Mikel Arteta has had more time on the training ground with his Arsenal players than he may have expected following the postponement of Sunday's home clash against Everton.
In turn, the next time the Gunners are in action comes in the form of Thursday night's Europa League contest against PSV Eindhoven at the Emirates. Arsenal enjoyed a relatively comfortable 2-1 win away at FC Zurich on match-day one of the competition and will be hoping to build on that momentum.
During that clash, Arteta rang the changes and handed minutes to a number of first-team stars who have found regular playing time hard to come by. One of those in question was left-back Kieran Tierney, at one time arguably the first name on the manager's team-sheet, he has fallen down the pecking order since the arrival of Oleksandr Zinchenko.
The ex-Manchester City star was purchased for £35million in the summer and has seemingly dislodged Tierney as Arsenal's starting left-back with relative ease. Zinchenko is widely regarded as the more technical of the two, providing a better fit for the system Arteta wishes to deploy.
During the recent win in Switzerland, it became clear that Tierney was asked to try and operate outside of his comfort zone. The Scotsman's heat-map after the game made quite the picture, with the full-back taking up all sorts of unfamiliar positions - at one stage even contributing to an attack on the right-wing.
What was obvious was that Tierney was trying to play a more inverted role, receiving passes in more central attacking zones as he aimed to provide the likes of Gabriel Martinelli and Eddie Nketiah with sufficient ammo while also contributing to attacks himself.
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While Tierney, for the most part, succeeded in a lot of what was asked him, the obvious reduced quality of opposition raises question marks over whether the former Celtic star could be entrusted to play a more 'Zinchenko-type' role against tougher teams.
The Europa League is likely to be Tierney's best bet for regular football for the time being, but PSV are a step up in quality from last week's competitors, which raises a different question over the left-back's role entirely.
Arteta is faced with a decision when deploying Tierney against better sides - ask him to thrive in a system undeniably better suited to Zinchenko, or sacrifice some of the system to try and play to Tierney's own strengths, of which there are plenty.
A fully-fledged international, Tierney's combative approach and ability to make tireless, lung-busting runs up and down that left-flank all game make his own skillset a useful one, but one Arteta's Arsenal appear to be moving slowly away from.
Tierney is on the record multiple times as having praised Arteta's tactical approach and even dubbed the Gunners boss a football "genius" previously, so it is ironic that he himself is now presenting the Arsenal manager with one of his tougher decisions to make.
The visit of Eredivisie side PSV later this week could potentially shed insight on how Arteta plans to use Tierney for the remainder of the campaign.
