A pretty dull 1-1 draw at Crystal Palace , defined largely by hesitancy in the Arsenal midfield and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang’s red card , might seem like a strange game to choose to praise new manager Mikel Arteta for the impact he has had on the club since arriving in December.
However, the scale of the mess he inherited at the Emirates should not be understated, and nor should the Gunners' progress over the last three months be measured by results.
Despite a record of just two wins from five outings in all competitions, there are numerous signs that Arteta is quietly starting a revolution in north London, imparting tactical and psychological wisdom that will bear fruit come the start of the 2020-21 season.
If there was any doubt Arteta would model his managerial style on Pep Guardiola, that has certainly been put to bed now.
Broadly speaking, his vision for Arsenal is high-pressing, high-tempo possession football that aims to pin the opposition back and move the ball in complex designated patterns.
The squad’s fitness issues, and brittle confidence following years of stagnation under Unai Emery and Arsene Wenger, mean Arteta’s tactical philosophy has only emerged briefly; at most in 30-minute spells that provide us with a tantalising glimpse of what is to come in the long term.
Arsenal fans have every right to get excited, though, irrespective of the points dropped against Bournemouth, Chelsea, and Palace. It was against Manchester United that the vision first revealed itself .
Arteta utilised something close to a 2-3-5 when Arsenal had the ball, with Ainsley Maitland-Niles spending much of the first half as an inverted full-back, patrolling midfield alongside Granit Xhaka and Lucas Torreira. This gave them a solid screen behind a front five that was framed by Sead Kolasinac bombing forward on the left and Nicolas Pepe holding the width on the right.
The other three attackers were the most important pieces in the jigsaw: Alexandre Lacazette dropped off the front, Mesut Ozil roamed alongside the Frenchman, and Aubameyang cut infield to replace Lacazette.
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United simply couldn’t cope with the movement of these three, who, along with Kolasinac and Pepe, synchronised movements in classic Guardiola style. The Catalan has always emphasised the importance of ensuring no two players occupy the same zone of the pitch, either horizontally or vertically, thus creating tessellating triangles throughout the final third.
What this allows is quick vertical passing; rondos on the pitch, drifting from one flank to the other. It might have only happened for about 35 minutes against United, but it was enough for us to see where Arteta is taking this team and, more importantly, underlined their willingness to listen and learn.
Another telling example of Arteta’s in-depth tactical coaching came last weekend at Palace, when Aubameyang finished off an 18-pass move to give the visitors the lead. Most of those passes were patient sideways balls between the defenders who, waiting for a gap to emerge, carefully stretched Palace from side to side.
But the final few touches suggested Arteta is now coaching specific attacking moves in training, in the hope that certain high-tempo interactions become etched into muscle memory. This feature, often referred to as automatisms, is what makes Jurgen Klopp’s Liverpool or Guardiola’s Man City look like such great improvisers when in fact they are merely repeating rehearsed moves, like actors making dialogue feel spontaneous.
As David Luiz played an assertive forward pass to Ozil, he instinctively knew where Lacazette would be as he dropped off the front. The Frenchman then stabbed a pass forward for Aubameyang with the speed of someone who already knew where to look, and Aubameyang had indeed begun making his diagonal run as soon as Ozil first took the ball. The Arsenal players automatically knew where each other would be.
There was a telling moment later in the half when Kolasinac, all alone, dribbled into the middle of the pitch among a crowd of opposition bodies, but rather than turning back to find help, he angled a through ball down the left wing: a no-look pass to nobody. Instead of being berated by his team-mates – easy to envisage under Emery – Aubameyang apologised for not being there.
It would appear that Arteta is teaching the players specific rhythms of movement, doing away with the sort of genuine creative freedom that is vulnerable to the changing self-belief of individuals. When you begin to rely on rehearsed moves, it matters less when low confidence causes hesitancy and mental blocks.
Of course, teaching automatisms is secondary to getting the wider shape right. Arsenal – again, in fits and starts – are moving in the right direction here, too, with compression between the lines a top priority for the new boss.
High-pressing and a high defensive line requires compactness; otherwise the opponent can simply counter-attack into huge open space, re-stretching the pitch until you have an elongated formation incapable of pressing as a unit. Compression is just as important in a high block as in a low block.
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Arsenal are getting there, and the chief beneficiaries so far have been Granit Xhaka and Lucas Torreira. Suddenly, both players have a much smaller area of the pitch to cover, with close support from both sides meaning just a narrow column of the pitch in which to makes tackles and interceptions.
Where previously they had to scramble across the width and depth of the pitch, now they benefit from the presence of others and the confidence of knowing they can rely on their team-mates.
Both Xhaka and Torreira are flying into tackles now, briefly sprinting out of their zone safe in the knowledge they will be covered. Simplifying individual roles is always a good thing, but particularly for central midfielders who, depending on the system, can be asked to cover wildly different areas of the field.
These tactical improvements wouldn’t be possible – and certainly won’t hold for long – unless Arteta is also a good motivator and, fortunately for Arsenal fans, this is another area in which the Spaniard is similar to Guardiola.
Such potentially risky tactics – from high starting positions to trusting the collective to press together – requires unerring self-belief and unquestioning loyalty.
Here, too, we have had a brief window into the future under Arteta. At half-time against Leeds United, the Arsenal manager "shouted a lot", in the words of Lacazette, inspiring a much more assertive display in the second half.
Having the charisma to command respect in the dressing room is vital at any level, but perhaps particularly so for a young manager stepping into a club moulded by Wenger and allowed to drift further by Emery.
For that reason alone, there will be plenty of tough times ahead. Arsenal will continue to switch off, to slide back into bad habits, over the coming months. Ozil will go missing for long periods. Defenders will continue to make sloppy errors.
Revitalising Arsenal will be a long and painful process, requiring patience from the fan base and money from the board.
But early signs suggest that, in Arteta, Arsenal have found the right man to lead them forward, to bring modern attacking football to the Emirates, and to restore the club to the top of the game.