Premier League weekend + Arteta and tactical variety

Morning all.

It’s been quite an interesting weekend in the Premier League. I caught the second half of the Manchester derby yesterday evening, and it was kinda boring … until it wasn’t. City were 1-0 up and seemingly set for three points, until Matheus Nunes produced one of the dumbest challenges you’ll ever see, clattering Amad Diallo and United had a penalty.

Bruno Fernandes dispatched it for 1-1 and a minute later it was 2-1 when Diallo did brilliantly to dink the ball over Ederson and then find a finish despite the presence of defenders on the line. Obviously nobody wants Manchester United to be happy, but there’s still some enjoyment to be taken in yet another bad result for Pep Guardiola’s side.

It is an extraordinary run by any standards, let alone the ones we’ve come to expect from Man City. I think they’ll steady the ship and go on and win a lot of games, but a run like this goes a long way to piercing the aura they’ve had for so many years. They’ve been so dominant, so inevitable, that I think it impacts the opposition teams and players. If they go ahead, there’s a sense that the game is done, and I don’t think that’s the case any more.

I will say though, without trying to bring anyone down, the gap between us and the leaders isn’t the one that gives me most pause when I look at the league table. It’s the fact that despite City’s terrible form, we only have a three point gap over them, and it should be more. The last two games, at Fulham and Everton on Sunday, have been missed opportunities – not just to catch Liverpool and keep pace with Chelsea, but to put some distance between us and City.

Sticking with us for just a moment, I wonder if the last couple of games and our inability to find a way through a team that sits deep will have given Mikel Arteta a bit to think about beyond how an extra attacking player might help. I don’t think you need a master’s degree in football to see how adding qualities we don’t have to our front line might be useful. I know there’s a lot of clamour for a striker, and I get that completely, but I don’t think there’s any real chance of getting one of the few good ones that exist in the January market. I do think there’s far more chance of a versatile attacker who can play across the front three, and I hope that’s where the focus is if we are active when the window opens.

Beyond the obvious though, where that player might give you another actual goalscoring option (something we don’t have enough of on our bench right now), it might also give you greater tactical variation. I remember at the start of last season, Arteta was very big on making his team unpredictable, not simply in terms of the starting line-ups, but how they could play from game to game, or even switch things up during games.

Right now, I don’t see that from Arsenal. I think we’re still good, by the way. Capable of playing some very good stuff and producing good results, but on the days when the opposition frustrate us, do we have enough tactical variety? It’s why, in yesterday’s blog, I mentioned the idea of playing Martin Odegaard and Ethan Nwaneri together, rather than it being a one or the other situation. Our left hand side remains an issue, and I don’t know what exactly we can do about it with the players we have, but watching Leandro Trossard and Gabriel Martinelli struggle to produce from there must be something that is giving the manager plenty to think about.

Again, I think both players are capable of better than we’ve seen so far this season. Trossard isn’t exactly one for the future given his age, and Martinelli appears to have plateaued in a significant way, but is there something Arteta can do elsewhere on the pitch that might get more out of them? A new signing could unlock something, no question, but the patterns of play that have been so effective for us for the last couple of seasons are now well known by the opposition and their analysts, and I think that has played a part in the last couple of games – in tandem with our own issues in the final third.

Anyway, back to the Premier League, and we’ve seen a couple of managers sacked. I don’t think either is a surprise really. Gary O’Neil’s Wolves have been bad for too long, while Russell Martin getting canned by Southampton after 5-0 defeat yesterday felt inevitable. It’s all well and good for a manager to have his own style of play or principles, but when they’re so frequently the cause of your team conceding goals and losing games, you have to adapt when the players aren’t capable of doing at the required level.

Hat-tip to Andrew Allen who sent me this piece during the week, it’s a good read about some of Southampton’s woes and the wider ‘trend’ of teams playing out from the back. Russell Martin has paid the price for that this weekend. For more on the Premier League, you can join us on Patreon later for an episode of The 30, plenty to get our teeth into for sure.

And of course we will have an Arsecast Extra for you in a little while too. We’ve put out the call for questions on BlueSky @gunnerblog.bsky.social and @arseblog.com with the hashtag #arsecastextra – or if you’re an Arseblog Member on Patreon, leave your question in the #arsecast-extra-questions channel on our Discord server.

Pod should be out around noon. For now, have a good one.

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