Arsenal have a 5-0 home win and a 3-0 home win this season in the Premier League. The two most forgiving games in the schedule, against Leeds and Nottingham Forest at the Emirates, have seen the Gunners create and score relatively easily, even if the Leeds victory was inflated by some setpiece goals.
However, the schedule has been frontloaded with some difficult fixtures, Liverpool and Bilbao away (and Manchester United I guess?) as well as Manchester City at home. This weekend Arsenal travel to Newcastle where they haven’t scored in their last three visits.
Performances and setups in these tougher games have set off a discourse over Arteta’s approach and whether it is inherently too conservative. I admit that I have really begun to lament the levels of hysteria around every single thing Arsenal do and don’t do, but it is still a very worthwhile discussion.
Arsenal signed Viktor Gyokeres, Noni Madueke and Eberechi Eze this summer, so we can assume that Arteta wanted greater creativity and unpredictability in attack. All three of these players have an element of improvisation about them in different ways. Diversifying and refreshing the attack was clearly one of the manager’s principal aims for the summer transfer window.
These additions have added depth to the attack too and it has been needed in these opening weeks. Kai Havertz, Martin Odegaard, Bukayo Saka and now Noni Madueke have all already been injured. Some of those absences have informed a stiffness in these Arsenal attack in some of these bigger games in the opening weeks of the season.
Strangely, I think Saka’s absence was probably the least impactful since Noni Madueke is a very capable deputy and he gives Arsenal a lot of the qualities Saka does. The absences of Havertz and Odegaard have been more problematic in my view, especially as they have been simultaneous.
For a start, it has often meant Arsenal’s entire front three has been comprised of new signings. In Bilbao Eze, Madueke and Gyokeres started together having only joined the club this summer, so new relationships have been forming in some of the toughest fixtures.
One of the reasons that Odegaard and Havertz are so trusted by Arteta is that they perform ‘both sides’ of the game very well. Odegaard is a creative player and one of Arsenal’s most important and hardest working out of possession players too.
His absence leads to some very binary choices between players who can match his creative output but can’t lead the press as well (Eze and Nwaneri) or a player who can perform his less eye catching duties but with little of his creativity (Merino). Arteta has mixed and matched according to the opponent.
When Odegaard had to be substituted against Leeds and Forest, Ethan Nwaneri was preferred. In Bilbao, at Anfield and at home to Manchester City, Arteta opted for Mikel Merino. Of course, against Manchester City, the decision to pick Merino was almost immediately rendered redundant by Erling Haaland’s early goal.
Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face. Once Arsenal picked themselves up off the canvas, Arteta sent on Eze for Merino because the game state had shifted so early. Missing such an all round player like Odegaard has been an issue in these games and I would say the same of Kai Havertz. Havertz is another player who does ‘both sides’ of the game to a high standard.
That certainly isn’t true of Viktor Gyokeres. Not yet. Gyokeres has scored against Leeds and Forest at home (both of those open play goals emanated from lofted passes over the top of the opposition defence, just as Martinelli’s did against City, which is clearly a string Arsenal have added to their attacking bow this season) and I think, broadly, that was the sort of game he was bought for.
Arsenal sometimes lacked the guile to break down deep defences last season and drew too many games through a failure to convert dominance into goals. Arsenal didn’t have as much of an issue in the ‘bigger games.’ I suspect Arteta would have envisaged a template where Havertz started upfront in the bigger games.
In fact, if he had been fit I also suspect Arteta would have likely opted for Havertz in Odegaard’s position for tests like Liverpool and Manchester City. There is something in here about the profiles of player that Arsenal have had unavailable during arguably the toughest run of fixtures of the season.
Arsenal have certainly been better equipped to deal with some of these absences than they were last season. Injuries to Havertz and Saka basically ended the Gunners’ domestic chances months before the end of the last campaign. They have been better resourced this time around and have been able to rely on individual moments of quality amid some pretty stiff performances.
Eze was not great against Manchester City but his pass for Martinelli’s goal is the sort of match changing moment he was bought for. Whereas players like Martinelli and Trossard were starting pretty much every game they were available for last season, now they are largely making an impact from the bench. (For my money, the decision to start Trossard against Manchester City was a more debatable selection than Merino).
Arsenal are also adjusting to a new striker for whom, at this stage, I think it is fair to say offers little more than goals. I suspect this will only change slightly over the season which is why I think Arteta would probably have preferred to play Havertz in those bigger games when the contest happens more ‘between the boxes.’
My own view is that I am ‘sticking a pin’ in some of Arsenal’s attacking stiffness in the opening weeks of the season given all the caveats. They made short work of their two gentlest fixtures of the season so far, but that isn’t to say everything will be totally fine after Newcastle this weekend (a game I think many will have to watch with gritted teeth again). Personally I think I would be inclined to reassess in a month or so.
