Are Arsenal struggling? Why Premier League’s leaders seem vulnerable despite consistently winning games

As the season approaches its halfway mark Arsenal are top of the table, so many of their most difficult away assignments negotiated at a time when Mikel Arteta has struggled to keep his squad fit. There is plenty in the data to suggest that they are the best team and even their recent perceived wobble in performances has not seen them surrender their advantage over Manchester City.

Why then the powerful sense of dread that seems to have engulfed the Arsenal fanbase? It is easy to dismiss the doomerism on the internet as 21st century pub talk, nothing to be taken seriously by Arteta, his players or even the media. And yet Saturday’s 2-1 win over Brighton was the clearest indication yet that these nerves are shared by the Emirates Stadium, which spent the final third of the game pleading with their players to just get up the pitch. There had been too many nervy wins for supporters to be able to cope with another half hour on the edge of their seats, and yet that is what Arsenal delivered.

Saturday’s win is another that contributes to the vibe shift. It almost doesn’t matter whether Arsenal are playing well but whether it feels like they are. Where some of the Gunners’ own supporters perceive Manchester City as always having another goal in them, they seem to believe in their own instability. Even Arteta, a manager who never ceases to glaze up his fanbase, seemed to acknowledge on Saturday that his stadium’s nerves is getting to the players.

To change the mindset of nigh on 60,000 it is first necessary to understand what is causing this slump of sorts (12 points from 15 is the sort of wobble most managers across the sport would snap Arteta’s arm off for). There are of course more factors, mini-issues and explanations for why it feels like Arsenal aren’t what to be but perhaps the most compelling might be the most infuriatingly unsolvable. 

This team is a bit too good at defending.

Arsenal’s habit of dropping deep

There have of course been moments where that has not been the case, particularly in the last gasp win over Wolverhampton Wanderers where Arsenal spent 10 minutes aimlessly hoofing the ball away as they attempted to hold on to a lead that they would instead have to go and earn back at the death. That display drew a rarely seen level of incandescence from Arteta, who will not tolerate passivity from his side.

That is not the same as saying he does not want his team to occupy a low block. When the Arsenal manager speaks about wanting his team to be the best in every aspect of the game he is not exaggerating and this squad are put through their paces on defending at every line height on the rare occasions where there is enough time on the training ground. And it is the whole team.

That is precisely why it can so often feel like Arsenal are retreating into their shell. When the other team forces them to drop deep — and almost every team in this league has the technical and physical qualities to force their opposition to adapt for a spell — Arsenal’s forwards will get back and help.

Take the Brighton win. The player with the most ball recoveries and as many successful out of possession duels as all bar one of his teammates? That would be Bukayo Saka. His importance to the Arsenal side has never diminished and yet there is no sign of the 24-year-old slacking off in his defensive duties. This is the first season of his Arsenal career where his duel success rate is over 50% in which he has averaged over five ball recoveries per 90 minutes in the Premier League.

It is worth dwelling on that latter statistic for a moment, if only to contextualise it. There are only two forwards averaging more ball recoveries in this league than Saka, who has proven himself to be worthy of exactly the same sort of treatment that Mohamed Salah was given at Liverpool last season. If Arsenal let him shade the defensive duties he might be one of the top scorers and assist providers in the league. Even without that they still get a forward who averages the third most expected assists in the league, is above average for expected goals and has the third most recoveries.

Leandro Trossard and Gabriel Martinelli might not have such gaudy output but they too do their work tracking back (if one wants a sense of why Noni Madueke has not played a minute since his brace against Club Brugge perhaps it would be worth considering his indifferent out of possession play in that game). This is largely a very, very good thing. How much more effective might Liverpool be if they got comparable covering from Salah and even Cody Gakpo? Too many of Tottenham’s forwards rank in the lower reaches of that graph too.

The drawback to such diligence comes when teams do what Brighton did on Saturday. Push their full backs up the pitch in pursuit of an equaliser and Arsenal will follow them. This scene below speaks to the problem with that. Lewis Dunk hangs a cross in that a red shirt clears but where is there to go? 

Even Viktor Gyokeres is back on the edge of his box but what might it take to spring out on the counter? Arsenal would have to get the ball under their control and then advance from their own box to the opponents. These were the moments when the Emirates Stadium was pleading with its players to get up the field, to have a run of play in the Brighton half. That would come but not until a while later. Barring a brilliant David Raya save, Arsenal weren’t really tested after Diego Gomez halved the deficit. There were only three attacking sequences that ended in shots. The pick of the chances fell not to Yankuba Minteh but to Gabriel Martinelli.

Injuries hitting hard

Sitting deep is not, of course, Arsenal’s preferred method of being without the ball. Their opponents have the third lowest pass completion in the Premier League and Arteta’s side sit in the top five for passes per defensive action (a metric that offers a strong sense of press intensity) and possession regained in the attacking third. That last one is particularly impressive given how much possession Arsenal have most of the time.

You might think of the Gunners as the kings of the low block, a team who could repel crosses all day long. They might even be that. But Arteta would be much happier with his center backs on the halfway line, the rest of his team strangling the opposition before they even catch a glimpse of Raya’s goal. Such an approach, however, is physically demanding.

Clubs do not readily make physical data widely available but what we do have speaks to the demands placed on Arsenal center backs. What we do have, however, is UEFA’s sprint data from the Champions League. Every one of the regular starting back four in the competition — Jurrien Timber, William Saliba, Gabriel and Myles Lewis-Skelly — rank in their team’s top 10 highest sprint speeds, all clocking in at over 19 miles per hour for their top speed. Cristhian Mosquera and Ben White too, are maxing out at high speeds. No wonder you could see the latter’s hamstring just go when he was sprinting back.

Arsenal have left no stone unturned in their pursuit of injury succour but they cannot change the basic fact that loaded muscles are going to be under the greatest burden when they have played a significant number of minutes, have not had much in the way of training sessions to build strength in the muscles and are having to accelerate to top speeds. Some of Arsenal’s injuries were the sort no one could see coming — Mosquera’s awkward landing against Bayern Munich, for instance — but the muscular issues faced by White and Gabriel were eminently predictable.

Arsenal know their playing style places strain on their defenders, hence why they have recruited for such depth in that position. Arteta could feasible name any combination of the eight available to him when fully fit and feel confident that they can keep a clean sheet. And yet there is only been a window of three match weeks this season where he could choose from his full compliment of eight. Given that perhaps it is less immediately surprising than it might seem to hear Arteta open the door, at least partially, to another signing in January.

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Francesco Porzio

“We’re Arsenal and we have to be looking at it,” said Arteta. “‘OK, What do we need?’ We have to be actively looking. Then can we do it or not, that’s a different story, but our job is to be always very prepared because something can happen.”

Asked directly if his defense needed fresh recruits, Arteta indicated that much will depend on the recovery of those currently sidelined. “We’re going to be really aware of the situation and the timescale of certain players,” he said. 

“That’s the depth that you need, when you look across the other clubs as well, they have 24, 25 squad players. The thing is that although we have more injuries than expected, some of them [are] not avoidable I would say. We want to be better and we know how important the part of having the right availability with players going to play in this season.”

Mosquera is expected to be sidelined for much of January but Arteta has offered a hopeful assessment of the extent of White’s hamstring injury. There is also understood to be optimism over the extent of Timber’s injury while Calafiori’s was known about prior to Saturday’s game. Arsenal had planned for the eventuality that the Italian would not be able to start, Arteta confirming that he had told Declan Rice that he might need to fill in at right back, and ultimately their adaptation proved to be swift when it was concluded that the Italian couldn’t go. If he came within half an hour of making the XI against Brighton, there is reason to hope he might be fit to play Aston Villa.

Why not change the style?

If recruiting for further depth is one option to address the issues at the back, might another be to change the style? Leave Saka high, let the line ease back, space things out a bit and take a load off. There’s just a problem with that. It’s quite hard to make a compelling case for Arsenal changing what they’re doing when what they’re doing has them top of the Premier League. 

Recent games have felt a bit wobbly but take those performances and play them in sky blue shirts and would they not be viewed as evidence of the inevitability of Manchester City? Shorn of Gabriel for all bar half an hour of December this team has conceded the fewest goals of any team in the league except Everton. The ball has not gone in the goal as much as they might have liked but their expected goals output is better than City during this month.

Their fans are getting skittish but this remains a team with by far the most solid foundations in the division. If Arsenal want to end their 21 year wait for a title, the best thing they can do is keep doing what they’ve been doing all the way through this season so far.

Viewing information: Arsenal vs. Aston Villa

• Date: Tuesday, Dec. 30 | Time: 3:15 p.m. ET
• Location: Emirates Stadium — London
• TV: NBC SN | Live stream: Peacock
• Odds: Arsenal -225; Draw +320; Aston Villa +550