Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta has been handed another untimely "riddle" to solve in the wake of William Saliba's hamstring injury, Gunners expert Charles Watts has told Sports Mole.
The Frenchman was unexpectedly absent from Saturday's 2-2 Premier League draw with Aston Villa, and it was subsequently revealed that he had been suffering from hamstring tightness in the wake of the North London derby win over Tottenham Hotspur.
Reports have claimed that Saliba is likely to miss around two weeks of action, putting his chances of facing Manchester City on February 2 in jeopardy, and Arteta has confirmed that he will miss Wednesday's Champions League clash with Dinamo Zagreb.
Arteta responded to Saliba's blow by fielding Jurrien Timber at centre-back and Thomas Partey at right-back against Villa, but the latter has struggled to fit into that unfamiliar slot, giving Arteta another unnecessary headache at a crucial point of the season.
"It is a huge blow, especially with that Manchester City game," Watts said. "Everyone's going to be focusing on that match now and when Saliba will be back. It's a huge blow losing William Saliba for any game. He's played the most outfield minutes for anyone at Arsenal so far this season. That centre-back partnership with Gabriel is just so, so key.
"Coming up against Erling Haaland in a couple of weeks, those two do play very well against Erling Haaland. He struggled against them in the last couple of games. Certainly the game earlier on in this season, he didn't really get a sniff, you you want him fit for that game.
Should Arteta ditch the Partey experiment?
"If you haven't got Saliba, what do you do? You move Timber into centre-back because there's no Ben White, there's no Tomiyasu. And if you move in Timber, then what do you do at right back? Mikel's gone with Thomas Partey. Again, hasn't really worked. Without playing particularly badly, he made one really key defensive error that led to the equaliser.
"Arsenal fans do not like seeing Thomas Partey at right back. A, because he's not right back and B, it takes him out of midfield where he's been very important this season. So it's just another riddle for Mikel Arteta to try and solve. He's had to try and solve a lot of those this season. It doesn't seem like that's stopping anytime soon."
Saliba's absence coupled with injuries to Ben White and Takehiro Tomiyasu leaves Arsenal without another right-footed centre-back option besides Timber, seemingly leaving Arteta with no choice but to shoe-horn Partey into a right-back role.
However, the Gunners have only won one of their six games this season when the Ghana international has started in that slot, and Partey was culpable for Villa's equaliser on the weekend, being caught ball-watching and failing to track the run of Ollie Watkins.
Watts does not think that the Partey right-back experiment can be blamed for the midfielder 'switching off' in a crucial moment, but he believes that Arteta cannot ignore the "telling statistic" of Arsenal winning so few games with the 31-year-old in defence.
"To be fair, I don't think the goal that Watkins scored has anything to do with Thomas Partey at right back," Watts added. "That was from a set piece. It was recycled and put back in. Thomas Partey wasn't marking his fullback in that situation. He was on Ollie Watkins. It doesn't matter where you play, right back, centre forward, centre midfield, you track Ollie Watkins when that cross comes in.
Arsenal's record with Partey at right-back "telling"
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"So I don't really put that goal down to the fact that Thomas Partey was playing at right back. I just put it down to being really, really poor defensive play from an experienced player who switched off in a moment when he really couldn't afford to do.
"[Jakub] Kiwior's obviously the most natural option. You just play him there, but then you've got to play two left-footed centre backs, which Mikel doesn't tend to like to do. So I can understand why he's a bit resistant to that as well. But one win from six with Partey at right back, for a manager who puts an awful lot of emphasis into stats and into numbers, that's a pretty telling statistic that I don't think you can really ignore.
"It was put to him in a press conference after the game at Villa. He brushed it off, but when he's sitting back in his office at London Colney thinking about it and you look at that statistic, it's not great. And so it feels like for whatever reason, it's not really working, and Arsenal aren't getting the results they need when he plays there."
Aside from 19-year-old Maldini Kacurri, the only other centre-back option on the Arsenal bench against Villa was the seldom-seen Jakub Kiwior, who is more comfortable on the left-hand side where the ever-present Gabriel Magalhaes operates.
Kiwior has started just twice in the Premier League and once in the Champions League this season, leading to talk of a possible return to Serie A, but he is expected to continue in North London until at least the end of the season.
While Watts can see little good of putting Kiwior up against Erling Haaland, he expects the Poland international to earn some minutes over the Gunners' next three matches, adding: "Surely you have to try something different.
Watts: 'If Kiwior does not play, what is the point?'
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"I think for these few games you've got coming out, you've got Zagreb, Wolves and then Girona. If you're not going to play Kiwior in those games, what's the point of even being here? He can play in that centre-back partnership with Gabriel there and then he can leave Timber at right back.
"The Man City one's slightly different. I'm not sure you'd want Kiwior up against Haaland in that position. But I think these next three games may be giving him a chance to just play Kiwior there, give him some minutes, see how he gets on and then you'll have a decision to make against Manchester City."
Without Saliba in the first XI, Arsenal threw away a hard-earned two-goal lead against Unai Emery's side and had a late goal disallowed for a Kai Havertz handball, a devastating blow after Liverpool trumped Brentford 2-0 earlier in the day with two dramatic strikes from Darwin Nunez in added-on time.
As well as killing the momentum from their derby success over Spurs, that stalemate saw Arsenal fall six points behind Liverpool at the top of the Premier League table, and the Reds still boast a game in hand on Arteta's side.
Furthermore, only goal difference is keeping Arsenal ahead of Nottingham Forest, and the importance of gameweek 22 in terms of the title picture is not lost on Watts, who could sense the hope being "sucked out" of Gooners after Nunez's late show at Brentford.
"It felt really pivotal, didn't it?" he said. "The fact that Liverpool for so long looked like they were going to be dropping points, every single Arsenal fan was going to be very, very excited as that clock ticked down the 90 minutes at Brentford.
'Liverpool win sucked optimism out of Arsenal fans'
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"And then suddenly Liverpool snatched the win like that right at the end. You could just feel that suck the optimism out of Arsenal fans. It was a really damaging, damaging day, damaging few hours for Arsenal. And you really get the sense of that in the fallout from the result on Saturday. I think everyone knows just how big a weekend that could potentially be in a title race.
"It's not so much the draw, it's the way the draw unfolded; having the win just there, you've done all the hard work, it was just about seeing it out. And then to throw it away the way they did with two sloppy goals. And then the high of thinking you've won it at the end and then taken away with the goal being disallowed, it was a tough day."
While Liverpool were able to bring their most expensive signing of all time off the bench at Brentford, Arsenal's attacking reserves consisted of Raheem Sterling and academy pair Nathan Butler-Oyedeji and Ismeal Kabia.
Injured trio Gabriel Jesus, Bukayo Saka and Ethan Nwaneri were all watching on helplessly amid calls for the Gunners to add to their attacking ranks in January, and Arteta highlighted Liverpool's strength in numbers in his post-game press conference.
Sterling on loan was Arsenal's only attacking arrival of the summer window, but the Chelsea-owned man has failed to make any sort of impact this season, and Watts went as far as to say that he is guilty of making the team worse when he is introduced.
"What changes could you have made at that point? When you looked at the bench, obviously you're pushing for a win, but the only attackers you got are two academy kids who've never played before," he concluded.
'Sterling makes Arsenal worse'
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"Potentially could have done something with [Oleksandr] Zinchenko, but Arsenal were on top. Despite conceding those two goals, they'd managed to wrestle control of the game again. They had the momentum in that final 10 minutes. So I just don't think Arteta really felt the need to change it in midfield.
"But in attack, he just had no other options. You throw Sterling on, that almost makes you worse, to be honest. The way he performed when he came on, he had absolutely no influence on that game whatsoever, just didn't look up to speed at all.
"He referenced it in the press conference afterwards; he pointed to what Liverpool had done and the impact that their substitutes had made at Brentford. And then basically said what we did was the opposite. And that is where Arsenal are right now when it comes to attacking options. If they're not doing it on the pitch, they don't really have anything else to change it with."
Arsenal now take a break from Premier League duties as they host Dinamo Zagreb in the Champions League on Wednesday, where a win would see them take a huge step towards a top-eight finish and guaranteed last-16 spot.
Arteta's men then head to Wolverhampton Wanderers for Saturday's top-flight battle, bidding to replicate their 2-0 success over the Old Gold from their opening game of the season.
Ben Knapton
