ARSENAL FIND FLOW STATE
If I were the CEO of Perspective FC, I’d be writing you an email right now, and I’d be saying something like:
Dear Pragmatist,
We’ve been preaching the facts: The season is long. The past is not always an indicator of the future (unless it suits my agenda). Eleven games in is no time to start taking Ws on a miserable season prediction.
On Saturday, November 23rd, we were able to take a small shot of 70% proof VINDICATION, and it hit the spot.
Keep thinking big picture.
Yours sincerely,
CEO, Perspective FC
Pronouns: Always/Right
This CEO might be imaginary, but the contents of the email were most certainly the hardest of facts.
Manchester City had lost four on the bounce. They were playing so badly, Pep G had to cancel his retirement. They lost a very important Premier League vote, then played a team that has a crazy hex on them and lost 4-0. That is the worst result of Pep’s career.
City are not the same as they once were. They are missing their best player, their midfield looks old, previously high-level players look like they might be teetering on the edge of decline, and Mr. Stay Humble has taken a delicious form tumble scoring just 2 off 8 xG since the infamous quip.
My view hasn’t shifted on them being the frontrunners. They’re never truly down and out. But my prediction at the start of the season was they’d find it difficult to navigate the distractions, and I think we might be seeing that impact now. Pep G signing a new deal was supposed to be a shot of compound V in the arm, but read his comments about the deal:
"Maybe the four defeats were the reason. I feel I have to help the team to recover."
"Since the beginning of the season I was thinking a lot in the moment, I will be honest, I thought (the season) should be the last one."
It’s gun-to-the-head reasoning, I don’t believe he’s really there for 2 years, and I wonder if the players see through it all? It doesn’t feel like he’s all in, and as Michael Rainey said on the Culture podcast last week, if someone isn’t interested, they might as well not be there. If players don’t think he’s really interested, he won’t get the same turn from them. Football at the highest level is all about marginal gains - knowing your manager would rather be on a Disney Cruise in Alaska necking Mickey themed Negronis will weigh on the minds of players who have have a lot of time to think about these things. A lot of people think the marker for elite behavior in life is fast change and maximum churn, but the objective truth is the most successful organizations have a secret weapon that doesn’t make for a good book: stability. Tim Cook (13 years), Mark Zuckerberg (20 years), Warren Buffet (54 years), Stephen Schwarzman (35 years), Jensen Huang (31 years), Satya Nadella (11 years), Elon Musk (16 years). Pep G has been at City for 8 years, Klopp was at Liverpool for 7 years, Carlo has been at Madrid for 5.5 years… stability is key and now City doesn’t have it. That will come with pain.
Arsenal had a different set of problems to overcome. Our YouTubers have been waving the white flag to drum up some traffic. We’ve had fans say things like "give up the league and focus on the cups." It’s all been a bit tense and irrational.
Forest at home had to be a win, and if we’re blunt about it—it had to be a proper performance.
Well, it was both. Arsenal put on a Christopher Nolan blockbuster. The football was artful, complex, and the piano score in my head was Interstellar levels of fancy. A very good Forest side was made to look average in the extreme.
Arteta made five changes to the starting XI. He benched Kai, Martinelli, Partey, and Declan. We welcomed Jorginho, Timber at right-back, Calafiori at left-back, Jesus as the striker, and Trossard on the left. Some fans quipped that they didn’t like it—I have to say, I was nervous. If the heavily rotated squad needed help, it wasn’t going to bode well for our "game every three days" run in December.
Reasons to believe were:
Mostly players who didn’t travel, so they spent a lot of time with Arteta.
Mostly players who can unlock tight defenses.
We needn’t have worried. The post-Dubai shift saw Jorginho integrated in January, and the luck shifted with him yesterday. My view is our run at the league needs to start a month earlier this season. December can’t be slow. The luck shift needs to be now.
Arsenal started strong. An early corner led to a clearance that found Saka; he scuffed his 9-yard shot into the path of Trossard, who couldn’t get his close-range strike out from under his feet.
Forest showed a bit of threat on the right early on, releasing Ralf Rangnick fave Elanga out wide.
First blood was actually a scratch.
Odegaard delivered a great ball into the box, Merino leapt like a caracal picking a bird out of the air, and he nodded across goal. Timber turned it in… but the linesman flagged. VAR took a close look. Very close. Close and slow. Then they drew the worst lines I’ve ever seen to disallow the goal. Can PGMOL please stop this amateur-hour nonsense and just get the speedy semi-automated tech going?
The first 25 minutes were really open, and the ref decided to let the physical side of Forest’s game run riot. I wrote at the time that this has been a familiar pattern this season—i.e., let other teams roughhouse, then clamp down when Arsenal return the favor.
… and so it was. Arsenal players were booked three times off four fouls. Forest were booked once off seven. Not to mention a fair number of heavy challenges that were passed over early on. Jorginho was booked for his first tactical foul. Jesus was booked for fouling a player he couldn’t see because he came in behind him. Saka was booked for challenging for the ball. We are reffed differently. Arsenal doesn’t have the same dark arts options open to it as clubs like City do—and that affects how we use our subs.
The second half saw Jorgi go off, presumably because Arteta sensed Simon Hooper was drunk on attention and clearly keen on making the afternoon about himself. That’s really not good. But his performance was just bad, which doesn’t make the headlines, so it’ll pass without comment.
Still, can’t whine too much. Thomas Partey coming on in the form he’s shown this season was pretty decent. He collected a pass from Saka and decided, 30 yards out, that he’d just wallop it into the top corner. The man has been sensational. Which utter mug said he was concerned about him in our side? Not me. Definitely NOT me, okay?
The second goal gave Arteta the opportunity to bring squad players into the mixer. We saw Sterling, Nwaneri, Zinchenko, and Kiwior given time to shine. This was great news for all four, who have had their issues this season.
Nwaneri really did catch the eye. Firstly, with a dazzling run and clipped shot toward the far post that just went wide. Secondly, when Sterling found him with space in the box with a perfect cutback. Ethan, cool as you like, planted his shot inside the near post for our third goal of the evening. Magnificent.
THE BIG THOUGHTS
ARTETA DEVELOPMENT
So… 250 games for Arteta, and we should all feel pretty good about where we are as a club. The thing I loved to hear the most in the press conference after the game was this:
"Then the fact it was a total effort of the team because other players have to come in. I had to take Jorgi out because of the yellow card, Thomas [Partey] comes in, impacts the team, scores a goal. Raheem comes in, he makes an assist, Ethan comes in, he scores a goal. That gives us a different kind of dominance, Jakub comes in to get some minutes in the legs. You don’t play Thomas, you don’t play Declan, you don’t play Martinelli, you don’t play Kai Havertz, and there’s always that question mark, is it right or wrong? I felt it because I think the team needed it, that they all feel important and all have a real chance. Some of the players, the way they trained while we were here, was unbelievable and I have to praise that."
Arteta’s biggest weakness, by far, is that he over-relies on his favorites and puts other players out in the cold. When he needs the other players, they’re frosty, brittle, and out of form. The fact he left our best players on the bench speaks to an evolution in the way he thinks and a realization that December cannot be defeated with posi-vibes and machismo statements like "elite players just get it done."
The most inane thing I hear fans preface about Arteta is this: "He has made mistakes." As if there was a hire, somewhere in the world, who was going to come in and be flawless. My favorite thing I hear fans say now is that he learns from his mistakes really fast. This error in thinking has been the one mistake he’s never corrected—but those comments today indicate we could be about to see more rotations. That could be very, very big for our season.
NWANERI LAYS A BRICK
It seems pretty clear that Ethan Nwaneri was not the heir apparent to Martin Odegaard in the eyes of Mikel Arteta.
What I like is that he comes in, in that context, and the first thing he does is take a touch, run forward, run past two players, and put it inches away from the post.
"I understand that, I am responsible for him, and you have to do that brick by brick. Today he put in another brick, now we have to put the cement, make sure that it doesn’t get dry, so that he can put in another one and another one and that one is going to stick. Then we put one more layer. We want to put five in a row. Believe me, it won’t work, and we have to manage that with his expectations and his load as well, which is really important."
My suspicion is there were two ideas for back-up to Odegaard. The first was Trossard; the second was likely Kai if we signed Sesko. Ethan was supposed to be a bit-part player all season. Well, we’re seeing that bit-part player stake a claim for more minutes. Ethan looked brilliant, and he made the most of his short amount of minutes with a great solo run and a goal.
Arteta stressing the load management seems key as well. He was at the club with Jack Wilshere, a player who dropped 50 games in his first season and broke himself forever. Hopefully, this clarity slows us down when we’re begging for him to start regularly.
DEFENDING LIKE KINGS AGAIN
Arsenal have been a touch suspect this season when it comes to defending. Admittedly, we have conceded 33% of our goals in games we’ve gone down to 10 men. Without those goals, we’d have conceded 8, which would be the second-best defense in the league. Alas, if your aunty had… you know the story.
Our defense still hasn’t felt great. We’ve seen Raya make a lot more saves than usual, and some of the goals we’ve conceded have been sloppy. If we’re going to win the league—we need the Arsenal of last season, where our biggest concern was whether Raya was good because he never made saves.
Forest was one of those games. Raya didn’t make a single save. He still had a brilliant game with great kicking, good box management, and top handling. Zero shots on target against a team that started the day in the top 6 is remarkable defending. That means everyone in the team did their job to the highest level. That energy needs to be taken into every game.
SAKA’S CHOCOLATE LEG
I’m making a Robin van Persie reference to his favored foot that he called his chocolate leg, presumably because of the sweet strikes he’d unleash. Has Bukayo just decided to channel some of that this season?
It feels like he’s moved on from his perfectly placed daisy cutters to these new brutal HAMMER OF THOR monster shots that are struck so hard, I find myself feeling sorry for the keepers. Arjen Robben had the best name for his left foot… he called it the "difference maker," and that is how I feel about what Bukayo’s legs are doing for Arsenal right now.
He’s found the next level as he opens talks with Arsenal on his next deal. What a player. What a person. How lucky are we to be watching one of the greats of global football at The Emirates?
TO CONCLUDE:
The Premier League is a long and treacherous journey, and anyone saying that Liverpool are even close to winning it doesn’t know what they are talking about. Their distractions are coming, my friends. It won’t be against Southampton, but problems will arise. They have MASSIVE players who might leave, they have a manager who hasn’t dealt with pain in that dressing room, and they have the same squad that bottled a 5-point lead over Arsenal in the Premier League in a 13-point swing to finish 3rd. They added nothing. Do you really think anything changed? It’s still Mo Salah scoring the goals, VVD making the tackles, and their keeper dropping worldies. The run won’t last, I promise.
Now we’re looking good, I can say it again:
The way fixtures roll is an important context for results.
Losing your best players to long-term injury hurts even the most well funded of teams.
Bad luck like three awful red cards will damage results.
Arsenal have gone through all of the above, and we’re 1 point off City, 6 points off Liverpool, and we have a very nice run of games through December. The panic about our demise, terrible summer, or the ridiculous notion that Arteta was sussed were the usual bedwetting we associate with a certain section of the fanbase that can’t wait until the halfway point of the season before giving up.
Saturday was a good day for Arsenal. There will be more. Keep the faith—the season will throw up lots of surprises, but I am sure we’ll be battling come the end of the season for our first title in a very, very long time.
Ok, if you want the On The Whistle Podcast early, there are some very nice offers for December to get you to commit to a Le Grove membership.