Everyone’s tomorrow.
Arsenal will train at London Colney today before leaving for Germany tomorrow to play Bayern Munich. I would strongly bet that tomorrow’s opposition will not set up the way Nottingham Forest did on Sunday and perhaps that will make for a more interesting game.
Looking at some of our results against the ‘big’ teams in Europe, it will probably tell you that while we can all harbor some concerns about our attacking play and/or attacking talent, it’s not just about that. In the last two seasons alone, we’ve seen:
- Arsenal 4:0 Atletico Madrid
- Inter 1-3 Arsenal
- Arsenal 3-1 Bayern Munich
- Arsenal 2-0 PSG
- Arsenal 3-0 Real Madrid
The win against Atletico came without Martin Odegaard or Kai Havertz, both injured at the time, but under Diego Simeone we took them to the cleaners against what many consider to be one of the most tenacious and defensively organized teams in Europe. Partly because they weren’t really playing defense (they probably should have), but also because we went ahead with Gabriel’s well-timed goal in the 57th minute. What Arsenal would give for one of those corners at the City Ground to pull something off on Sunday.
Here were the stats for Sunday’s best match of the day: No team in Europe has won more games than Arsenal since the start of last season, 18 – the next best, rather amusingly, being Italy (Inter with 16):
Lewis has some good things to say about this in his recent newsletter, which I think provides good context for our struggles (if you want to call them that) compared to a team like Brighton who have scored goals this season. People say, “If they can do it with the players they have, why can’t we?” I saw what they said. There’s context to what Lewis puts out, but the fact is that teams don’t set up against Brighton like they did against us. Seeing how they’ve performed so far this season, that could actually change as managers and analysts realize the threat they pose, but so far it’s not something they have to contend with.
In fact, it’s a literal result of us being good, really good. If we were as stupid as we were, we wouldn’t have to deal with this kind of approach again and again. Teams will feel more daring to attack because they are not afraid of us. As Oliver Glasner pointed out on Sunday, manager after manager looks at this Arsenal team and decides that the best way to get something out of the game is to make life especially difficult for us. As I said in yesterday’s blog, I think two things can be true. We can be better, we must be better, but to dismiss or downplay the opposition as a factor I don’t think is reasonable.
Then there is the wider question of whether this is what Mikel Arteta wants. Is this his preferred style and way of winning games? While I can see his strengths being more defensive than offensive (to put it simply), my strong opinion on this is that it isn’t, and I know some will disagree. However, he is an eternal pragmatist and knows that his job is to make ends meet. Remember when he first came into office. He specifically talked about wanting to play a 4-3-3, but used a back three until he recruited better players for the right positions with players.
Obviously it has a huge impact on recruitment and over the years I think the way we’ve added to the forward line has been far less effective than the way we’ve built our defense and midfield, but it’s also fair to say that the pool of elite attacking talent is smaller than other positions. If you look back at this summer, there is one manager looking to bring in Vinicius Jr (for all his struggles at Real Madrid so far this season) and Julian Alvarez is not one to be 100% happy with his choices.
He will obviously support these players because anything else would be stupid in the extreme, but you don’t watch this level of talent for no reason. You do it because you know you need to be better, you know there’s room for improvement, and you’re ultimately not satisfied with what you have. In the absence of that, you’ve got to make do with what you’ve got, and this manager has shown the ability to do that time and time again without ever blaming what he doesn’t have.
So I don’t think that’s what he wants. I think he would have been much happier if we scored more goals, if the games were less tense, if we didn’t lose our nerves in injury time when we knew that one moment from the opposition could cost us valuable points. For now, his job is to find a way to do that with this squad and against an opposition that is trying to execute a plan that rejects us as an attacking force week in and week out. It is also worth noting that, to the dismay of all of us, the opposition is often unsuccessful. Arsenal does.
All right, I’ll leave it for the morning. We’ll have a Bayern Munich preview podcast for you on Patreon this afternoon. For now, good luck.