Arsenal supporters know all too well Premier League title races are cruel and fickle; that the tide can turn in the blink of an eye.
But even they must be reeling from the shock of the last four weeks and a whiplash momentum shift that has turned a stoic and wizened Arsenal into clingers-on.
The gap to first is only five points, but a run of one win and four points from their last five matches has wrenched open old arguments about youthful naivety and killer instinct.
Across a five-match sequence Arsenal have taken 94 shots and scored four goals. They couldn’t score from 30 attempts in the 2-0 defeat to West Ham United and then, worse still, struggled even to create openings in a 2-1 loss at Fulham.
But their goalscoring woes extend beyond a wretched December.
Arsenal have scored only 20 open-play goals this season. That’s the 13th most in the division and fewer than the likes of Nottingham Forest, West Ham and Fulham.
Their non-penalty Expected Goals (xG) per 90 minutes is down from 1.82 to 1.59, which over the course of a 38-match season amounts to around a drop of nine xG.
The reasons for the downturn are interrelated: Mikel Arteta’s tactical shift towards control has made Arsenal a little predictable this season, and the resulting low blocks they face have shifted too much responsibility onto Bukayo Saka while crowding out strikers who are struggling to score.
Arsenal’s increased control creates a problem
“More than control, I want dominance. Dominance in the right area and not allowing the opponent to breathe.”
Those are Arteta’s demands this season, in his own words. He’s got it, but at what cost?
Speaking on Sky Sports, pundit Jamie Carragher summed up the tactical problems at Arsenal this season.
“The best way to describe it is that last season it was a bit 'Jurgen Klopp Liverpool' and this season it feels more like Manchester City.
“There's less transition, there's more control which I think helps them defensively. But does it help them offensively?
“It made me think whether they are too organised in attack. We see the same repetition, but is there enough off-the-cuff?”
That’s the issue in a nutshell – and it’s borne out in the numbers.
The average "sequence length" of an Arsenal passing move has risen this season from 11.49 seconds in 2022/23 to 13.26, a significant increase.
Their average number of 10+ open-play pass sequences is also up, from 15.3 to 17.7 per match, while their direct attacks are down from 1.63 to 1.25 per game.
It has meant a more ponderous approach to goal and, crucially, an increase in the number of low blocks they face: teams are more likely to be set around the penalty area because Arsenal give them the chance to get into formation.
From a position of such territorial dominance, and facing a compact defensive shell, it becomes difficult to create chances.
Arteta’s tactical plan is overly structured
The issue is exacerbated by robotic attacking patterns that threaten to make Arsenal too predictable.
Arsenal appear to repeat the same move over and over again in pursuit of wide overloads that lead to cutbacks from inside the area.
The ball is funnelled to a winger via a wide central midfielder, and if the winger cannot beat his man, Arsenal carefully pass the ball in a ring-shape around to the other flank.
Anyone who watches Arsenal regularly will be able to picture this passage of play. Anyone who saw their match against Fulham will know why it is a problem.
Arsenal’s early opener came via a quick move from back to front; the sort of transition-focused goal that used to be common, but has disappeared as they move towards Pep Guardiola-style football.
For the remainder of the 90 minutes, their connections were too slow and easy to read to trouble the Fulham defence.
In years gone by Man City haven’t run into problems playing this way because Guardiola has disruptors: players who work against the grain with a moment of individual magic. By contrast, Arsenal only have an isolated Saka.
The pass map below exemplifies the attention to detail at Arsenal and the way they build predominantly through Saka only to cycle back around.
In short, they lack spontaneity and inspiration. Even the player who used to provide it, Saka, is beginning to look trapped by a system that seeks control and dominance in a tactical era of fast transitions.
Over-reliance on Saka and full-back problems
Now regularly camped in the opposition final third, and with no space in which to dribble, Arsenal’s take-on success has dropped substantially - from 46.7 per cent last season, ranking sixth in the Premier League, to 40.6 per cent, placing them 18th in the competition - while their number of crosses has risen, from 17.7 to 19.9.
Increased crosses into a congested penalty area wouldn’t be such a bad thing if they had a striker like Erling Haaland (as we’ll come to), but for the time being the desire to carefully recycle the ball around the edge of the box, only to cross it in, is a dead-end.
That’s mainly because of an over-reliance on Saka to come up with the goods, as evidenced by the fact the England international receives more progressive passes (305) than any other player in the Premier League.
By now, teams know to put two defenders on Saka, and be physical with the winger, in order to slow him down and force that around-the-houses passing out to Gabriel Martinelli.
He needs help, perhaps via an attacking right-back who can pull players out of position by over and underlapping, rather than hover just behind Saka, as Ben White does, to make himself available for that first pass around the box.
The best comparison here is Mohamed Salah, who maintains his threat at Liverpool because Klopp ensures there are willing runners – and maverick ones at that – around him, from right-sided No 8s charging ahead of play to Trent Alexander-Arnold flitting around the pitch.
Harvey Elliott, coming off the bench, often releases Salah by confounding defenders with his unusual position as a wide No 10 – another option that Arsenal lack.
Arsenal substitutes scored eight goals in the first 13 matches of the Premier League season – but none since. They could do with entering the transfer market for some creative, idiosyncratic energy in that right half-space.
Another solution would be quicker moves from one side of the pitch to the other, which might stretch the defensive blockade out of shape - but of course that would risk losing possession; losing control.
But Guardiola is not as risk-averse as people think, and at present Arteta can be guilty of looking like a caricature of his old mentor: Arsenal rank 17th in the Premier League for total switches with 40, amassing 50 per cent fewer than Man City's 61 this season.
Arsenal need a clinical No 9
Then again, perhaps all of this is over-analysis of a simple problem.
Arsenal have taken the highest number of touches in the opposition penalty area, with 723. Their total of 319 shots ranks joint-second while their xG per 90 is barely down from last season, moving from 1.89 to 1.80, which amounts to 3.4 goals over a full season.
Most striking of all, they’ve scored 20 open-play goals from an open-play xG of 25.17, meaning an under-performance of 5.17 goals. Only Manchester United, Chelsea and Everton fare worse for that metric.
So, maybe creating chances, tactical structure, and Saka-dependence isn’t an issue at all, leading us to one obvious conclusion.
Arsenal need a penalty-box poacher: a striker with a killer instinct who will put away the one big chance his team-mates produce in brutal matches like those against West Ham and Fulham.
Gabriel Jesus has scored three goals from 32 shots this season and is averaging 0.29 goals per 90 in the league, his lowest-ever return over the course of his career bar his debut season at Palmeiras as a 17-year-old.
And Jesus is under-hitting his xG to a figure of -1.7, which is not out of the ordinary. He’s produced a negative return in five of his seven Premier League campaigns.
Eddie Nketiah fares better, scoring five league goals this season from only 967 minutes, which is the equivalent of just under 11 full matches, but his conversion rate is still lower this season compared to last.
Arsenal attackers last two seasons
| Player | 22/23 goals | 22/23 shot conversion | 23/24 goals* | 23/24 shot conversion* |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gabriel Martinelli | 15 | 19% | 2 | 6% |
| Martin Odegaard | 15 | 16% | 4 | 10% |
| Bukayo Saka | 14 | 16% | 6 | 12% |
| Gabriel Jesus | 11 | 14% | 3 | 9% |
| Combined | 55 | 16% | 15 | 10% |
*After 20 matches
But you don’t even have to go that deep into the stats to understand Arsenal’s need for a goalscorer.
Nketiah’s five strikes make him Arsenal’s top-scoring centre-forward - but only place him joint-26th for goals in the Premier League.
Signing a top striker might solve all of Arteta’s problems. Then again, the eye test – surveying a mechanised tactical plan and opponents increasingly disrupting the circuitry - says it’s a little more complicated than that.
