Arsenal's Attack Explodes In Eindhoven
At times, the Gunners have lacked flexibility, unpredictability, and dynamism under Mikel Arteta, but it was a different story against PSV.
This is a guest article by Jack Holmes of The Football Weekend.
Arsenal smashed seven past PSV in the Champions League on Tuesday after two scoreless disappointments in the Premier League. But can they sustain it?
When Arsenal began the bold experiment of a strikerless existence a few weeks back, I decided it was an opportunity. Mikel Arteta — who on Sunday will mark 200 Premier League games in charge of the Gunners — has transformed the club since he took over five years ago, and I genuinely do not understand the fans who’ve turned against him. He gave the club its dignity back.
But there is one glaring issue with his reign: Arsenal can sometimes be predictable — even boring — going forward.
The glorious 2022-23 season was anything but, particularly before Gabriel Jesus was injured at the midseason World Cup. Arsenal played flowing stuff, rampaging up the field with combination play and often taking a stranglehold of proceedings. This and a few other periods have proven something of the exception, however.
Too often, Arteta’s system has felt rigid and predictable. An emphasis on approaching the box from the wings — a less dangerous place to cough up possession and spawn a counterattack — combined with a lack of dynamic movement could sometimes lead to the Horseshoe of Death: moving the ball ‘round and ‘round the perimeter of the 18-yard box without penetration or threat.
Some of that is game state and the opposition, in that Arsenal face deep blocks as (or more) often than any team around. PSV have been struggling defensively in general, they were poor building out of the back, and they generally chose not to prioritize containing Arsenal’s threat. That left space to exploit.
But even still, there were some highly encouraging developments in Arsenal’s patterns of play that shouldn’t just carry them through this strikerless period. Arteta should make that adaptability, dynamism, and unpredictability a permanent fixture of the team, even when the injured return and the new summer signings (hopefully) come into the forward positions.
But what, exactly, fueled those features of Arsenal’s play in Eindhoven?
DEEP RUNNERS
A defining element of that 2022-23 team was Granit Xhaka and his underlapping forward runs from the “Left 8” position. These vertical cuts through the lines and in behind the opposition stretched the defense and opened up space in front of the back line for Arsenal’s creatives to exploit.
That’s been missing in recent times, but Declan Rice did the job admirably in Eindhoven, ripping off lung-busting runs to cause havoc for PSV. That created more space for Leandro Trossard to operate in the areas that he wants to operate in. The Belgian is a tricky dribbler and a shifty operator, but he doesn’t really want to take on full-backs all game. He wants to combine with people, and he has the skills to perform some technical hold-up play until his teammates can get around and beyond him.
And it wasn’t just Rice — the full-backs supplied the deep runs as well. Riccardo Calafiori capped it all off by running in behind the PSV centre-backs to score the seventh goal, but he and Jurriën Timber were causing havoc all game on the overlap, the underlap, even diagonal dashes to the centre-forward position. Before he went off early at risk of a second yellow card, Myles Lewis-Skelly was causing a lot of trouble running beyond Trossard. At times, Timber was competing for long balls from William Saliba — the man nominally next to him at the back of Arsenal’s formation — with PSV’s centre-backs, giving them headaches.
All these unpredictable runs forward gave Martin Ødegaard some more space to operate, too, and runners in behind to hit with his world-class through balls. It’s no coincidence that the Norwegian string-puller had his best game in months.
CHANGING LANES
With much of Arsenal’s forward line bruised and battered and unavailable, Arteta cannot afford the three he does have in place to be static. When he’s fit, Bukayo Saka is too often left isolated with two markers out near the sideline, and Ethan Nwaneri suffered from similar treatment against West Ham and Nottingham Forest. Saka is often at his best when he receives the ball on the move, rolling inside to combine with Ødegaard and take on more central players who want none of what the Gunners' No.7 is serving up. So, too, for Nwaneri, though he goes about things in a slightly different way.
The best of Arsène Wenger’s teams, particularly the free-flowing side of 2007-08, relied on positional interchange to disorient defenses and create unpredictable triangles in their build-up play. Alexander Hleb could pop up in attacking midfield or even on the opposite flank. Tomáš Rosický would drift inside from the left and scythe through the defense with a dribble or a one-two.
The latter is closer to Nwaneri’s forte, as he loves to drift centrally (even without the ball) to combine and get on the end of things. He scored the second goal against PSV this way, and it’s a model that works for everyone in Arsenal’s patchwork forward line. Trossard is highly versatile and does not want to camp out wide on the left. A midfielder himself, Mikel Merino can drop in to provide the extra man or drift out wider to give the defense a different physical profile to deal with out there. And all the while, those deep runners — and Nwaneri — are running in to fill the space at the nominal #9 position.
The defense doesn’t know who’s going to be where, when, and nothing is more important for scoring goals.
THE PRESS
PSV defended calamitously throughout and built out of the back poorly, including on Arsenal’s third goal. But Merino’s calm finish — notice how he waited for the five-hole to appear between the defender’s legs before slotting it through — was also a product of the visitors’ ferocious press.
That was another staple of Mikel Arteta’s team in their best periods of the last few years, and it must be a crucial part of their chance-creation process now that they have no strikers. Win the ball high up the field, catch your opponent with numbers ahead of the ball, and take your chances — as Merino did — when they fall to you.
Now, this is easier said than done in the Premier League, where Arsenal face a lot of mid- and low blocks. The Horseshoe of Death is not solely down to a stagnant approach from Arteta and his attackers. Sometimes the box and the yards in front of it are just packed with 4,000 opposition players. It helped on Tuesday that PSV essentially botched their own game plan.
But I also have to believe that there’s opportunity for more unpredictability and dynamism from the Arsenal, even against those low blocks. It may involve taking a few more risks in central areas, and it will definitely mean moving players around — from deep to the front, and between positions in the front line — to confuse the opposition and pull them apart.
This week was certainly a start as far as breaking apart the popular perception — some of it real, some of it mythology — around this Arsenal team as predictable and boring in open play. In Eindhoven, the first corner kick did not arrive for Set Piece F.C. until an hour in, by which time they’d already scored five.
Next up for Arsenal and Arteta are Manchester United.
The Gunners will be hoping to get back on track in the league in Arteta’s landmark match, and United, with their many faults and failings, present a potentially ideal opponent for Arsenal to build on their rout in Eindhoven.