While I share the concerns over Saka's form (and he looked absolutely awful yesterday), I do still keep coming back to the fact that every time he picks up the ball on the right flank, he's always looking at 2-3 defenders. It is absolutely criminal that we have spent 4 years without developing any semblance of a left sided attack structure or attacking through the middle.
In my opinion, we either need Odegaard and White to come back and stay healthy for the next few months to bring back that triangle that Saka dominated in, or we need to start Havertz at ST to allow for more fluidity through the middle to open up Saka more. I am pretty done with seeing the trio of Martinelli-Gyokeres-Saka starting games - Saka never looks to play Gyokeres in, Gyokeres can't do anything on the ball and Martinelli's real value is running off a striker like Havertz or Merino to get in behind the defense. I really feel like our best lineup when we need goals or against a team we think we can dominate is:
Martinelli - Havertz - Saka
Eze - Odegaard
Rice
Calafiori - Gabriel - Saliba - Timber
I would want one of Calafiori or Timber to invert next to Rice and the other to overlap. Martinelli and Saka both work hard enough out of possession to negate the clear deficiencies that lineup would have. And out of possession it could morph into a 4-4-2 with Havertz and Eze as the ST's and Rice and Odegaard as the CM's. It wouldn't be what I would lineup against City in the final or a later round Champions League match but I'd love to see that lineup against Leverkusen at home.
