Why Zinchenko is MORE important to Arsenal than Rice or Saliba 👀 | ESPN FC

Why don't we start with Arsenal and in that kind of reverse order from five through one, if we can put a full screen graphic on the page to have a look at the five you've got as your most valuable players at Arsenal. Before we get Ali's thoughts on your order, how difficult was it to put Zinchenko at three because that's pretty much going to be one of the talking points that I get to with Ali ahead of Saliba and Declan Rice? Yeah, so when you're trying to figure out who the MVP of a team is, of course, there are multiple things that go into it, lots of variables, and I had to come up with some kind of methodology that could guide me through on a consistent way to get through all six teams. And what I kind of came up with was overall player ability, call that about 70% of the equation, and then tactical importance, call that about 30. And somewhere between the two, I think you get a really good measure for how good a player genuinely is and how important they are to the team. So from the example of Zinchenko, he is not a better player, in my opinion, than Declan Rice or William Saliba. If you just take them one on the other in one each hand, I think that Saliba and Rice are better. But I think at this point, Zinchenko is more important tactically because of the way he inverts, because of the build-up play that Arsenal produce, and when he's not there, you can see there's so much flatter. And also on occasion this season, they started moving different fullbacks into different midfield roles, like when Zinchenko is not there, the system doesn't work as well. And I felt like I needed to give that respect and credence, so I ended up ranking him third. Okay, Ali, that's kind of the case for the defense. What about the case for the prosecution with regards to the order? Do you like the order or do you have one or two gripes? Well, see, the defense, as you called it, actually presented the case for me. He opened up his statement and his defense by saying, if you put them side by side, Declan Rice is a better player than Alexander Zinchenko. He said it, I didn't say it. I could not have said it better myself. And I would add this to the conversation. Arsenal did not have a good enough team to win the Premier League last season. And one of the reasons as to why that was the case is because they were missing a piece in the midfield that would give this team balance and would give this team presence and personality. Zinchenko was part of the team. Odegaard was part of the team. Bukayo Saka was part of the team. You know who wasn't part of the team? Declan Rice. And if indeed they're going to have a chance to win the Premier League this season, he's going to have to play a major role. And a major role is far higher than number five. I think Declan Rice should be higher on this list, certainly higher than Alexander Zinchenko. Now, of course, this is subjective. We're not saying one is right and one is wrong, but we're here for a debate. The ones that just missed out, Gabriel Jesus, Gabriel Martinelli as well. Were they close at all, Sam, of getting into your top five? I've definitely, through this process, I've started to feel a bit bad about how I treated certain players. And Gabriel Jesus is definitely one of those scenarios because I think he's magnificent. And I know that people do tend to criticize the fact that he's not seemingly a 20 goal, a season striker. But if you talk the impact he has, the goals, the assists, the movement, the ability to create space for others. And if you talk up his expected goals and his expected assists is basically averaging about one goal involvement a game on those statistics. So he's clearly extremely important and he's clearly extremely good. But maybe that just tells you how strong a squad this Arsenal team is, that he's only sixth because, wow, the players ahead of him are superb as well.