After flying out of the blocks in their 2022-23 title challenge, Arsenal have made more stuttering starts in the two seasons that have followed.
They went into the World Cup break around this time two years ago five points clear at the top of the Premier League after 14 games. A slower start to last season meant it took them 13 matches to get into first place. And after 11 matches of this one, they are nine points off leaders Liverpool, though the circumstances have been different.
“There are other things, like the level of opposition we have played, that’s for sure,” manager Mikel Arteta said in his pre-match press conference before Arsenal faced Chelsea in their most recent outing almost two weeks ago. “Nobody has played the amount of away games that we have, and certainly not in the condition of playing half of those with 10 men. Nobody in the league.”
Just a day later, his Liverpool counterpart Arne Slot concurred when speaking to UK broadcaster TNT Sports after a 2-0 home win against Aston Villa. He said: “It was Mikel (Arteta) who said — and I agree with him completely — they had many difficult away games already and had to play them with 10 men as well. We had difficult games, but only Manchester United and Arsenal away as the ones (opponents) you’d expect to be top six (come May).”
Slot’s Liverpool have made a similar start to that Arsenal of two seasons ago. Their nine wins, one draw and single loss have them five points clear of four-in-a-row champions Manchester City — but, as the Dutchman states, perspective is key.
From an Arsenal standpoint, there was an understanding that the start of this season would be tough as soon as fixtures were announced in June. Their first four away games across the Premier League and Champions League against Aston Villa, Tottenham, 2023-24 Europa League winners Atalanta and City — the final three in successive matches — set the tone.
Despite four home fixtures in a row at the start of October (all of which they won), ending the most recent block of matches by having them on the road for four straight outings in 10 days across three competitions was recognised as an important period.
The combination of those opening and closing weeks objectively made for a more difficult start to the season, compared with what both Liverpool and City had to face.
After 11 of the 38 league games, Arsenal have already visited five of the other six sides in last season’s final top seven — a task just six other teams have had since the Premier League era began in the early 1990s.
Manchester United in 2008-09 and neighbours City in 2021-22 are the only teams of the six who went on to win the league that season, though both did so as defending champions. The other sides to experience this are Chelsea in 1992-93 (final position: 11th, but in a 22-team table), West Bromwich Albion in 2002-03 (19th), Southampton in 2016-17 (eighth) and Burnley in 2017-18 (seventh).
Although it is a trend that has become more common in the past eight years, no new Premier League champion has had such a run to start that season.
As Arteta and Slot mentioned, Arsenal have been hamstrung by red cards. No matter your opinion of the validity of the dismissals, all three changed the matches in which they happened. There are ways to illustrate how the games were affected other than the gut feeling during play and what is obvious to the eye.
Take field tilt, which is the proportion of total final-third passes played, suggesting territorial dominance when the percentage is high.
The biggest shift in this metric came after Declan Rice’s dismissal on 49 minutes at home against Brighton in August, with Arsenal’s field tilt dropping from 57 per cent before his sending-off to 13 per cent after it. Next is October’s defeat away to Bournemouth, where Arsenal’s field tilt was at 66 per cent when William Saliba got his marching orders after half an hour, and 39 per cent for the remainder of the game.
Unsurprisingly, the draw at Manchester City in September is where the least amount changed, with a drop from 21 per cent field tilt to six per cent before and after Leandro Trossard’s second yellow card in the final moments of the first half. This, however, was probably the best example of how important momentum can be.
The momentum chart below uses expected goals (xG) or possession value grouped in three-minute intervals, depending on which is higher, to determine the probability that a team will go on to score from a particular zone of the pitch during a spell of possession.
Riccardo Calafiori’s equaliser on 22 minutes came from an opportunistic quick free kick after a confident City start.
Arsenal slowly grew into the game after that and deserved to take the lead through Gabriel, who had a similar chance minutes before his goal made it 2-1 to the visitors just before the interval. The red card just after and then the half-time interval provided City with a natural reset before throwing everything they could at Arsenal, with 28 of their 33 shots that day coming in the second half.
A similar momentum shift can be seen against Brighton, the game that changed the most for Arsenal after a dismissal.
Already 1-0 up, Arsenal had started that second half with intent. Jurrien Timber was inside the Brighton box before finding Rice, who had an effort blocked. Gabriel then headed wide from the resulting corner, with Trossard driving the ball back into that corner before Rice’s fateful incident with Joel Veltman. The momentum shift after the red card was instant, but Arsenal might have been frustrated with themselves for not taking advantage of their unexpected dominance around the 75th minute.
In the graph above, that is shown by the three pluses, which represent a goal probability of an additional 20 per cent. Those came from a Kai Havertz one-on-one and Bukayo Saka’s rebound, as well as a Saka chance where he slid in a few moments later. Better finishing touches could have put Arsenal back into the lead, but with Brighton regaining control, the moment had gone.
These are just a few of the situations that have made Arsenal’s start to the season tougher than it already would have been.
They are still yet to begin a game with what was considered their ‘Plan A’ side at the end of the summer transfer window, with Martin Odegaard, Rice and newcomer Mikel Merino in midfield. Though three were fit and available against Chelsea last time out, they were not on the pitch together, with Merino replacing starter Rice after 71 minutes.
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A conveyor belt of injuries across the team has also hindered any momentum gathering in a football sense. Something similar happened early last season, with Timber, Gabriel Jesus and Thomas Partey having spells on the sidelines.
Although Arteta will still be awaiting the return of a few players once this final international break until March ends in the coming days, he has arguably the most important one back in captain Odegaard.
Aside from Odegaard, the players Arteta cannot afford to go too long without are Saka, Gabriel and Saliba. The Norwegian’s return to the starting line-up against Chelsea after being out since September’s internationals showed his importance both in and out of possession, and having him in the team again should help make Arsenal more fluid.
There will also be a recognition of how different Arsenal’s games in the lead-up to Christmas are compared with the fixtures awaiting Liverpool and City.
After playing Nottingham Forest and Sporting CP of Portugal in the coming days, the only current top-seven Premier League side Arsenal face before Santa Claus comes to town are Fulham. And depending on developments in the two domestic cups, as things stand they will also leave London just once, a shortish trip down to Brighton, between returning from Lisbon this time next week and the visit to Wolves on the final weekend in January.
On the other hand, Liverpool and City meet at Anfield on December 1, Slot’s men go to Newcastle three days later, and both teams have to play Tottenham over the next month.
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With many of the group now into a third successive title race, Arteta and his players will not be naive enough to believe their coming matches are given. Even so, considering the points they have already dropped, Arsenal do have an opportunity to kickstart their season in this next block of games.
An international break cannot replicate the positive effects of Arsenal’s training trip to Dubai in January, where they returned and rattled off eight league wins in a row by a combined score of 33 goals to four. But the past two weeks could have come at the right time for a team who were in need of a moment to breathe and then go again.
(Top photo: Stuart MacFarlane/Arsenal FC via Getty Images)
