Where have all the goals gone? Anyone?
For all the talk of Arsenal’s transformation under Mikel Arteta – the newfound organisation, the high pressing, the neat passing, the tighter defending – at some point the manager has to address the issue of his team not actually managing to stick the ball in the back of the opponent’s net in the high intensity of the Premier League.
No tap-ins, no long range belters, no intricate eleven-pass moves, no headers, no lobs. No goals in open play in almost eight hours of Premier League football now and counting. Not since the start of October when they scored twice against Sheffield United. Merely a solitary, desperate penalty against Manchester United in their last five league matches.
This is starting to turn into one of those dystopian stories about the world’s water supplying drying up (also known as The Next 50 Years) only it’s a club who once regularly challenged for the Premier League title suddenly forgetting how to score from open play.
Arteta turned to an attacking quad of Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, Nicolas Pepe, Willian and 21-year-old Joseph Willock in his starting line-up against Leeds United on Sunday,
Aubameyang has scored two goals in the Premier League this season. One was a penalty. The other was against Fulham, who have conceded the joint-most goals this season with West Bromwich Albion.
Pepe, making only his second league start of the season, has one goal in the league, against Sheffield United, who have one point in nine games and are bottom. Pepe’s other two others goals have come against Dundalk and Molde, in the Europa League.
Willian is yet to score in 11 matches since moving on a free transfer from Chelsea on mega wages.
Willock, positioned in behind Aubameyang, was handed his first Premier League start of the season, following goals and impressive performances against Dundalk and Molde.
It did not go well.
Willian was hooked at half-time – replaced by Reiss Nelson – after offering virtually nothing. Pepe was sent off in the 51st minute for head-butting Ezgjan Alioski. Willock was next to go, subbed on 57 minutes for Bukayo Saka.
An Arsenal team with no shots on target after almost an hour were forced to play deeper now with fewer players.
It’s easy to highlight the attackers, of course, when a team is struggling to score, but they can’t do anything if they don’t see any of the ball. The first half against Leeds was one of the most one-sided you’ll see.
Marco Bielsa’s side had 60 per cent possession and 13 shots at Bernd Leno’s goal, an astonishing number only slightly less astonishing than the fact they failed to score one, that is only slightly less astonishing than Leeds somehow failing to win the game at the end of 90 minutes.
Arsenal, meanwhile, had five shots at the Leeds goal in the first 45 minutes, if you can call them that. Three were from outside the area. One from inside the box by Aubameyang was so wayward it possibly cleared the Elland Road stand.
The thing this Arsenal team are really missing is an exceptionally creative player to seamlessly link defence and attack. Only, they happen to have one of those, he just happens to have been exiled from Mikel Arteta’s team after speaking out about social injustices that are not aligned to the club’s and is now sat at home tweeting about Arsenal’s games from the sofa instead.
On the morning of the game, former Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger appeared on BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs and cheekily revealed that he relishes in the pain current managers’ experience now he has retired. “I relax by watching other managers suffer,” he said. “And think, ‘It’s your turn my friend.’”
The Frenchman must surely be loving this. Only, everyone is suffering, not just Arteta. The unsuspecting neutrals who tune in to watch the highlights, the pundits, the staff members in the stands, the subs.
Particularly the Arsenal supporters, whose team sit mid-table, having scored the same amount of Premier League goals as Fulham so far this season.
Perhaps it is Arteta who needs a few quiet weeks on a desert island to work out how to get his Arsenal players to score goals again.
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