Morning all.
So we go into the first Interlull of the new season, and an extended Interlull at that, in second place. Man City are top with 15 points, having won five from five, while Brighton sit just behind us in third place with 10 points. The season is obviously still young, and it might be a case that some thoughts are coloured by what happened at the Amex on Saturday, but it seems like a good place for some early thoughts on the team and what we’ve seen so far.
Goals not quite galore
We have 8 goals from our 5 games. Above us City have scored 13, while Brighton have 16. These numbers can change, the discrepancies can be closed, but it does stand out to me a bit. We were the lowest scoring champions since Leicester in 2016 (they scored 68 that season to our 71 last time out), and it really felt like this was an issue we had to address going into the new campaign.
We are out-performing our xG (6.8) if you put stock in that, and I do think we could and should have more to our name. The issue seems to be more about failing to take chances rather than an inability to make them. If there is a better problem to have when it comes to scoring goals, it’s that one, but all roads lead back to the summer and the transfer window.
We let a lot of goals and assists go when we sold Leandro Trossard, Gabriel Martinelli and Gabriel Jesus, and we only added one man, Christos Tzolis, to bolster the squad in that regard. He has done well enough, but in five Premier League games he has one assist. His alternate out on the left, Eberechi Eze, has none. Up front Kai Havertz has two goals, Bukayo Saka three, Martin Odegaard two, and Bruno Guimaraes one.
It’s fine, but a bit average. There’s room for improvement, I think.
Set-piece blanks
We had an interesting question about losing our set-piece aura on the Arsecast Extra yesterday. We scored a lot of goals that way last season, and in our eight games in total this season we’ve yet to make the most of a corner or a free kick. The closest we came was Jurrien Timber heading home Odegaard’s excellent delivery against Sunderland, but from a marginally offside position.
Is it just a blip? We’ve had stretches of games without a goal from a set-piece before, but the new rules around holding and grappling etc might be seen as a hindrance to our prowess in this area. It’s possible, but I think much of that is over-egged when it comes to Arsenal. The idea that we only score these goals because we’re throwing opposition defenders around and kidnapping goalkeepers is just plain wrong. We score them because the delivery is consistently good, and we have players who are really good in the air and in the opposition box.
I’m not overly worried by this right now, it feels like a bit of an anomaly more than a problem, but let’s see where we are in a couple of months time.
Relationships
Mikel Arteta talks all the time about how important on-pitch relationships are, and this season so far has provided us evidence of that on both sides. How much have we loved seeing the Ben White, Bukayo Saka, Martin Odegaard triangle again? That on pitch chemistry is obvious, and it has worked well again in these opening games.
Elsewhere though, there are players who are having to forge that relationships because they’re new. On the left, Tzolis looks to have a decent connection with Havertz and Riccardo Calafiori, and hopefully there’s more to come from him. The manager spoke specifically about how Declan Rice and Bruno Guimaraes will have to learn to play together after a poor showing from the summer signing at Brighton (it also made me wonder why we didn’t see Myles Lewis-Skelly at all, given his established connection with Rice). And at the back, Gabriel and Ezri Konsa seem like a good fit, but as Brighton’s second goal demonstrated, there isn’t quite the instinctive understanding as when the Brazilian plays alongside William Saliba.
Not massive issues, but something for the manager to think about. For me, the midfield combination is key – how does he get the best out of Rice and Guimaraes? It’s hard to judge based on one game where they started together, especially when it’s a horrible display like Brighton away, but it just felt to me like those two didn’t quite connect, which meant Martin Odegaard had to drop deep to help us exert some control in possession, and the knock-on effects of that on our attacking game are obvious. Not just in terms of creating, but the captain is our leading goalscorer across all competitions this season, and I want to see him closer to the opposition goal than our own.
Again, early days, there’s room for improvement, but as the manager sits in his office during this Interlull, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if this was high on his to-do (or to-think-about) list.
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Right, I’ll leave it there. The Arsecast Extra poring over the Brighton game and the many questions it raised is below, we’ll have an episode of The 30 rounding up all the weekend’s Premier League action over on Patreon later too.
For now, have a good one.