When Gilberto Silva packed his bags and left north London in 2008, Lucas Torreira was 12 and, one imagines, spent most of his free time frantically kicking an empty pie tin up and down the dusty streets of his native Fray Bentos. And whilst the young Torreira had almost certainly heard of Gilberto – he had captained Brazil to glory at the Copa América just a year before – he probably hadn’t given much time to mulling over how Arsenal would replace their imposing defensive midfielder. At that point, of course, that was not his responsibility. Unfortunately for Arsenal fans, it seemed Arsène Wenger had spent equally little time considering the issue. Years passed, and the question continued to be asked. In the intervening post-Gilberto, late-Wenger period, Arsenal signed a grand total of Mathieu Flamini (again), Mohamed Elneny and Granit Xhaka to cover the position, and spent a long while relying on the questionable abilities of Francis Coquelin. The narrative built and consumed all, becoming central to the Wenger-Out brigade’s regular protests. Finally, a decade later, the Gilberto Silva problem has been solved. Lucas Torreira, that little boy from a fairly inconsequential Uruguayan town, has filled the void left by the ‘Invisible Wall’. Or at least that is what we are constantly told. Arsenal fans are enamoured; pundits too. “I love him”, said Martin Keown, who rarely utters those words about anything. Ian Wright, meanwhile, beamed, “He’s the guy we’ve been looking for for the last four or five years… He’s magnificent.” And Paul Merson weighed in too, “They’ve been crying out for someone like him since Gilberto Silva and Patrick Vieira.” Torreira, however, does not really have a great deal in common with Gilberto. The latter was a converted centre-half, a substantial physical screen for his back four who rarely ventured over the half-way line. The five-foot-five-inch Torreira, on the other hand, started out in the youth ranks at Montevideo Wanderers and Pescara as a number 10. He is energetic, eating up ground like few others in the Premier League, and fits more into the mould of a modern, all-round midfielder than the out-and-out blocker. That long-standing narrative, though, is a powerful force. It would not really be satisfying to admit that football has changed, and that as a result, Arsenal didn’t really need a Gilberto replacement any more. Having the diminutive Uruguayan as a way to tie up that loose defensive midfield end fulfils our innate desire for the stories we create to have neat beginnings and middles and pleasing ends.