Why Nacho Monreal Has Been the Unsung Hero for Arsenal so Far This Season

After a shaky start to the season, marked by an opening-day defeat to West Ham United, Arsenal are finally finding some form. In their last three matches, they have beaten both Manchester United and Bayern Munich, racking up eight goals without concession.

In that run of games, the likes of Mesut Ozil and Alexis Sanchez have understandably made headlines. However, those performances have been underpinned by the remarkable reliability of a man who regularly flies below the radar: Spanish full-back Nacho Monreal.

Left-back certainly isn’t the most glamorous position on the field. Perhaps that’s partly why Monreal has not received the credit he deserves. However, over the course of the 2015/16 campaign, he has arguably been Arsenal’s most consistent player. Week in and week out, Monreal delivers.

It’s a far cry from the volatile form he showed when he first arrived in England. Initially, Monreal struggled to adapt to the physical side of the Premier League. However, that all changed early on last season, when a spate of injuries forced Arsene Wenger to deploy Monreal as a makeshift centre-half.

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Some players would have wilted in those kinds of unforgiving circumstances, but Monreal rose to the challenge and emerged as a better player. The spell in the centre appeared to toughen him up, and when he returned to full-back, he looked a better player for it.

Since then, Kieran Gibbs has barely had a look-in. Thus far in 2015/16, the English defender has made just two Premier League appearances totalling 21 minutes. When Monreal arrived back in January 2013, it was ostensibly to provide support for the injured Gibbs. Now, he is the undisputed first-choice left-back.

That’s partly because of how much balance he brings to the team. With Hector Bellerin bombing forward from right-back, Arsenal need someone on the opposite flank who is prepared to be more conservative. Monreal is a defender first and foremost, and he does his duty with incredible diligence.

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That much is clear in his stats. Montreal has won 60 per cent of his one-on-one duels this season—a number that, from the regular Arsenal first XI, only Francis Coquelin and Per Mertesacker can better. Perhaps most impressively, he has won 67 per cent of his aerial battles. That underlines the dramatic nature of his improvement; in his first season in English football, he won headers just 40 per cent of the time. 

That’s not to say Monreal’s game is entirely about defending. He’s created 11 goalscoring chances this season—more than the likes of Theo Walcott, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain or even Hector Bellerin. He also has two assists to his name, suggesting the quality of his delivery is good. Monreal generally adopts a safety-first approach, but when the opportunity is there to attack, he is not scared to take it.

According to Sami Mokbel of the Daily Mail, Monreal has recently agreed a new three-year contract with the club. That’s a huge boost for manager and supporters alike. With Monreal in this kind of form, they won’t want him going anywhere anytime soon.

All stats via Squawka

James McNicholas is Bleacher Report's lead Arsenal correspondent and is following the club from a London base throughout 2015/16. Follow him on Twitter here.