We knew that Arsenal were highly dependent on Bukayo Saka, and they had no shortage of stodgy performances even before his injury. But bloody hell, we still weren’t quite prepared for just how utterly toothless they would look so much of the time in his absence.
Mikel Arteta’s side are very solid and can control games at will when they’re not losing their heads over whatever perceived injustice has gone against them this week, but their struggles against the ten men of Manchester United in the FA Cup third round underlined just how unconvincing Arsenal are in the final third.
Even against ten men, Arsenal’s chances of scoring still felt distinctly limited to set pieces and nothing else. Even against Altay Bayindir, Declan Rice seemingly trying to shoot directly from corners does not inspire confidence in a side’s creative prowess.
Having a penalty saved feels very Arsenal, even if it was an excellent save. Kicking off about a correctly-given offside is very Arsenal. A front three for much of the game of Leandro Trossard, Kai Havertz and Raheem Sterling is so Arsenal it almost hurts, and delivered exactly the kind of end product you might expect.
READ: Mikel Arteta negativity, Bukayo Saka injury and set-pieces: What is going wrong at Arsenal?
It’s only fair and right to note that just like against Liverpool, Manchester United were by and large defensively excellent, certainly considering their numerical disadvantage. Harry Maguire did not get nearly enough credit for his showing at Anfield last weekend, but he and Matthijs de Ligt were given their dues here.
After their awful run of form, the work Ruben Amorim is doing on the training ground is starting to show on matchdays, at least when it comes to fixing that defence.
Now both managers need to prove their chops at the other end of the pitch – but the reality is that for Arteta, as with Amorim, there is only so much he can do without the addition of more quality for the front line.
Coaches can provide a framework for the defence to work with, and there will be principles and positions they want their side to abide by in possession, but any manager at any level will tell you that they ideally want to give their attacking players as much freedom as possible to do their thing once they get into the final third. The problem both sides have is that Their Thing is simply not very good.
For Arsenal, that represents an obvious decline. This Arsenal is a far cry from their free-scoring form last season, despite the personnel being much the same, and it is hard to put a definitive finger on why that should be the case. Injuries haven’t helped, but also don’t explain why Leandro Trossard is unable to hit a shot any lower than 35 yards in the air, or why Martin Odegaard continues to run the show yet has as many Premier League assists this season as Adam Lallana.
The fact that Arsenal thought Sterling might be a solution to their problems in the summer suggests it is an issue they are very well aware of and were (belatedly) desperate to fix; short of complacency or a failure to have watched any of Sterling’s spell at Chelsea, there’s no way that deadline day move would have been sanctioned otherwise. We doubt there were any forlorn Gunners who were cheered up by the prospect of Sterling’s impending return as Saka’s most natural replacement.
We’re not “throw money at the problem” people, as a rule, but it’s hard to see a better way out of it for Arsenal at the moment. They have already been knocked out of one cup and are teetering in another because of that issue; it looks extremely likely to be another season without silverware unless they can pull something bloody spectacular out of their bag this month.
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