Arsenal season preview 2016-17

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way”.

I’ve written before about how the internet leaves very little room for nuance. Earlier this week, I read a debate on my Twitter timeline about how long a post should be - with the maximum suggested being 1000 words. This all feeds into an environment a bit like the opening paragraph of A Tale of Two Cities, where people end up taking a binary position, and anything longer and more balanced is too long for modern man’s attention span.

The truth is, with Arsenal - and with almost any football team - the situation is not neatly black and white but actually very complicated.

The complaints are much the same as ever: a lack of new signings. And, er, oh well that’s basically it.

To an extent, it’s natural. Change is visible and more exciting. New signings - anybody, regardless of their perceived talent level - is now regarded as a positive move, just because it’s different. So people engage in logical contortions to try and find a way that Ashley Williams might actually have been a good signing for Arsenal.

Continuity is much less exciting. Another season of playing together and knowing which runs to expect from your teammates, and developing a greater understanding both on and off the pitch is great for the team’s success. But it’s intangible - it’s not the sort of thing you can easily point to and say “look, that’s changed from last season”.

And what’s more, that intangibility means it’s very difficult to prove that it would have been negatively affected by more new signings. Nonetheless, settled teams do tend to consistently perform better - the starkest illustration of this is how AVB struggled to integrate six new players into the Spurs team following Gareth Bale’s departure.

So, what we have is a team which has few, if any, players who might be placed on the wrong part of the ageing curve, who were the second best team in the League last season according to the table (and better by many other metrics), and with almost everybody expecting Leicester to go backwards this season.

If you want more stats on how this team was good, Statsbomb’s overview is a good place to start - but the headline point that Arsenal took shots from the closest to goal of any Premier League in the last six years, and also forced opposition to shoot from the furthest away is indicative of a team playing in a way which is likely to bring success.

In addition, even if you don’t believe that Arsenal’s very low conversion rates were simply the work of variance over a small sample size - Tim Stillman makes a fair criticism here about the speed of our attacks - the signing of Granit Xhaka should go a long way to mitigating this problem.



And the reality is that signing more players who are an upgrade on our current squad is really difficult. With the noted exception of David Ospina, there’s nobody who I look at in the current squad and think “they’re a bit rubbish”. I definitely wouldn’t mind seeing us sign another defender, but it’s very hard to find somebody who won’t be offered bigger money by City/Chelsea/United/RM/Barca and is actually an upgrade on what we have. Perhaps John Stones is that man - but where Arsene Wenger used to spend £2m gambling on potential, City have spent £48m on Stones and £49m on Raheem Sterling. It’s very difficult to find value in this market.

That’s what all the blogs which bang on about the diminishing value of Arsenal’s cash reserves miss - there’s such a dearth of supply of quality defenders compared to the demand, that the prices quoted are so high as to render any write-off in the value of the cash reserves still plausibly better business. That’s particularly the case when the market is circular - the money likely goes to a rival who can spend it better, again weakening any advantage gained from a new signing. Still, “get it done” is the mantra of the day.

Similarly, to sign an actual upgrade on Olivier Giroud is very difficult - with the players who might plausibly be an improvement already playing for Barcelona, Real Madrid or Bayern Munich and likely on huge wages to boot. Still, “get it done” say people with no business experience.

So where does that leave us? With a team which has been upgraded substantially in the one position which was crying out for a new signing and otherwise retaining the components of a team which largely played very well last season, especially until January. Performances in the second half of the season were disappointing but that was largely a function of a lack of a working central midfield which should be helped by the return of Santi Cazorla as well as the signing of Xhaka.

There are other reasons to be positive - this is a team which has historically struggled in the Premier League following Champions League games. Playing Hull, Burnley, Middlesbrough, Spurs, Bournemouth and Stoke (at home), is about as good a result as we could have hoped for to mitigate any post-Champions League fatigue issues. Qualify for the last sixteen and the second leg would be followed by either Leicester or West Brom. The fixtures are kinder than in previous season and while not a massively big deal could well help eke out two or three points more.



And our problems pale in comparison with our rivals. A short-term lack of centre backs while Laurent Koscielny gets back to fitness may cost us for one match. But Chelsea still own only five senior defenders, two of whom seem completely past it, with Kurt Zouma also out with a long-term injury.

Man United lack any squad depth - although they’ve signed Paul Pogba, a couple of injuries would seriously hurt them in midfield and Zlatan Ibrahimovic is now 34. Contrast this with Arsenal who have Xhaka, Mohamed Elneny, Aaron Ramsey, Santi Cazorla, Jack Wilshere and Francis Coquelin as competent central midfield options and the comparison does’t favour United.

Liverpool lack enough top level talent to suggest they’ll kick on significantly (they’ll be better but not to the required extent). Spurs already ran out of steam last season and now have the added difficulty of Champions League games added in, and I’m very unconvinced that signing a striker who was available for 500k last summer is the sort of move which is going to change them into a suddenly superior team.

Even Manchester City, who were the team I expected to finish above Arsenal when I predicted a second-place finish at the beginning of last season (you can’t really have expected to get through this without some self-congratulatory comment) have significant question marks in several positions, and seem overly dependent on Sergio Aguero’s hamstrings not going twang. And it doesn’t require an over-active imagination to suggest that the energy Pep Guardiola demands of his teams is going to be difficult to maintain for 38 games in a more competitive league.

Sure, pointing out the weaknesses of our rivals may just exacerbate anger at a lack of new signings. But, as outlined above, any new signing comes with significant risks too. One of Arsenal’s great successes in recent years has been a lack of mistakes in the transfer market. A few very well-picked signings - Santi Cazorla, Mesut Ozil and Alexis Sanchez most notably - have been well integrated leading to a gradual improvement both in performances and results. Xhaka could well be the final piece of the jigsaw.

I’m not going to go all out and say this year we will win the League. But I do think the odds offered by the bookies are probably a touch big. There’s no reason to believe that a couple of new signings is enough for either Man United or Chelsea to suddenly be miles better than last season, certainly not to the extent that they suddenly dominate the League.

It promises to be close - even the bookies favourites only have an implied probability of winning the League 28% of the time. But I expect Arsenal to challenge well, and given the financial advantage of our rivals, that would be a pretty good outcome.

Keep the faith.

The team ain't bad: a post-August appraisal

How quickly people forget
At some point in your education, you probably were asked the question “why does a goldfish not get bored swimming round and round in a small bowl, especially when it does nothing but this?”

And you probably pondered: maybe the goldfish sees people walking past outside the bowl and this stimulates it? Maybe its growth, while not necessarily visible to the human eye, excites the goldfish itself? And eventually, you were taught that the goldfish has a memory of but a few seconds, and so it doesn’t remember having swum round the bowl by the time it gets to the start again; it doesn’t remember what works well and what works badly, and so it has to relearn technique forever.

The human memory isn’t as short, but just like the goldfish the human yearns for stimulation. And as tortuous, prolonged metaphors go, I think this goes a long way to explaining the fan attitude to the transfer window.

Improving the team on the training ground seems humdrum. The players knowing each other and working on instinct isn’t necessarily a visible change, until the team scores a brilliant goal as a result of it. But somebody holding up the club shirt with their name and number on the back: that’s exciting.

It was not so long ago, that in the space of a couple of days right before the transfer deadline, Arsenal signed Park Chu-Young and Andre Santos. These were signings which to any reasonable observer, even at the time, appeared gambles. And while you might caveat this evaluation a touch, those gambles failed.

There are two reasons a club might sell a good player right before the transfer deadline, unless they absolutely have to: either, a whole series of moves fall into place which enable each other. See how Gareth Bale’s transfer to Real Madrid facilitated a whole series of deals including Mesut Özil’s to Arsenal; or, that player really isn’t actually that good.

I understand the human desire for excitement and for new signings. But it’s exceptionally difficult to get clubs to sell their best players (basically what Arsenal are in the market for) and gambling on players you’re unsure on usually leads to failure. If you want evidence of this, look no further than Liverpool.

The thing which makes fans’ short memories so frustrating is that people don’t seem to join up the dots. Even last season, people were bemoaning an injury crisis at Arsenal in the autumn. Perhaps the one other reason a gamble might be successful is if a player has a bad injury record, meaning their team is happy to let them go. The signing of the season thus far is undoubtedly Andre Ayew who has been excellent for Swansea.

Ignoring whether he is good enough for Arsenal – because he definitely has the talent to play for a better team than Swansea – the point is that people hate players who are injured a lot. Abou Diaby became a figure of hate and financial profligacy from a large section of the fanbase through no fault of his own. Many of these people are exactly the same people who complain about missing out on a player like Ayew.

Of course, some gambles are also successful – one need only look to somebody like Freddie Ljungberg as proof of this. But it’s hard to justify spending money on a signing you’re unsure of when there’s nobody in the Arsenal team who my reaction to is “I really don’t fancy seeing them play ten games”. And it’s even harder in the new climate of football economics, where smaller Premier League teams having so much more money than before means a gamble is no longer maybe £5 million but more like £15 million. That’s a lot of money and a lot of wages for somebody who is highly likely to be a failure and it’s money and wages which can’t be spent again further down line.

It can be difficult to understand why money isn’t spent on improving the team. But the real thing to focus on is the lack of departures at Arsenal this summer, and how the nucleus of a very good team has been retained. Four in and four out, is largely not better than one in and one out, because players knowing each other and playing like a team is a hugely underrated quality for a team.

If a player becomes available between now and the transfer deadline who would definitively improve the team, I’m sure Arsenal will spend. But it’s not as easy as just going “we want you” – at least it isn’t unless you want to pay comedy transfer fees like Manchester United.

Defending counter-attacks
As it happens, I think Francis Coquelin’s lack of passing range in terms of clever, short passes combined with a lack of width from Arsenal’s wingers is contributing to Arsenal conceding more good counter-attacking opportunities to opposition teams than in 2014-15. With the full-backs pushing up to offer necessary width, there’s an enormous amount of space in behind for teams to exploit. (This may also lead to Per Mertesacker losing his place in the team, and ask questions of Petr Cech in terms of coming off his line he has rarely been asked since he left Rennes).

But the interesting part of all this is what it means for Arsenal defensively. Coquelin is clearly not very good at defending in space, but poor pressing from the whole team makes his job far harder than it should be.

The weird thing is I think Arsenal are allowing opposition teams more counter-attacking opportunities but defending them quite well. This is mainly because most Premier League teams are incompetent at counter-attacking. Put them under a semblance of pressure and they either just whack a long ball to a striker, in which case a centre back should be able to isolate the striker and either shut down the counter, or at the very least, give the team room to reorganise; or alternatively, they try to dribble out of trouble, in which case Coquelin just needs to ensure he isn’t dribbled past (and can make a foul if necessary).

Neither of these are particularly difficult for the team. So even against a pretty good Premier League team like Liverpool, good counter-attacking opportunities can be shut down.

And this is the weird thing about Coquelin: defensively, he will be okay most of the time. He’s not the player I want but he’s not going to kill the team.

But what’s bubbling under is exactly what happened against Monaco: that as soon as you play against a team which has a bit more fluidity in how they counter-attack, Coquelin’s ability to adjust is limited. I think he’s pretty good at repeating moves he’s been coached into: he has okay technique and is a good athlete. What he lacks is an understanding of how to organise and how to switch who he’s picking up. That may well not cost Arsenal in the League; it’s likely to in the Champions League, where teams don’t all play the same well, and the team is less practiced at dealing with how they play.

The goals will come
Since chanting ‘boring boring Chelsea’ in April, Arsenal have played five home games and scored four goals, all in a dead rubber against West Brom. To some extent, I think Arsenal’s shot numbers are masking a real problem: while the Gunners took 22 shots against West Ham, this high figure does not really tell the story of a match in which Adrian gave a pretty average performance in the West Ham goal.

But even so, to have taken 83 shots so far this season and scored one goal (excluding own goals) is pretty incredible. I don’t rate Arsenal’s attacking play thus far as highly as some; I do think a few more shots hitting the back of the net is pretty much inevitable, especially with a couple of weeks off for players like Alexis Sanchez to try and find some form and sharpness.

Keep the faith.

Arsenal season review 2014-15

When I wrote my season preview back in August, I suggested that Arsenal would need to improve markedly this season just to stay still. It was oddly prescient of a debate which has been playing out over the last few weeks over whether Arsenal did indeed improve over the course of 2014-15, compared to the previous season.

The argument that Arsenal didn’t improve runs something like this: in both seasons Arsenal won the FA Cup, reached the last 16 of the Champions League and were knocked out early in the League Cup. In 2013-14, Arsenal challenged for the League (at least until the end of March) and finished on 79 points, only nine points back from the Champions. In contrast, 2014-15 saw no title challenge, the team accruing only 75 points and finishing twelve points back from the League leaders.

Let me make one thing clear: the area where Arsenal definitely regressed was in the Champions League. Although it had an element of tragi-comedy about it, the 3-3 draw at home to Anderlecht was a throwback to the worst of Arsenal a few years back, and losing 3-1 to Monaco at the Emirates (despite bad luck) was, under the circumstances, the worst result in a very long time. Bizarrely though, that’s not the claim peddled by those who say Arsenal regressed. If it were, I’d have a lot more time for it - the Champions League is supposed to test Arsenal against the best teams in Europe and despite not playing anybody particularly good, the team struggled except for against Galatasaray. I’ll come back to this later when I look at how the team could improve.

In the FA Cup, there was no Hull-style early collapse in the cup final and there was an impressive win away at Old Trafford but the overall standard of teams beaten was lower. Call it scratch.

And so to the League campaign. The pure maths is somewhat misleading. It was notable to me how the team seemed to be playing with less intensity after the 0-0 draw against Chelsea, only beating a Hull team which was saving itself for a huge weekend game against Burnley and a disinterested West Brom on the final day of the season. This contrasts hugely with spring 2014, where only the last game was a dead rubber. Certainly, the dropped points against Sunderland and Swansea pushed the club down from 2nd to 3rd, but given neither of those involves a Champions League qualifier, there is little tangible difference in finishing a place higher.

That’s important insofar as had there been more on the line, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to suggest that Arsenal would have beaten Swansea and Sunderland and improved on both points and distance to the champions compared to 2013/14.

So the final area where Arsenal might be said to have regressed was a lack of a title challenge. As I wrote in my season preview, for years the club has struggled when playing away after a Champions League game. Of ten Champions League games this season, eight were followed by away League games. In those eight games, Arsenal won just four (away to Villa, West Brom, Sunderland and Newcastle) and dropped some very disappointing points away to Leicester, Everton and Swansea.

First, this wasn’t a problem posed the previous season where far more Champions League games were followed by home games which is just a tangible benefit and a quirk of this year’s fixture list. But in addition - and this is why finishing third is so important and such an improvement - not only is the qualifier bad in of itself, it also has knock on effects on League form. One of the key reasons the club struggled to build momentum in the first half of the season compared to 2013/14 was this problem of playing away after Champions League games, something which was compounded by a lack of options to rotate, as a result of injuries.

The great irony is that the explosion in interest in tactics around 2010 coincided with what those in the stats community call the ‘enlightened era’: teams are generally better organised and more focused on retaining possession, leading to marked drop-off in shots per game, shots on target per game and this season, goals. In effect, since interest in tactics increased, stamina has become more important: it’s become less likely that a player is in a bad position because of organisation, and so being able to run more late in the game has a significant effect.

While it’s fashionable to talk about systems and formations, in reality, Arsenal’s lack of effective options to rotate into the team (particularly when playing twice a week, compared to opponents who had a full seven days to prepare) was something which had a significant effect, a problem exacerbated by a lack of a full pre-season for the World Cup stars.

In addition, and I appreciate this isn’t something which most people who go to matches care about, the start of 2013-14 was marked by unsustainable conversion rates from very few shots. In that sense, the drop-off in the second half of the season was simply regression to the mean. In contrast, the first three or four months of 2014-15 saw a freakishly high number of opposition shots going in, and it was always likely results would improve given the team was playing pretty well.

There are those who argue that this is a problem of mentality and that the players can only do it when there’s no pressure on. But this is counter-intuitive given that when you’re a team expected to challenge and you’re 6th or 7th at Christmas, that actually puts more pressure on.

Regardless of all this data-crunching (as I always say, it’s supposed to be fun following a football team), in terms of transitions and movement off the ball, the team is playing far better now, with several individuals hugely improved (Olivier Giroud especially) and more players who you think can ‘make something happen’ when a game seems tight. Perhaps some of the issues of the first half of the season were systemic, but more broadly it was a question of a (im)perfect storm of a tough fixture list, bad injury list (particularly defensively) and bad luck.

Moreover, the team seems more balanced, with a more sensible approach to big away games which has yielded much improved results. And yet, in terms of where the team goes next season, I have to disagree with my friend @RoamingLibero.

He says the problem against Monaco was one of panicking when going a goal behind, and that proper on-pitch management would be sufficient to fix this.

While clearly this would go a long way to counteracting the issue, it overlooks the root cause of the problem, that the specific players being picked make Arsenal play in a certain way. It was definitely an issue in the first leg that the team was overcommitted in attack after going behind; but it was a much more telling issue because of the personnel in the team lacking the mobility to play a higher line, leaving huge gaps for the opposition to exploit on the counter-attack, or alternatively, leaving Per Mertesacker engaged in a pace battle he could never win and therefore committing to a tackle.

But it also affects how the team attacks. Go back to the second leg against Monaco, a game which most observers thought Arsenal were very good in, and the problems were still on show there.

When Arsenal were attacking, the team had to sit far too deep to counteract a lack of pace of both Per Mertesacker and David Ospina. Had it been possible to push the centre backs up, so that Francis Coquelin could win the first ball out of the opposition box, rather than midfielders like Santi Cazorla and Mesut Ozil challenging for it, there would have been far greater attacking impetus, and the stronger Coquelin is also more likely to win these duels.

To me, it’s self-evident that not pushing the team up the pitch is a result of Mertesacker (and to a lesser extent) Ospina’s lack of pace. Not only that, but this also has a knock-on effect on the shape of the rest of the team: quite a few times, Hector Bellerin received the ball with Nacho Monreal quite advanced on the left. He didn’t want to pass to Coquelin because of Coquelin’s limitations on the ball; he didn’t want to pass to Cazorla because Cazorla was too far left for him to safely reach; and so, because of the positions Mertesacker necessarily must take up, when Bellerin passes to him the ball goes a long way back.

Given Mertesacker’s fondness for passing laterally to Laurent Koscielny, this means Koscielny has to sprint back to get the ball, and Monreal tries to cover for him in case he doesn’t get it easily and to offer a passing option by also dropping back.

The effect of this is to create a sort of split in the team which hampers the attacking harmony, allows Monaco to regain their shape and makes breaking them down significantly harder. And while needing to win 3-0 away is an anomaly, struggling to break down well-organised opponents is hardly something particularly rare for Arsenal.

Clearly, the organisation Mertesacker lends the team is enormously beneficial and he is an exceptionally good centre back. But he does require the team to play in a certain way to mitigate his weaknesses.

The problem with changing this next season is that Koscielny definitely cannot organise effectively, and it’s unlikely that Gabriel Paulista can, particularly while he’s still picking up the language. Definitely, part of the problem is mitigated by picking a goalkeeper like Wojciech Szczesny who isn’t afraid to come off his line, particularly when the alternative is Ospina. In addition, a better defensive midfielder than Coquelin would do a lot more to help organise the team effectively, lessening the chance of an effective opposition counter-attack and allowing the team to push up a bit more, even with Mertesacker. That’s where I’d prioritise improving the team over the summer and it should leave the team strong enough to challenge for the League title.

But there’s a part of me which is dubious that despite having an exceptionally high quality attack, Arsenal can challenge for the Champions League with Mertesacker at centre back. At any rate, an exciting summer awaits.

Keep the faith.

Five thoughts on Chelsea 2 Arsenal 0

Chelsea 2 Arsenal 0

This was not “same old, same old”
For sixty minutes, Arsenal were very good. Playing a better team away from home, Arsenal were reasonably in control. One moment of skill from Eden Hazard had cut Arsenal open but for the most part, Arsenal were defensively solid and producing quick counter attacks.

In such matches, it’s the small margins which count - Jack Wilshere’s heavy first touch when in on goal, Santi Cazorla’s missed attempt to bring Hazard down, Martin Atkinson failing to send Gary Cahill off and letting Oscar kick the shit out of the Arsenal players for 70 minutes before finally deigning to show him a yellow card.

But if you don’t believe Arsenal were good, watch the game again and watch Cesc Fabregas off the ball - I won’t pretend to have watched absolutely every Chelsea game this season, or every Barca game for the previous three, but I watched enough (and 200+ games at Arsenal) to know that Fabregas normally does not work even nearly that hard. I was actually really surprised he lasted all 90 minutes given the amount of work he was forced to do. Similarly, look at how Branislav Ivanovic - one of Chelsea’s best attacking players this season, hardly ventured forward.

And that was in no small part down to the great movement of Arsenal’s front six. There were a couple of frustrating occasions when good opportunities to shoot were passed up, but in the main, Arsenal were patient and probing and looked very much like they would score at least one goal.

To some extent, that changed with the substitutions. Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain is a very talented player but I’m not convinced he’s the player you want when Chelsea are sitting deep, particularly given his telegraphed passing (in action once again yesterday) is exactly the sort of thing which gives Chelsea the chance to counter.

What does it all mean?
Pointing out Arsenal played well does not imply happiness with the result or diminished expectations. Only an idiot would compare with last season’s game to consider where Arsenal are at, given Chelsea scored two once-a-season goals and Arsenal had a player sent off before the game was even twenty minutes old. But what it does mean is that Arsenal can compete in this sort of game without surrendering the vast bulk of possession, like happened so often last season in away games.

Sure, you can make the case that it didn’t matter as Arsenal went to places like Swansea and hit them on the break. But it’s very hard to absorb pressure like that and that was borne out against better teams like Liverpool, Man City and Everton. By playing in a more positive way, Arsenal stand a much greater chance of getting results in games of this nature. That’s how the team has improved, for anybody who says Arsenal just replaced like with like this summer.

But it doesn’t mean you’re always going to win big away games - tight games swing on small margins, and yesterday those margins weren’t in Arsenal’s favour.

Incidentally, if you’re using this as a stick to beat Arsene Wenger with, check Barcelona’s away record in the Champions League under Pep Guardiola. Or that in eleven away League games to Arsenal since the Abramovich takeover, Chelsea have won just four times. Maybe it’s just quite hard playing away to good teams.

The Ozil narrative
Here’s the thing, Mesut Ozil wasn’t at his best yesterday. But there does seem to be a perception amongst a large proportion of Gooners that as he is our most expensive player, Ozil should always be the best player on the Arsenal team. And that if he’s not great - like yesterday - he should be dropped. In other words, he’s being judged by completely different criteria to everybody else in the team.

In Bacary Sagna’s penultimate season, he copped a load of abuse until people realised he was giving the ball away because nobody was offering him a passing option. There does seem to be a general trend for people only to blame the player involved in the last phase of an error. So Koscielny gets blamed for the Hazard penalty despite him going past three players first and Alexis giving the ball away for no reason, and Ozil gets blamed for losing the ball even if he has no passing option. It’s absolutely farcical. Ozil played okay yesterday - perhaps it’s worth remembering that even Lionel Messi went about three months without scoring a League goal from open play last season.

Complaints about the system is the new calling for a DM
By its very nature, a 4-2-3-1 with a double pivot transitions into 4-1-4-1 when a team is attacking. There’s certainly been a tactical tweak this season, but claiming that it has engendered an unnecessary season of transition is both completely premature and more importantly untrue. The actual issue is one of personnel and too many players who want to play in the same positions. It brings benefits - for example, Sanchez and Welbeck ensured Ivanovic couldn’t get forward yesterday - but it also means Arsenal’s attacking play can sometimes lack a diversity of options.

As ever, I’d encourage people to really think - you might disagree with the tactics on show, but there are usually intuitive reasons why a good manager would pursue particular tactics.

Checked expectations
Last season, Arsenal were very lucky with how the fixture list stacked up until December and the momentum gathered was definitely worth an extra few points - how many is pretty much impossible to quantify, but at least four or five. In other words, just to stand still this season (i.e. to get 79 points again) Arsenal needed to noticeably improve over the summer. Probably the squad did get better - injuries to Mathieu Debuchy, Nacho Monreal and Arteta (as well as Theo Walcott’s continued absence) have not helped Arsenal. But regardless, it was always asking a lot of a team who were widely tipped to finish fifth last season, to kick on this year and win the League?

Add in Arsenal’s tough start to the season - already played four of last season’s top six within the first seven games - and there’s a lot to be encouraged about. I think people would be a lot happier if three points had been taken away to Leicester, and that was basically a freak result. Ultimately, your perception of how the season is going probably depends on whether you expected a serious title challenge.

Keep the faith.

Six thoughts on Arsenal 2 Man City 2

Arsenal 2 Man City 2

This was good fun
Social media has seen a great democratisation of football analysis, with every man and his dog able to have a view on things, but it’s also led to a 24/7 discussion of all things Arsenal, leading to people taking football far too seriously.

I’ve never held any truck with the ‘philosophy’ Jose Mourinho espouses of win at all costs. I think football should be enjoyable, and I don’t derive enjoyment solely from winning at all costs. Football should be fun and if you don’t enjoy it, you’re doing it wrong.

So sure, were there tactical tweaks which might have made Arsenal’s life easier? Yep, but that doesn’t mean this wasn’t a highly enjoyable way to spend a Saturday lunchtime.

And to a large extent, that’s because this was the most entertaining display I’ve seen from Arsenal in a long time. Scintillatingly quick transitions from defence to attack allowed Ozil, Sanchez et al to really stretch the City defence. Arsenal’s reputation as entertainers (built in the era where Cesc Fabregas was the fulcrum of the side) stemmed from brilliant possession football in the opposition half and shooting from good positions.

This was different, but arguably more entertaining, with the ball zipping from one end to the other in just a few seconds. And at the heart of all that was Mesut Ozil. No doubt he will face criticism once again – a quick skim of my Twitter feed (and I like to think I largely follow sensible people) indicated that’s the case. But I don’t really see why; the difference between him and Fabregas is that he makes the ball move so much quicker, only ever taking one or two touches. A style based on quick transitions simply can’t contain Fabregas, and on the basis of yesterday’s performance, my hopes for the season are much higher. This was not just an entertaining performance – it was also a very, very good performance.

The curious case of Alexis Sanchez and Mesut Ozil
Attacking players like Sanchez and Ozil are ultimately judged on goals and assists – but it’s only really fair to judge them over the course of the whole season. Some woeful decision-making from Alexis was one of the main reasons Arsenal trailed at half-time. Conversely, Ozil makes the right decision almost every time he gets the ball. But because he hasn’t really supplied any goals and assists so far this season – whereas Alexis already has three goals, the narrative is one of Ozil underperforming. I’m sure by the end of the season that wrong will have been righted. For the record, I thought Ozil was very good yesterday.

The Aaron Ramsey paradox
Ramsey has been miles worse than he was last season. I never expected him to score 30 goals this season, but his defensive work is lacking and he is taking up some bizarre positions. And yet because he is plausibly the fittest player in the team, you can’t really take him off after 70 minutes if he’s having a bad game, because it’s so likely that his stamina will tell towards the end of games. His goals against Palace and Everton are testament to that.

To lose the first half was a travesty
Ignore the bollocks about it being “so very Arsenal”. That’s only if you discount the last three years where Arsenal have rarely dominated big games even for ten minutes, let alone 35-40 minutes. It’s a completely different team from the one which used to get hit on the counter-attack, and the first City goal stemmed from a sensationally good piece of play from Jesus Navas.

But to dominate territory to such a great extent – presumably this was the last big game start ever for Frank Lampard – and to go in 1-0 down was incredibly harsh on Arsenal. Danny Welbeck must take some blame – sure he’s only had two training sessions but you don’t need team practice to finish the chance he had. Just imagine the reaction of Gervinho had missed it.

Mark Clattenburg was atrocious
And I don’t say that as a partisan point – I thought there was quite possibly a foul in the build-up to the first Arsenal goal. But its pretty galling to read criticism of Arsenal’s “lack of steel” when every time Arsenal players committed a slightly bad foul they picked up a yellow card. James Milner’s foul on Mathieu Debuchy in the City left-back position just before half-time should be shown at conferences as the dictionary definition of a yellow card foul. Clattenburg’s decision? Just a free kick. Rotational fouling is something that happens and I can deal with. But Milner committed three yellow card offences and emerged from the game without a caution to his name. Farcical.

Arsenal’s Carling Cup line-up will be very interesting
Presumably with yesterday’s injury to Debuchy, the team against Southampton will be a mix of a comically inexperienced defence and then a very experienced midfield and attack, with Abou Diaby, Tomas Rosicky and Lukas Podolski desperately in need of game time. And the way Wojciech Szczesny’s been playing, it will be a good opportunity for David Ospina to show what he can do.

Keep the faith.