In the very early stages of his Arsenal career, Takehiro Tomiyasu is proving one of the Premier League’s most effective players in the air.

Arsenal summer signing Takehiro Tomiyasu is only a couple of games into life in the Premier League, but he’s already finding one way to stand out.

Against both Norwich City and Burnley, Tomiyasu contested and won a lot of aerial duels. In total, he won 10 of the 11 he took part in. That’s not always easy to do against the teams lower down in the table.

According to WhoScored, that means of the 116 players to contest 10 aerial duels in the Premier League this season, no one has won a higher percentage than Tomiyasu with 90.9%.

We’ll have to see if the right-back can keep that up, and he didn’t win such a high percentage over a full season in Serie A in 2020/21. But he was still in the top-10 in the league for aerial duels won and in the top-5 for defenders alone.

All the signs are that the 22-year-old is very good in the air. Standing at 6’2″, you’d hope so, but it’s good to see he’s getting the most out of that height.

Tomiyasu will now have a job to do on any Spurs forwards jumping off the back of the Arsenal centre-backs this weekend.