Forget everything you assumed on the walk to the ground. Leave those predictions of a fizzing home crowd, of Leicester City outfighting Arsenal, of Mikel Arteta’s team lethargically succumbing to high-intensity pressure, at the turnstile.
In fact, do more than that: turn them on their head. Arsenal and Leicester began the Premier League weekend with identical records, but Saturday’s encounter was no contest.
More than that, Arsenal’s 2-0 win felt like a breakout day for Arteta’s new team. If we can reasonably judge the mood of a club by their away support, those hardy hundreds who trawl the country in search of requited love, Arteta has a mandate.
These fans have experienced enough grim days on which even mediocrity appeared out of their grasp. At the King Power, they lauded the young players, chanted for their captain and hailed Aaron Ramsdale and Takehiro Tomiyasu as cult heroes.
It was a starting XI built in Arteta’s vision. Not only because it contained five new signings, or because half of the outfielders were aged 22 or under, or because it found room for both of their senior strikers, but because it was the same as the one that faced Aston Villa the previous weekend.
For so long at Arsenal, we have witnessed an auditioning process that takes place in front of a live audience. There will still be changes – Kieran Tierney, Granit Xhaka and Martin Odegaard are all at least on the edge of the first-team – but consistency is to be craved.
Some spots shine brighter than others. Behind Alexandre Lacazette and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, Arteta has offset age and experience with two of the brightest attacking talents in the country.
Bukayo Saka drove from deep with the ball, scaring Luke Thomas who was forced to stand off Saka and soon learnt that only provided temporary relief. On the left wing, Emile Smith Rowe prefers to pass his way through, interchanging possession with whichever of the two forwards has taken their turn to drop deepest.
The effervescent excellence of Saka and Smith Rowe is well-documented; the latter in particular is unfortunate that Gareth Southgate has a plethora of options of a similar type.
But at the King Power, Arsenal’s other prodigies stood just as tall. Nuno Tavares starts at left back but can be found anywhere inside the opposition half when Arsenal are counter-attacking at pace. Albert Sambi Lokonga marries ball-winning with ball-playing. Tomiyasu is unusual as a modern full-back in that he appears to prefer blocking crosses to providing them. Ramsdale has seized his opportunity (literally) with both hands.
When watching a team swarm over another of a supposedly similar quality, it’s hard to know whether to acclaim one or kick the other. The answer, as with virtually every subjective assessment, lies somewhere in between.
But Leicester were certainly strangely lethargic, sluggish as if surprised by an early kick-off time. The home support groaned and booed and eventually settled on the instruction to “get into them, f**k them up”. Brendan Rodgers probably offered similar advice at half-time, changing the shape and sending his team out early.
Leicester’s defensive issues this season are hardly a state secret. They have been vaguely wretched at defending set pieces ever since opposition managers realised that a late near-post run and flicked header was enough to outfox a fox.
Those problems are exacerbated by the gradual decline of Caglar Soyuncu from Leicester’s Harry Maguire replacement to an effective mimic of, well… Harry Maguire against Liverpool.
Individual deficiencies make supporters wince, but Leicester’s attacking strategy provided the greater cause for frustration. Defenders and midfielders preferred safe passes and usually looked sideways or backwards for their next option.
James Maddison was the conductor in his No.10 position behind two strikers, but more than once slowed down a move rather than quickened it up. Leicester players took four or five touches when two might have done. On the back foot with less than 20 minutes played, it required urgency to counteract emergency. Instead we got a meekness that equated to acquiescence.
This is all detailed not to pour scorn on Leicester, but because these are all the stereotypes of Arsenal when they fail: lethargic starts during which they look surprised by an opposition’s intensity, conceding soft goals, enjoying long spells of possession that come with too little penetration; those were commandments carved in stone during the late Arsene Wenger years.
At Arsenal, every defeat is destined to become a crisis, every victory a vision of new hope. Mikel Arteta is the personification of that dichotomous existence, to the extent that it’s hard to work out if he is in control of Arsenal or Arsenal is in control of him.
But slowly, slowly and who knows if surely, we are at least being offered a blueprint, the raw ingredients from which Arteta will hope to eradicate those interminable lurches in mood in favour of something a little less combustible.
More than anything, it’s something tangible to believe in after several years of vague half-promises and half-baked solutions.
from Football – inews.co.uk https://ift.tt/3nGpEe9
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