Lucas Torreira “is no longer at ease”

Like a lot of you, I was pretty excited when Lucas Torreira signed with Arsenal. He played a pretty pivotal role in his first season with the club, as a defensive midfielder who was very good at being the pivot, but then when he came back to the club this year after his summer at Copa America, he’s found himself both played out of position - as a ball-winning midfielder, much more of a #10 than we would have expected he would be - and buried deep on Emery’s bench as it’s been made clear he’s not very good at that #10 role.

Torreira has only played 355 Premier League minutes this season, and has found more meaningful minutes in the cups. As you can imagine, this isn’t his desired career path, and in an interview with Calciomercato today, Torreira’s agent is painting a picture of a player with one foot out the door (all translations Google Translate, not mine):

Mr Bentancur (Torreira’s agent), Torreira has lost his starting position at Arsenal. In your opinion, why?”I must say that the change of role has penalized him sharply. He is no longer at ease and we hope that things can change”.

“He is no longer at ease”. That’s...not great. Of course, this comes from the person other than Lucas Torreira with the largest vested interest in Torreira’s financial future, so grains of salt of course, but it’s also easy to see why a player like Torreira wouldn’t be happy with a demotion to cup specialist.

It remains to be seen whether this purported unrest will be enough to make Torreira want to leave (or for Emery to see him as surplus to requirements) in January or if he sees out the season, but either way, this isn’t a great look for the club, letting one of their better defensive midfielders get to the point where he’s so unhappy he wants to leave. Hopefully he can be turned around and can once again become a major contributor to whatever success Arsenal has.