ARSENAL FANS, TAKE A BEAT. THIS IS HISTORY.
‘It’s fine that people hate us. It’s part of our history,’
George Graham.
You can’t let it get to you. There’s always a new angle on our progress, and it has generally been quite disingenuous. The latest is set pieces, next week it’ll be something blander. But you can’t fuss over it.
What you should do is remember cackling pundits when we’d get slapped around by Tony Pulis teams. Fans booing snapped-legged kids getting stretchered off the pitch. An entire country laughing at the soft lads from North London who couldn’t handle outrageous roughhousing.
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Arteta was part of that era for a small chunk. He was in the dressing room with Arsène Wenger before big games, knowing his team weren’t prepared. He trained with kids that weren’t built for success. He watched as we solved set-piece issues with short players, when we packed out our midfield with players who weren’t athletes, and he refused to sully his art.
Best believe the team you see now is a by-product of being weak and unprepared. If you’re reading this blog right now, my guess is you’ve been with me a long time, and you were here through the banter years. Lean back from your phone and spend five minutes thinking about all the things we complained about here… now tell me one that Arteta hasn’t corrected?
Arsenal are a MASSIVE team.
We are hard-pressing.
Our defenders are tall.
Every single player is technically gifted.
The players are tactically intelligent.
Every single one of our players is a mentality monster.
We have specialist players who can play multiple positions.
The whole team is deeply committed to defence.
We are unbelievable at set pieces.
When you watch Arsenal, understand you are watching football trauma reach a psychological resolution, one game at a time.
Being good at set pieces isn’t Arteta throwing the art palette at the wall, it’s him creating a new form of art. And maybe it is brutalism, but I have to say, I’ve never looked at teams doing well from set pieces and thought it was an affront to the game. This current carry-on feels performative, the sort of thing ChatGPT would tell a football fan to be upset about. I honestly can’t quite understand how so much conversation has been generated about a team being really good at scoring goals from corners and free kicks.
The “it’s soooo artless” angle of the conversation is also extremely amusing to me because the whole reason we’ve had to find these ways to open up teams is because nearly every single team in the Premier League pulls a deep block on Arsenal. Even Manchester City did it this season. Teams quite literally do not want to play football against us because we’ll rip them apart in open play, so we lean into beating them from dead-ball situations.
Maybe last season we might have felt a little insecure about this type of attack, but this season we know we’re really good. In the Champions League, when teams come to play, we’re fourth for open-play xG. This chart fromDataMB also shows that we’re penetrating the box.
Arsenal have the most touches in the opposition box this season, and we’ve had one of the toughest runs. We’ve also had the third-most shots per game this season with 14.78.
The only thing we can really complain about this season is we’re not sharp enough in front of goal in open play at the moment, and we’ve had a lot of injuries. And that really is the point here—none of the complaints are real analysis. It’s the “game’s gone” crowd, led by thought leaders like Roy Keane. Just move on from it. It’s too boring to give your energy to it.
I have absolutely no reason to write this, but I just overheard someone say, “If you’re getting straight As, you haven’t been spending enough time in the lab.” I like it. Not sure how to use it in relation to Arsenal, but I’ll keep thinking, and you should too.
Arsenal are in the lab this evening, and Arteta basically said if you look at his papers, you wouldn’t play Dowman, but if you look at what he’s doing in the lab, you’d be crazy to leave him benched.
Did we just achieve something literary together?
This evening, we take on Brighton in the mighty Carabao Cup. For me, it’s a shame to play such a good team so early, you really want to be dealing with teams outside the league. Wrexham, Cardiff, or Swansea would have been nice for our Welsh fanbase. Brighton is that nasty level of “top end of small enough to really care,” and you don’t need that aggro until the quarters or the semi-finals.
But what I do like about Brighton is they will come to play some football. The game won’t be a dirty deep block. They’ll give us a run for our money, and finally, I think we have the depth to put out a weakened team that’s not actually that weakened.
The first trophy I ever saw lifted in the real physical world was a League Cup, the last one we won. I know, how can I be 26 years old if I was at the game? Don’t ask questions, just read.
We haven’t won one since. We’ve come close, but years preceding that win saw Wenger reimagine the purpose of the trophy, which was to focus the lineups on up-and-coming kids. That meant we mostly lost out in the early 2000s, but lost out having fun witnessing debuts of hot young upstarts who had zero chance of breaking the first team. It was the Nik Bendtner Cup. Mark Randall, Fran Merida, Justin Hoyte, Henri Lansbury, Nacer Barazite, Ryo Miyaichi, Carlos Vela, Joel Campbell, Emi Martinez—some absolute classic names out there. Did I have fun? Yes. No doubt. But I would say that Arsène Wenger missed the culture shift during those years.
Mourinho came into the league and decided that League Cups were an important signal of competitiveness and started taking it more seriously. The last two major upsets in the comp were 2011 when Arsenal lost to Birmingham after a Chezzer shocker, and Swansea beat Bradford two seasons later, but they were a Premier League side at the time. Since then, the list of winners would not indicate there’s a lack of seriousness about the competition. City have won it six times, Liverpool three, United two, and Newcastle won last year.
Could we have put more effort in? Maybe. Should Arteta be making moves on the trophy this season? Yes. Given the size of our squad and the levels of competition within it, winning a major trophy in February is important. That said, what I prize more than water right now is fit players, and this competition gums up December like a wet sneeze on the tube. Where are you going to put that hand, you foul beast? Oh, I saw you. Best believe I saw you.
This evening offers us a chance to put some minutes into new players, it gives us the chance to let injured players recuperate, and we’ll hopefully get to see some of the young players impressing everyone.
Max Dowman is going to be the main reason Carabao gets its impressions this evening. The 15-year-old is quite clearly the next big thing in English football, but he’s still at school and adapting to a new level of fame, so he’s been used sparingly compared to how we deployed him in preseason. He’ll get minutes, no doubt, likely on the right so we can rest Bukayo. I’m genuinely thrilled he signed a deal with us, because I’ve heard that the money on offer from the other clubs was beyond eye-watering.
Another player I want to see given time is Ethan Nwaneri. He’s adapting to a new position this season after filling in really well for Arsenal last season on the right, and it’s time to show everyone what he’s learned. We all need to take a beat and remember that Martin Ødegaard spent a lot of time adapting to the rigors of what Arteta asked of him, and he was well into his 20s by the time he joined us, after three loan moves and plenty of minutes in far weaker leagues. Ethan is going to be a different player—he’s direct, powerful, extremely pro-“having a crack,” and he’ll bring his own personality to the role. He’s been crushing it with England, so let’s see how he’s moved his game on.
MLS will also likely round out the trio of teenagers, and I’m looking forward to seeing him refine his game. He has so many positives about the way he plays. One of those elements is he is very brave—sometimes too brave—and he gets caught flat-footed, leading to dangerous counters or pulling players over and running the risk of a red. I’d love to see that part of his game ironed out, because I’m sure it’s on the minds of the coaches.
The defence will likely see game time for Hincapié, who will probably take minutes centrally, and I suspect he’ll have to play next to Mosquera with Saliba out. A new defence, but that’s what the comp is good for—testing new relations and building connections.
The forgotten midfielder this season is Nørgaard. You’d have to imagine he’ll get time today because Zubimendi has been flogged relentlessly this season. There’s always a layer of experience left in the side—that’s usually Declan Rice, though he has been overlooked in Champions League games of late. I’m also not loving the minutes Gyökeres has had to play, but outside Merino there’s really not a lot else we can do up front. I’d love to not be in a situation where we’re welcoming back Kai and losing Gyökeres to injury. That said, this is a guy who plays loads of minutes every season. He was bought, in part, because he’s robust.
We want to see some fun football this evening, no drama with injuries, and obviously a comfortable win.
Ok, that’s me done. Check out Jacob’s latest Dugout with the excellent Alex Moneypenny ofThe Different Knock.