Field awareness too, which I think is compounded by his poor first touch. He always needs an extra beat to control a pass, so by the time he looks up, the open attacking lanes are totally different. That's fine if we play him like Inzaghi, less so if we play him like Martinelli.
I really don't understand having Eddie out wide, at all. That said, he's been aggressively mid at striker too. Props to him, he got the bag off of like four matches.
tierney has been doing so in the last 3-4 games he's played. martinelli moves inside to the next lane (that xhaka typically occupies now) while xhaka drops deeper to pair with partey, receiving the ball from the defense. it neutralises what martinelli does best and how our offense operates this year. it's why i agree with what @mebeSajid said about him possibly pairing better with nelson. eddie was on the left yesterday but he's not really . . . useful out there in a normal flow of the game. as @ArsenalMetro touched on, his head is down lacking awareness out wide and his touch is not always reliable. to close a game, it's doable but during a full game, very meh. in preseason and when we started the season, if they were on the pitch together, gabe jesus was on the wing and nketiah was central. it negates nketiah's weakness better and jesus is capable enough as out wide as well as being diligent enough tracking back to meet arteta's requirement. that changed around the same time that tierney was no longer asked to take the zinchenko role and resume his old role with xhaka dropping deep instead. not sure why, whether it's to try to get jesus the goal to break this drought or just gabe jesus not being happy because he, likely, was promised the central spot (especially with WC coming up) to sign or, if it's as simple as what arteta said and just it's less change overall. (which doesn't actually jive with tierney's role changing.)
i don't mind eddie too much because he's homegrown and i will admit to having a soft spot for someone who scores the trash goals he does. and, honestly, i'm hoping it's one of those "we'll take chris wood to back up callum wilson until we have the time and money to get an alexander isak" thing. i kinda blame part of his recent looking bad on arteta. like you said, i don't understand having him out wide where his lack of capabilities is out there for all to see. the only thing i can honestly think of is arteta trying to get gabe jesus his goal and/or letting him stay central to try to lock in his WC spot.
In a vacuum, Nketiah wide makes no sense, but I think Arteta is desperately trying to get Jesus a goal as @daedalus posited. Tierney (before yesterday) had been doing far more inverting than y’all have been talking about, in my eyes. At PSV he was routinely directly above the left center half and was living in the center circle. Did he go outside at times? Of course, but no more or not much more often than Zinchenko or even Tomiyasu do. I think there’s a lot of confirmation bias at play in this perception that he’s just bombing down the outside constantly.
oh, i'm totally not suggesting that he's just blindly bombing forward (like we used to do) and some of it could well be down to him playing in situations where we need to score. but his role for the position has definitely been different from how zinchenko and tomiyasu gets deployed. i think the easiest indication is generally where martinelli and xhaka frequently start their play with him present. also, i put no blame on tierney because it has to be instructions from arteta since he's still getting playing time. with nelson gaining fitness and confidence, hopefully, they can be the left-side pairing for various cup games because i think they pair than with martinelli.
It's not that he can't invert or that he's only bombing down the outside: it's that he's at his best when he's going down the outside, and that creates space for whoever the winger he's paired with. This is also my problem with Ben White at RB: White doesn't go outside all that often, and that means Saka is almost always 1v2. And that overlap is devastating: it tore Sperz to shreds when we started doing it in the second half.