Christos Tzolis: Arsenal's New Left Winger Solution
Amid the noise around a blockbuster forward signing, Arsenal may already have their answer sprinting down the left touchline.
Christos Tzolis, once a quiet teenager on a doomed Norwich debut at the Emirates, has returned to north London as something very different: the form attacker in Mikel Arteta’s squad and a genuine contender to solve a long-standing problem position.
From footnote to frontline
Almost five years ago, Tzolis’s first taste of Premier League football came in a match that felt like a referendum on Arteta’s future. Arsenal, bottom of the table after three games, hadn’t scored a goal. Norwich arrived sensing blood. Lose that day and the manager’s position would have been perilous.
Tzolis started on the left but barely registered. No shots. Limited impact. Arsenal scraped a 1-0 win, clung on to their coach and began a slow, ruthless rebuild that has since carried them to the title.
The Greek winger has watched that evolution from a distance and, more recently, from the wrong side of it. Playing for Club Brugge last season, he discovered exactly what the modern Arsenal feel like to face.
“I can say it was the most difficult team to attack against that I’ve played so far,” he admitted earlier this summer. “We played against other big teams, but against Arsenal, we had the most difficulties to make clear chances.”
Now he no longer has to solve Arteta’s defensive puzzle. He has to break teams for him.
A numbers machine from Belgium
Arsenal paid £34million for Tzolis, and on paper the deal looks coldly logical. Last season at Club Brugge he produced 22 goals and 29 assists in all competitions, a staggering level of output for any wide player.
Yes, those numbers came in Belgium, a league Opta ranks as the seventh strongest in the world. That caveat will linger until he proves he can do it under the harsher lights of the Premier League. But inside London Colney, the excitement is real.
Recruitment staff liked his versatility across the front line and his ability to go either way, left or right, in the style of Leandro Trossard. Coaches liked his character. Decision-makers believed his technical level would drag training up a notch.
Above all, they loved the relentlessness of his end product. Tzolis has now scored or assisted in each of his last 15 competitive club games, racking up 25 goal involvements in that stretch. That kind of consistency has been missing at Arsenal, even in a title-winning season.
Gabriel Martinelli finished last league campaign with just one Premier League goal. No Arsenal player beyond Viktor Gyokeres reached more than seven league strikes. Martin Odegaard topped the assist charts with only six. For all the tactical sophistication and choreographed patterns, the raw numbers from the frontline were short of elite.
Arteta needs more players who finish moves, not just help construct them. Tzolis arrives with that as his calling card.
Fitness, form and a flying start
Another tick in his column: availability. During two years in Belgium, Tzolis missed only five matches, three of those through illness. In a squad where key forwards have repeatedly broken down at decisive moments, that matters.
He also hit the ground running. Two weeks of pre-season and a friendly with Club Brugge before his move meant he joined Arsenal already close to peak fitness. It has shown.
Across the summer he has looked sharp, direct and decisive. He registered assists against Borussia Dortmund and Real Betis. He scored his first Arsenal goal against Girona, curling a measured finish into the far corner.
Then came the Community Shield, the first serious test of his new life. Bigger occasion, better opposition, same calm execution. Tzolis set up Kai Havertz with a clever, cushioned header for Arsenal’s second, then found Odegaard in the box for another assist.
Wearing the No17 shirt, gliding forward with tight touches before slicing inside to deliver the decisive pass, he briefly evoked memories of Alexis Sanchez on that left flank. It was impossible not to notice.
“He’s fitting, he’s a really intelligent boy and he has a massive quality which is when he’s in the last 20-30 metres,” Arteta said afterwards. “He’s so composed to pick people out around the box or to finish actions. I’m really impressed with him.”
Tzolis himself has never hidden how much he admired Sanchez.
“Actually, I knew that he wore the number 17,” he said when he joined. “I watched a lot of football and he was a top player for Arsenal, as a left winger always. He’s one of the players I looked up to when I was younger. And also, I see some similarities with him. But it’s not the reason I took the number 17.
“It’s nice (though). Alexis Sanchez had number 17 - so I hope I will have the same success.”
A changing of the guard on the left?
Arsenal’s stance on Gabriel Martinelli underlines just how quickly the landscape has shifted. The Brazilian was left out of the Community Shield squad entirely, and the club’s openness to a sale reads like a clear endorsement of Tzolis as the current first-choice left winger.
That side of the pitch has nagged away at Arteta for several seasons. Arsenal’s attacking weight has largely fallen on Bukayo Saka and Odegaard on the right, with the left often feeling more improvised and less reliable.
Now there is the prospect of Riccardo Calafiori stepping up from left-back, knitting play and driving forward, with Tzolis ahead of him providing a ruthless edge. For the first time in a while, that flank looks like a planned weapon rather than a patchwork solution.
The club would still like to add another attacker. Eberechi Eze, for instance, can operate from the left and would offer a different profile. If no sale materialises before the window closes, Martinelli remains in the building as competition and rotation, and the arrival of a more progressive passer in midfield such as his Brazil team-mate Bruno Guimaraes could yet jolt his Arsenal career back to life.
But right now, the shirt belongs to Tzolis.
Marquee signing or quiet revolution?
When Arsenal signed him, the expectation was clear: a marquee forward would arrive alongside him, not instead of him. That plan has not disappeared. The club still have the financial muscle and ambition to go big in this or a future window.
If and when that happens, Tzolis may find his minutes squeezed. He knows that. Arsenal know that. This was never sold as a one-man rebuild of the attack.
Yet football rarely sticks to the script. A player who was supposed to be a supporting act can force his way into the starring role if he keeps bending games his way.
Arsenal head into their title defence needing almost every attacker to raise last season’s output. For most of them, improvement is non-negotiable.
For Christos Tzolis, the challenge is simpler: just keep doing what he’s already doing, and see how long anyone dares to take that No17 shirt off his back.
