Arsenal star Leandro Trossard has a new role - and has become one of the Gunners' most important players as a result

Arsenal should have sold Leandro Trossard over the summer, really: it would have made sense.

The coldest decisions often prove to be the best ones: a fact that has seen Bukayo Saka enjoy an ascendence to the throne of English football, and Mikel Arteta shift his crosshairs to bring in physical beasts over technicality in recent years.

For under £25m, Arsenal's acquisition of Trossard over a flashier name in 2023 ranks as another example of sensibility over passion – especially when considering the trajectories of the Belgian and some of the other names the Gunner have been linked to in the years since.

Leandro Trossard has come back into the Arsenal team - and been exceptional

Yet Trossard reached an obvious crossroads last season: he was never going to better his Midas goal haul of 2023/24, and at 30 years old, his goals were now punctuating scatter-gun displays in which little would stick.

Arsenal have long struggled to sell at players' peaks, and with three forwards targeted in Noni Madueke, Viktor Gyokeres and Ebere Eze – not to mention the fact that Arteta had looked to use Mikel Merino on attack ahead of the Belgian – Trossard seemed likeliest for the cut.

It makes his start to 2025/26 all the sweeter, and Trossard has a new role.

The former Brighton man has always excelled in tight spaces, and with Arsenal finding even less room in the final third, Trossard has left his touchline-hugging role to come inside and combine with Eze, Saka and others – yet he hasn't lost his penchant to drift, find space and play the ghost at the back post, as he did for Arsenal's winner at the Cottage.

But more significantly than that, Trossard was Arsenal's oldest starter against Fulham. Arteta lost Jorginho, Raheem Sterling and Neto as his elder statesmen over the summer, while Martin Odegaard has been in and out of the team following injury.

Seniority matters. Arsenal have more vocal leaders but in the experience of Trossard, Arteta has found a calm presence who has a chameleonic knack of twisting his game around his team-mates.

When Riccardo Calafiori overlaps, the Belgian adds numbers in the centre. When David Raya plays long, Trossard is a runner looking to catch Gyokeres' second ball. Even when truly on his game, he never does one thing exceptionally: he just does an exceptional amount to a good standard, getting the best out of Eze, Saka and even Martin Zubimendi with his movement and license to roam.

And nothing's particularly changed for Trossard either. This is simply a version of Arsenal that suits him so much more than ever before – he's not the star, he's a foil for others.

He is still the pint-sized, silver-haired hard-runner who put in wing-back shifts at the Amex, the false nine who impersonated Gabriel Jesus after signing for Arteta, the wingfielder who filled Odegaard's time-sheet last term and the man who struck against Liverpool, Bayern Munich, Manchester United, Tottenham and inevitably, Brighton.

Sometimes, he is every one in a transitional 15 minutes for a young Gunners side who are still gelling. He loses the ball, he doesn't dictate – but he makes life easier for those around him in and out of possession.

“He has this quality to create these magic moments when the team needs it the most,” Arteta claimed after the win at Fulham. “And that intuition: he's in the right place at the right moment.

“And that's a huge quality for the team and a massive weapon for us, so [I'm] really happy. I think he's been very, very good in recent weeks, and now we have a lot of players in a really high emotional state and performance level, which is really good to see.”

Few saw Trossard becoming anything more than a stopgap for a superstar when he joined, let alone this latest renaissance. In an Arsenal side that made eight signings over the summer, this latest iteration of an existing fringe player might just be the best addition of them all.