During that time the Gunners have gone from the ‘Invincibles’, through a ‘banter era’ made famous by Arsenal Fan TV and back again to their position now as one of the country’s most formidable teams. Whisper it quietly but, as many of their fans have been saying lately – ‘Arsenal are back’.
This revival has been a long time coming since the Arsene Wenger years. A look at Arsenal’s league positions over the past decade show just how barren a time it has been for the north London club: 5th, 6th, 5th, 8th, 8th and then fifth again last season.
Arsenal have not finished in the top two since 2016, and last played a Champions League game six years ago. Two FA Cup triumphs did help to quell the dissatisfaction in that time, irking Tottenham fans in the process as their rivals continued to outdo them in trophies. But for one of England’s most successful clubs historically, it has been a bad run.
This, though, may all be about to change. Arsenal have a real chance at being crowned champions of England again. This season Liverpool have been weak, Chelsea are undergoing a complete overhaul and Manchester City have levelled off, selling several players that were key to their recent success. Meanwhile over in north London, Arsenal’s revival has continued at pace.
An exciting, well-coached side filled with talent has emerged and seen off almost every challenge in their 21 league games so far. There are many keys to Arsenal’s revival but here are three main pillars – both on and off the field…
Mikel Arteta
The appointment of Mikel Arteta in December 2019 has had a huge impact on the club in all areas. An emerging coach with bright ideas who served under Pep Guardiola as an assistant manager at Manchester City, the former Arsenal player has been given carte blanche at The Emirates to rebuild the entire team and squad in his own image. Arteta has almost total control over the team, training, recruitment (of both players and backroom staff) and overall vision and philosophy.
While handing Arteta the keys to the whole club looks a great idea now that results start to bear fruit, there have been many times over the past three years where the Spaniard’s job seemed in jeopardy.
Many Arsenal fans wanted Arteta out as recently as last season, and so the club hierarchy deserve praise for allowing such a young coach in his first major job the time and patience to build Arsenal in his own way.
Arteta is a student of the game who has many coaching influences and mentors. He is part of a private group of elite coaches across different sports who share ideas and visions of sport, leadership and management in general.
“I guess what is stunning about both Eddie (Jones – former England rugby head coach) and Mikel is their intelligence and their ideas,’ says Mike Dunlap, assistant coach of the Milwaukee Bucks and part of this private group.
Arteta thinks outside the box for ideas on how to motivate his players and create team unity. He clearly has the discipline, intelligence and conviction in his own ideas required to coach at a high level.
He has built Arsenal with a youthful core that gave fans hope to cling onto during darker times, the emergence of Bukayo Saka and Emile Smith-Rowe for example becoming a popular terrace chant as Arsenal reconnected to their excellent academy and Hale End philosophy.
Important signings, which we’ll come onto, have rejuvenated the team. But it is this core of youth that has helped Arsenal find its identity again, ridding the club of an at-times poisonous match day atmosphere and giving supporters something to buy into.
Then there is the on-pitch transformation.
Tactics
Arsenal’s tactical setup is set by their inspiring coach and primarily involves using the full-backs in midfield to gain control and create overloads in key areas high up the field in attacking situations.
Arteta places a strong emphasis on having his wide players – usually Bukayo Saka and Gabriel Martinelli – stay as high and wide up the field as possible, to stretch the pitch and make his team harder to defend against. To be able to do this without losing shape though, his full-backs are hugely important.
Ben White and Oleksandr Zinchenko start games as full-backs on the left and right side, but often invert in Arsenal’s build-up play and come inside almost as central midfielders. This creates overloads that allow 2 v 1 or 3 v 2 situations, allowing Arsenal superiority to outnumber the opposition in central and wide areas and passing triangles to advance up the field.
Zinchenko, for example, is a key part of this and a hugely important signing for Arteta’s game model. He understands how to play this role extremely well from his time at Manchester City, where Arteta of course was an assistant to Guardiola. Arteta’s tactical philosophy generally is highly influenced by Guardiola.
In Arsenal’s build-up play, Zinchenko will often come inside into half spaces in midfield and link with the central midfielders, Thomas Partey, Granit Xhaka and Martin Odegaard. This allows Arsenal to outnumber opponents and create one v one situations for either Gabriel Martinelli down the left, or for a quick switch out to the right side for Bukayo Saka.
Both Saka and Martinelli are in the top three players in the Premier League for number of dribbles this season, according to Wyscout, and as two of the most skilled dribblers in the division – particularly Saka whose one v one ability is up there with the finest players in Europe – this tactic makes total sense.
It allows for penalty box entries, cutbacks and crosses for attackers in the box, destabilising defences and allowing for tap-ins at the near or far post – just as we’ve seen so often from the great Manchester City teams of the past five years.
Off the ball, Arsenal are a highly aggressive defensive unit. Their PPDA (passes per defensive action – a metric that illustrates pressing – is one of the best in the division. This means they hunt opponents down when out of possession in attempts to win the ball back as soon as possible.
As the team with the youngest average age in the league, this energetic style helps them pressure and suffocate opponents, a hungry pack of wolves ready to pounce.
Recruitment
In order to play in such a modern, successful playing style, attracting the right personnel is also hugely important. This is another area in which Arsenal have improved massively, from years of questionable or unsuccessful signings to this new era of transfer smarts.
For any club to win trophies, effective player recruitment is needed and in this area Arsenal, with Arteta at the top and sporting director Edu in charge on the ground, have really shown signs of improvement.
Compare the team now to the one that started the 2020/21 season: Leno, Bellerin, Gabriel, Holding, Tierney, Maitland-Niles, Xhaka, Elneny, Willian, Aubameyang, Lacazette.
The club has recruited top players like Gabriel Jesus, Martin Odegaard, Thomas Partey, Ben White, William Saliba and Olexsandr Zinchenko – all for respectable prices. Odegaard cost €40 million. Saliba – £27m. Zinchenko – £30m. The days of throwing £72 million on a player like Nicolas Pepe, who failed to ever even establish himself as a first team regular, seem over.
Arsenal now appear to make smart recruitment moves at the right price. They are on top of the market, spying opportunities early (such as Jesus or Odegaard) and are not afraid to walk away if they feel a deal becomes too out of hand price-wise, as they showed with Mykhailo Mudryk.
The squad is lean, young, fit and hungry and there appear to be no bad apples. As famously seen in the All or Nothing Amazon documentary in the case of Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, any dissent or indiscipline is cut out immediately and ruthlessly by Arteta.
Put all this together and you start to understand why Arsenal are just 14 wins away from a return to the very top of English football, 19 years on from their last Premier League title.