Have Arsenal gone backwards this season?

Following their 1-0 defeat to Newcastle United on Sunday, Arsenal are fourth in the table, three points off top, and four points short of their total at the same stage last season, leading some pundits to wonder if Mikel Arteta’s side have gone backwards.

The top five

Position Pos	Club	Played Pl	GD	Points Pts
1	Man City MCI	38	+62	91
2	Arsenal ARS	38	+62	89
3	Liverpool LIV	38	+45	82
4	Aston Villa AVL	38	+15	68
5	Spurs TOT	38	+13	66

See the full table

But there isn’t too much to worry about. Irrespective of whether or not Anthony Gordon’s goal should have been disallowed, Arsenal were a little unlucky to lose a tight match and there is no shame in being defeated at St James' Park.

See: Why VAR allowed Newcastle's goal v Arsenal to stand

No shame either in 2-2 draws with London rivals Chelsea and Tottenham Hotspur, which leaves the 2-2 draw with Fulham in August as the only bad result of the season to date.

Nevertheless, Arsenal do appear to be slightly weaker over the first 11 matches of this season than they were last year, as reflected in the fact that five of their seven Premier League victories have been by a single goal, just three short of their entire total of one-goal wins last season, when they had eight.

Here, Alex Keble looks at why they’ve dipped, and why Arsenal will be back to their best soon.

More rotation

Arsenal raced out of the blocks last season, winning 50 points from the first 19 matches thanks to the high-tempo, fine-tuned attacking rhythms coached by Arteta and enacted by the same small pool of players.

Those moves have been disrupted this campaign as a result of injuries and Arteta’s subsequent trial-and-error rotation.

Across the first 11 matches of last season, Arsenal made a total of 10 changes to the starting line-up. This year they have made 20 – double the amount. No wonder they have looked less settled; no wonder their patterns are a little slower and spluttering.

Indeed last season, six Arsenal players featured in all but two of their Premier League matches, whereas in 2023/24 only four players have missed fewer than two matches so far.

On a related note, fast starts used to be a hallmark of this team, but the Gunners are yet to score in the first 15 minutes of a Premier League match this season. Without settling down into a commanding position, Arsenal are inevitably slightly more anxious while the scores are level, which in turn affects their build-up play.

More important, however, is the constant tactical shape-shifting. Thomas Partey was trialled at right-back for a period; Kai Havertz has played in several roles; Arteta keeps changing which player sits as the midfield anchor; injuries have meant too much rotation in the forward line.

What the stats show

Put all that together and it’s no surprise Arsenal are building more slowly and with less dexterity, as we can see in Opta’s statistics.

Their total for non-penalty xG (Expected Goals) per match has dropped from 1.82 last season to 1.34, which is the result of their build-up play slowing.

Their "direct speed" has dropped from 1.48 to 1.25. This is the number of metres that the ball travels directly up-field, divided by the total time of the sequence.

Their number of "direct attacks" are down from 1.63 per match, the sixth-best total in the league, to 1.18 per match, which is the 14th-best tally. This measures open-play sequences that start just inside your own half and end in a shot or a touch in the opposition box.

Their number of 10+ open-play pass sequences are up from 15.3 per match (the fifth-highest total) to 18.9 per match (the second-highest), showing they are having to make more passes per attack.

How draw with Fulham underlined issues

The perfect example of these combined difficulties is that one outlier: the 2-2 draw with Fulham.

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Fulham raced into a lead in the first minute, pouncing on a misplaced Bukayo Saka pass that occurred because of an unfamiliar Arsenal set-up.

Partey, not used to inverting from right-back, left a gap by pushing forward too quickly, while Ben White, normally at right-back but stationed at centre-back that day, instinctively but mistakenly shifted over to the right.

Granted, it’s an unforced error from Saka, but Andreas Pereira should never have been afforded so much space between centre-backs White and William Saliba.

At 1-0 down, Arsenal just couldn’t regain enough control to take a commanding lead, which ultimately cost them. While they went 2-1 up, Joao Palhinha equalised late on from a corner.

Arsenal failed to put the match to bed for two reasons. First, because the relationship between Declan Rice and Havertz, starting together in midfield, was yet to gel, affecting Arsenal’s ability to pull Fulham’s defensive block out of position and play fluidly through the lines.

But it was also for the simpler reason that, in the absence of the injured Gabriel Jesus, Arteta had Leandro Trossard up front.

Jesus’s influence is often underestimated. During the first half of last season, when Arsenal amassed 50 points, Jesus proved to be the missing link: the all-action No 9 who received the ball between the lines and drove Arsenal forward.

Pundits frequently question whether Arsenal need a higher-quality striker, forgetting how brilliant Jesus was when fit and firing last year and, more importantly, missing the fact that this season Jesus has played a grand total of 128 minutes of Premier League football as a No 9.

Arsenal just need time

All of Arsenal’s problems are a simple case of individuals needing time, either to recover from injury or to settle in at their new club.

David Raya, for example, has made a couple of high-profile errors, costing points against Newcastle and Chelsea, but he will surely iron these out as he gets used to the pressure of the job.

In fact those Raya moments, coupled with the concerns against Fulham detailed above, account for every point Arsenal have dropped in 2023/24 bar a 2-2 draw with high-flying Spurs, a match Arsenal would have won had Jorginho – on for the injured Rice – not made an unforced error moments after Saka gave his side the lead.

Once again, it can be explained away by a simple injury.

Defensive improvements led by Rice

If that wasn’t enough good news, Arsenal have significantly improved defensively compared to 2022/23.

Arsenal’s non-penalty xG Against has dropped from 1.0 to 0.74 per match this season, while their shots on target faced have almost halved, from 3.5 to 1.9 per match. Their total for passes per defensive action, which measures how many passes the opposition make before Arsenal intervene, has fallen from 11.0 to 9.6 per match.

Most likely, this is thanks to Rice’s influence. He tops the Arsenal charts for combined tackles and interceptions, with 38, amassing 36 per cent more than the next-best Arsenal player, Saka, with 28.

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Rice is a phenomenon and only just beginning to take the reins at Arsenal; only just starting to drive forward on the ball and appear as if by magic across the entire width and depth of midfield.

Once he clicks, once their bad luck with injuries breaks, and once Arteta finally has a settled first 11, Arsenal’s high-tempo football should return.

And when it does, they will find they have an even stronger defensive foundation upon which to build a title challenge