-needed injection of attacking swagger into the team.

But the club had also brought in Christos Tzolis, signed for £34million ($46m) from Club Brugge. The Greek does not have the profile of a Vinicius Jr, and despite an electric showing in the Community Shield, it might have been hard for fans to accept the downgrade from Vinicius Jr and Tzolis to just Tzolis once it became clear the Brazilian was staying in Madrid. After all, was Tzolis that much of a step up compared to Leandro Trossard or Gabriel Martinelli?

But Did You Notice that the Greek attacker has been offering something that neither Trossard nor Martinelli were really able to during their time in north London? He’s been finding a way of breaking opponents down on the diagonal.

In order to explain what I mean by “on the diagonal”, it’s perhaps worth talking through the evolution of the role of winger.

Traditionally, you might expect a winger to be used as a width holder: a player who would receive the ball in the wide channels and look to carry it past the opposition full back towards the byline and then look to swing crosses into a striker from there.

In order to maximise the chances of this sort of play coming off, it was usual to play wingers on their ‘strong’ side; that is, on the same side as their strong foot: a right-footer on the right and a left-footer on the left. This way, when arriving at the byline, the winger was able to hook their strong foot around the ball to get it into the box.

As the game evolved, though, we started seeing a different use of wingers. With teams increasingly trying to control games through possession, an opening for a very different kind of winger emerged: the inverted winger — a term coined by The Athletic’s Michael Cox in 2010.

Not to be confused with inverted full backs, an inverted winger is a wide player who is used on the opposite side of the pitch to their strong foot — so a left-footer on the right or a right-footer on the left.

Although you may still get the same advantage as a traditional winger from an inverted winger — hitting the byline in the wide channel — another possibility emerges. The winger can now cut inside onto their stronger foot, giving them a very different access to the box.

In these scenarios, you would expect the winger to go much more directly to goal, either attempting to curl a shot into the far post with their strong foot or look for a cross to the back post.

But this action of cutting inside the pitch also opens out the opportunity for a diagonal pass into the box. And as Tzolis and Arsenal have been showing in the opening weeks of 2026-27, this diagonal pass can be devastating if it is exploited well.

Tzolis is a right-footed winger who plays off the left. Although he can operate as a channel runner (setting up Kai Havertz with a wide cutback 20 minutes into the Chelsea game), his instinct is to cut back inside onto his stronger foot and operate in that diagonal line to goal.

However, unlike a lot of elite-level inverted wingers, he doesn’t really have the ability to generate separation from his markers that is necessary if you’re going to use this diagonal line to produce shooting opportunities. Instead, he loves to exploit the diagonal through passing instead.

Take, for example, his second assist from the Community Shield match against Manchester City. Receiving the ball in the wide channel, Tzolis runs directly at Abdukodir Khusanov, forcing Khusanov deeper while making sure that he keeps both options open: either going down the line or cutting back inside.

As soon as he draws Khusanov in, though, Tzolis is ready to cut inside, which opens out that diagonal angle into the box.

At this point, it’s worth exploring why the diagonal angle is so dangerous. As you can see here, when Tzolis cuts inside, there are now four Arsenal players making runs to intersect that diagonal pass into the box.

If any of these players receive the ball, then they will become an issue to Manchester City and so the City defenders have to assume all of them are the intended target of the pass and deal with them.

This produces a number of effects. On the one hand, it drags the City defenders out of the way. In this instance, both Riccardo Calafiori and Kai Havertz end up making dummy runs which pull the City defence out of position.

This leads to a second effect: the passing lane is now opened into Martin Odegaard who, because he is arriving at speed, is able to nip in front of Josko Gvardiol and generate a one-v-one with the goalkeeper.

With the goalkeeper rooted to the goal line (because the diagonal pass means he cannot commit to a single receiver), Odegaard finishes comfortably.

Now, on the face of it, this might be the sort of situation where the casual fan might shrug and make some sort of comment about ‘tacticos’ overcomplicating the game. But if we return to the point at which we started this conversation, then could it be the case that, in accessing the diagonal, Arteta has found a solution to the problem of left-sided threat?

If Arsenal can use Tzolis to repeatedly generate these sorts of scenarios, then they might have found a way to add attacking value to the team without needing to shell out for a left-sided attacker like Vinicius Jr.

And this is exactly what they did to create the winner against Chelsea at the Emirates in the Premier League.

Once again, notice the similarities in the starting position. Tzolis is isolated in the wide area, against his opponent, Josh Acheampong.

Cutting inside opens the diagonal angle and this move immediately triggers the Arsenal players to intersect the line. Notice how Havertz is pointing to his teammates to indicate they should hit the line if possible.

Just as he did in the example against Manchester City, Calafiori makes a sacrificial run to drag a defender deeper, opening the passing lane into Havertz.

Tzolis plays the pass and, because the Arsenal players are attacking the diagonal, there are a number of receivers available. Havertz uses this to his advantage, dummying the ball so that it runs through to the unmarked Martin Odegaard. He can do this in part because he is aware of his surroundings but also because he knows that Odegaard is also hitting the diagonal.

Being unmarked and arriving with momentum, Odegaard finds himself in a one-v-one with the goalkeeper again caught on his line. Once again, he finishes comfortably.

Every season under Arteta, Arsenal have evolved in one way or another. This is simply what great managers do to stay competitive.

This summer, having finally won the league, the narrative shifted somewhat towards their coach being able to go big in the transfer market and find solutions that traded on an increased ability to bring in elite players.

No doubt Vinicius Jr would have moved the needle in that respect. But it doesn’t mean that without him, there are no upsides to be found.

With the arrival of Christos Tzolis, Arsenal have unlocked one of these upsides: the diagonal. If they can keep accessing this passing lane into the box, then the disappointment of missing out on Vinicius Jr might be forgotten sooner rather than later.