It’s official: Arsenal are good again.
December has offered further evidence that Arsenal are the Premier League’s most puzzling football club. It began with a pair of demoralising defeats to Manchester United and Everton, clubs who had either recently disposed of an underperforming manager or were in full-blown crisis mode under an unpopular one.
Arsenal’s initial response to those setbacks was ingenious: get on the phone to Adidas, release more retro merch and flog it by making the loveable Bukayo Saka model it while cradling an impossibly cute puppy. Just when you thought you were out, they pull you back in.
Handily, the on-pitch response has been good too, Arsenal recording consecutive wins against Southampton and West Ham to haul themselves improbably into fourth in the Premier League table. All of a sudden, the Emirates has become a fortress: Arsenal have won seven of their last eight league matches at home and not conceded once in their previous four.
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And then there has been the ongoing saga involving Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang which has no doubt pleased Amazon executives ahead of the latest installment of their All or Nothing series. A stern Mikel Arteta responded to the striker’s latest breach of discipline by forcing him to hand over his armband before banishing him from the squad like a headmaster dealing with a troublesome student.
With most other Premier League matches falling foul of escalating Covid cases and people barricading themselves indoors to try and keep the virus at bay before Christmas, plenty of eyes will be plugged into Arsenal’s next game against a wounded Leeds. The fun thing about Arsenal is that you never know what they will do next: they should beat a team that just got thumped by seven without return against Manchester City but they could just as easily shoot themselves in the foot.
Arsenal supporters have been around this block so many times they are in danger of getting dizzy, but it does feel as though maybe, just maybe, things are starting to fall into shape. The recent exile of the 32-year-old Aubameyang has made an already youthful team even younger. According to Transfermarkt.com, the average age of Arsenal’s starting line-up this season is just 24.1, lower than any other club in the Premier League. Only one of Arsenal’s last 14 goals has been scored by a player older than 23 – Alexandre Lacazette’s opener against Southampton. When there is youth, there is hope.
Arsenal fans may not welcome the comparison, but Arteta’s team isn’t too dissimilar to Mauricio Pochettino’s early era Tottenham one. High-earning players in their 30s have been moved on to create room for a promising young core. Thirtysomethings Mesut Ozil, Willian, Henrikh Mkhitaryan, Sokratis Papastathopolous have gone and Aubameyang could be next; in contrast, all six of the club’s summer signings were aged between 21-23 at the time of their arrivals.
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Supporters have been enthused by the emergence of a couple of game-changing Englishmen in attack in Saka and Emile Smith Rowe, just as their rival fans were swept away by Harry Kane and Dele Alli in their breakout years; there is a Scandinavian No 10 pulling the strings, Norwegian Martin Odegaard playing the part of Denmark’s Christian Eriksen; and there is even a South American workaholic out wide in Gabriel Martinelli, a more clinical and less demonstrative Erik Lamela.
Arsenal fans celebrated in Tottenham’s trophy failures, but deep, deep down, some will have envied the process and journey that Pochettino’s side went on. More bumps in the road are to be expected, but at long last Arsenal are building towards something tangible. Marcelo Bielsa, Dr Arsenal will see you now.
from Football – inews.co.uk https://ift.tt/33FzO8r
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