No Bukayo Saka
No Martin Odegaard
No William Saliba
No Kai Havertz
No Ben White
We went to Atletico Bilbao with half a starting XI out missing, including arguably our 3 best players, and won 2-nil. It was a victory for squad depth.
Mikel Arteta spoke in the summer about changing the make-up of Arsenal’s squad. He no longer wanted to rank players as A, B and C. Instead, he wanted a squad with a higher floor, where he could pick on 20 players without seeing a drop off in quality.
A year ago we would have been concerned about going to the 4th best team in Spain without so many top players. But this 2025 squad is made different.
The fact that even without the 5 missing superstars, we could win so comfortably really is a testament to Arteta and Andrea Berta building a fantastic squad.
Noni Madueke, Mikel Merino, Cristhian Mosquera, Viktor Gyokeres and Jurrien Timber were the 5 to start and there was zero drop off in quality.
And then add in Myles Lewis Skelly and Thomas Partey, both of whom would have started 6 months ago. And then you are perhaps beginning to see the step up in squad depth.
The cherry on the cake is that Arteta was able to bring on players of the calibre of Gabriel Martinelli and Leandro Trossard, despite missing 3 key attackers, and it was those subs that took us to victory.
Arteta’s place for this season was built on the semi-final defeat to PSG last year.
Losing 2-1 in the game and 3-1 on aggregate, Saka had thrown us a life line with 15 minutes to go. It would have been a huge task, but we were not out of the tie.
Arteta turned to his bench to see what attacking options he had. Players that could make an impact in the final 20-25 minutes. He saw Raheem Sterling, Ethan Nwaneri and Nathan Butler-Oyedeji. He opted for Ben White.
Now some will say that this was by his design. That he had not signed the attackers we needed over successive summers. And I get that. But he was also robbed of Kai Havertz and Gabriel Jesus. Two senior forwards who could have made an impact.
Role on to last night and Jesus and Havertz were still nowhere to be seen. But instead of Arteta looking at the attacking options on the bench and feeling his heart sink, he was able to bring on game changers.
Nearly two years ago I was blogging about Arteta taking inspiration from Eddie Jones and his finisher concept. It feels like the rest of the world has caught up following Trossard and Martinelli’s moments.
Too many fans were quick to write off the pair. Demand we cash in. But both have shown that they are able to change games.
Trossard, for me, has always been a supersub. His instinctive, off the cuff play benefits from the chaos of the closing stages of a game. And likewise Martinelli could become a suuperb option off the bench with his direct, tireless running at fullback who have already faced 70 minutes.
Neither is particularly suited to Arteta’s structured build up play (nor is Noni Madueke). But the pair, alongside Mdueke, will thrive in the chaos of the final 20 minutes when the play is less structured and they are facing tired defences. Their instructions will be simple: Go make something happen. And against Bilbao they did.
So we get 3 points from a tough away fixture. Based on last season, we need to win 4 from 8 to qualify for the play-offs and 5 wins and a draw to be top 8.
UTA.
Keenos