Arsenal sign surprise £50m Gabriel replacement

Despite making breakthroughs in the Premier League and Champions League, Arsenal seem unable to catch a break this season.

Mikel Arteta’s side have played much better football than last year, but have been just as unlucky, if not more so, when it comes to injuries.

For example, Kai Havertz, Bukayo Saka, Martin Odegaard, Victor Gyokeres and Noni Madueke are just some of the star players who have been or are still being forced to the sidelines.

And with the Gunners set to be without Gabriel Magalhães for up to two months unless the situation worsens any further, Arteta may have a surprise replacement in mind for the Brazilian.

Arsenal’s record if Gabriel didn’t play

It’s no secret that Gabriel has become one of Arsenal’s most important players in recent years thanks to his impact in both penalty areas.

Indeed, it is this ability that led Sky Sports’ Jamie Carragher to suggest last month that he could be “considered the most influential player in the Premier League”.

But how important is the big Brazilian to Arteta’s team? That’s a pretty difficult question to answer, but a good way to approach it would be to look at how the team has performed without him over the past two-plus years.

The former LOSC Lille star made 50 appearances in all competitions in the 23/24 season, 48 of which were starts, and scored four goals and provided one assist, averaging 2.16 points per game.

The only games he did not feature in were the draw against Fulham and the win against Sheffield United, meaning that without him the team averaged just two points per game.

However, the two-game sample size is quite small, unlike last season when he missed 16 games, of which the club won just eight, drew five and lost three, and the Gunners averaged just 1.81 points per game without the Brazilian in their squad.

What were they doing when he was playing? Well, the Sao Paulo-born giant made 42 appearances across all competitions, scoring five goals and providing three assists, averaging 1.98 points per game.

So while there is not a huge drop in points per game for Arsenal without Gabriel in the team, there is still a noticeable drop and that is a cause for concern with games against Tottenham Hotspur, Bayern Munich and Chelsea coming up.

But Arteta has more than enough replacements for his monster centre-backs, including some rather surprising players.

Arsenal’s surprise substitution of Gabriel

The consensus among most Arsenal fans at the moment seems to be that Riccardo Calafioli or Cristian Mosquera would be the ideal replacements for Gabriel this weekend.

The former has been in good form all season, while the latter has shown glimpses of true talent since joining.

But while both players make perfect sense, the other more surprising option Arteta could choose from is Ben White.

Yes, the former Brighton & Hove Albion player feels like a forgotten man at the moment, spending most of his time at the club playing right-back, but he has been handed a £50m deal and could be handed the job on Sunday.

After all, although he hasn’t played there consistently for some time now (his last substitute came in October 2024), the Englishman was signed as a centre-back and spent the entire 21/22 season playing there, where he performed well.

In fact, the only reason he was moved to the right wing was because William Saliba was eventually given the chance to play, and Gabriel was completely unfit to play at full-back.

Moreover, by playing the Poole-born ace there, Calafioli won’t have to give up the position he’s been incredibly good at all year, and the younger Mosquera won’t be thrown into one of the most tense games of the season, and the same could be said for Piero Hincapie.

Finally, and this particularly pertains to the game against Spurs, the 28-year-old is, in the words of journalist Charles Watts, a “master of the dark arts”.

In other words, he could be the perfect player to ensnare Spurs players and force them out of the game or sent off.

Additionally, he has a track record that made Guglielmo Vicario’s life particularly difficult.

After all, it would be a surprise and a certain risk, but Arteta should still consider starting White at centre-back for Arsenal in Gabriel’s absence.