EMIRATES STADIUM — Mikel Arteta believes in the future. He has now picked the 10 youngest starting XIs in the Premier League this season. Semi-shambolic, self-inflicted defeat to Liverpool at Anfield doesn’t mean you rip it up and start again; it means you ask the same players to prove that they are capable of learning. One change to the team from that defeat to this win: a 30-year-old out for a 22-year-old. The goals? Scored by a pair of prodigious 20-year-olds.
Gabriel Martinelli’s, the clincher, was particularly warming. Martinelli has missed six months of his nascent career through serious injury and is desperate for more regular minutes. It becomes increasingly difficult to impress, snatching your moments in the dying embers of matches.
So the manner in which he held and arched his run and lofted the ball over Martin Dubravka with only his second touch indicates a maturity as well as sparkling ability.
Saturday lunchtime marked the start of the Premier League’s long winter. The wind wasn’t satisfied with biting; it ripped whole chunks off your face. The Emirates hung in the dreary half-light of early evening even at lunchtime.
Storm Arwen threatened to hold up Newcastle supporters with trains cancelled out of the north east, but the away end was full. When there’s a team to support and a new manager to welcome, you find a way.
Some might have wished they hadn’t bothered. Newcastle’s recent record against Arsenal is horrific. Arsenal have now won 18 of the last 19 meetings, stretching back to March 2012. Newcastle haven’t even scored in the last six since a Ciaran Clark consolation at St James’ Park in September 2018. But then Arsenal shouldn’t feel too special; Newcastle’s recent record against everyone is mildly wretched.
For long periods, Arsenal frustrated themselves and their supporters. The Emirates produced its familiar soundtrack of repeated groans not for chances missed but chances not even created. It starts with a backwards pass, an overlapping run ignored or a full-back shooting high and wide from 30 yards and ends with everyone taking one too many touches. The key to beating a deep-lying defence is to move the ball and yourselves quickly, dipping into space to drag opponents out of position.
Instead Arsenal were flat; they calmly passed the ball from side to side and then attempted a cross into a penalty area where only Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang stood. Arsenal had four-fifths of the possession and took 12 shots in the first half, but only produced one moment of real danger when Aubameyang should have scored from an Emile Smith Rowe rebound but hit a post.
But the game turned in the first moment when Arsenal switched to double speed. Bukayo Saka is quickly becoming Arsenal’s man for big moments and Arteta will pray his injury is not serious. It is ludicrous how consummately he is able to seize control of a match and increase its tempo to his will at such a young age. Nobody in this team gives and goes quickly more often.
Newcastle United are not a forlorn team when they are level. They do not look broken in every moment of every match. They displayed steel in the first half and troubled Arsenal on the break; Aaron Ramsdale’s save from Jonjo Shelvey was a highlight. Eddie Howe had clearly instructed them to break up any Arsenal rhythm by dawdling over each restart; Martin Dubravka’s goal kicks were preceded by an extended dramatic pause.
But their inability to shift between gears is painfully obvious. They can either play chaos football – see the 3-3 draw against Brentford – or back-to-the-wall shutout football. When they are asked to change within the same game, either to stop the chaos after scoring or chasing a game after conceding the first goal, they fall flat. After Saka’s goal, there never seemed any danger of a black-and-white response.
Arsenal’s results this season suggests that they are easy to pigeonhole: better than the rest and worse than the best. That provides a headache for an industry desperate to make definitive conclusions on a weekly basis; short-termism rules. Arsenal are perceived as flip-flopping between crisis and salvation. At various points over the last half-decade, competing to be the best of the rest would have been interpreted as a miserable existence.
But that’s what makes the profile of this squad so crucial. Take a few steps back to appreciate Arsenal in wider focus. They have a manager learning on the job in charge of a group of young players doing exactly the same. Their progress will never be linear and never occur without pockmarked disappointment. They will dip and soar and dip again because that is how young players develop. But as long as Saka, Martinelli, Smith-Rowe, Ramsdale et al feel empowered to try and drag this club on, they will always rise higher than they will fall.
from Football – inews.co.uk https://ift.tt/3nWq0i6
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