Arsenal were worse in the Premier League in 2024/25 than the previous season. That is obvious and it should go without saying.
Fewer wins, fewer points, fewer goals, fewer clean sheets than in 2023/24. And it wasn’t bad luck. Arsenal had less possession, took fewer shots, conceded more shots. There were fewer touches in the opposition box, and more opposition touches in the Arsenal box. I could go on. There is no need for debate: the league campaign was a step backwards.
But this team, and their season, is so hard to analyse because you simply cannot separate the performances from the injuries suffered. Removing Ben White, Martin Odegaard, Bukayo Saka, Kai Havertz, Gabriel from this team for months at a time was always going to have an impact on performances and results. In 2023/24, William Saliba and Declan Rice were the only outfield players to play more Premier League minutes for Arsenal than those five.
In 2024/25, all five of them missed months at a time. That’s half of last season’s starting lineup going from almost ever-presents to being sorely missed, which means that level of disruption has to be taken into account when judging the team, and especially judging the tactics employed by the manager. Did Arsenal play the way he envisioned back in August? Or were his hands tied and his options limited?
When Arsenal were so excellent and, largely, so injury-free in recent seasons, one of the keys was the brilliantly co-ordinated press. Pressing well helps you achieve a few things. It can help you create chances by winning the ball back high, it can help you win possession deeper by forcing the opposition to go long, it can prevent the opposition from breaking you down. With players missing, the press was weakened and so was Arsenal’s ability to do all of the above.
When pressing aggressively, it all collapses if you do not have blind faith in the players behind you to also be doing their job. That trust is built over time, as is the timing of when to jump, when to hold, and what intensity to go at. When Arsenal are humming, the press can help them dominate games: creating more chances, having more of the ball, and making sure when the opposition have the ball they have it as far from your goal as possible. When injuries occur, the trust is not quite there in the same way and, perhaps more importantly, the squad is thinner: players get more tired, they don’t have the chance to have a break, the intensity is dialed down to avoid picking up even more injuries.
That’s especially true in the case of players like Jurrien Timber, who was back from an ACL injury this season, and Thomas Partey, who has had a very spotty fitness record up until this season. With White absent, for example, Arsenal could not afford to lose Timber at any point this season, but coming off a huge injury and almost a year out, it’s fair to assume we saw a different, less intense version of the player than we would have seen had he been able to share right-back duties with White. We saw that in the press and we also likely saw it in attack, where Timber was much less likely than White has been to overlap and support the winger ahead of him.
Arsenal won possession in the final third 4.9 times per Premier League game in 2024/25, down from 6.7 the previous season. And I don’t think it’s that the press was not as effective, but that Arsenal did not have the players to press as effectively so chose not to be as aggressive.
When we see how the team plays, we assume it’s what the manager wants. Sometimes a lot of it is. But even what the manager is instructing may not be their own ideal world, other factors come into play and for a team already suffering so many muscle injuries and the squad thinning as the season went on, you could understand why Mikel Arteta may have dialed things down. The team already looked knackered over the second half of the season. Now imagine how things may have looked had Arsenal had played more intense football, had not taken their time over throw-ins, had looked to press higher and break quicker.
Still, even with the injuries, Arsenal and Arteta made choices and they could have done things differently. This summer is now about addressing that, finding ways to help Arsenal play differently. It probably isn’t unfair to say Arsenal can be too predictable, too slow, a bit too Goldilocks — waiting for the perfect run to play the pass, or for the ball to sit perfectly before taking a shot. Links with Ollie Watkins in January, and Benjamin Sesko and Viktor Gyokeres both now and previously, suggest a willingness to address those issues.
Sesko and Gyokeres are both typical, powerful number nines. They don’t drop into midfield to combine, they run the channels and lead the line. As per The Athletic, 45.8% of the runs Ollie Watkins made in 2024/25 were in behind the opposition defence, the highest rate in the Premier League.
As of January, Aston Villa ranked second in the league for total runs in behind in relation to how long they were in possession, sandwiched between eventual FA Cup winners Crystal Palace and eventual Premier League winners Liverpool. Arsenal were down in 16th. Not saying being top of that ranking makes you a good team or being bottom makes you a bad one — Tottenham were fourth — but it feels like something Arsenal need to look to do more of just to stretch teams. And that’s chiefly because Arsenal don’t create enough chances.
The finishing has been lamented at times and a lot of fans want a striker to rectify that but I think that’s maybe a case of barking up the wrong tree. The misses stick out precisely because Arsenal don’t create enough chances, so they badly need to take the ones they do create. Who had the most big chances missed in the Premier League this season? Liverpool, with 90 to Arsenal’s 70. The difference being they had 40 big chances more than the Gunners. That’s 20 extra misses, it’s also 20 extra goals.
Over the previous two campaigns, eventual champions Manchester City also created (and missed) more big chances than Arsenal. Misses happen, they just matter less when you create enough opportunities to make up for them.
A new striker could add the movement to create more — and it does seem Arsenal want a striker to help encourage the team to play more directly at times — but a number nine will obviously also need the likes of Saka and Odegaard fit to provide for them. Encouragingly, there was a lot more unpredictable and direct movement from Gabriel Martinelli late on in the season. That could be something to look out for next season as an option: maybe we have the option to see Martinelli leave the touchline and make those runs when Kai Havertz plays up front and he plays a more deferential role, more like a typical winger, when someone else is up front?
As we look to take the next step, adding those options and some variability to the team is key. A fit Riccardo Calafiori has shown the ability to add more unpredictability and movement from the back to unsettle opposition defences.
With the manager (and club) seemingly finally settled on Declan Rice playing mostly as a number eight, the proposed arrival of Martin Zubimendi should finally give Arsenal a settled midfield again, something that has been lacking over the last two campaigns. Alongside fitting in with the press of yesteryear (Zubimendi’s tenacity should support that well), having a technically excellent midfield presence schooled in Spain should also offer more control: Zubimendi adjusts the tempo of games, knowing when to play sideways and when to suddenly turn and fire a ball between the lines. Arsenal often gone long under pressure this season but Zubimendi is also excellent at both receiving deep facing his own goal and manipulating his marker in those situations to open space for a team-mate.
Arsenal’s ability to dominate matches will never be fully uncoupled from how effective the press is, but this improvement in midfield could help the team dominate games even without the press fully firing.
Looking to play through the opposition press more often, rather than over it, should be seen as a way for Arsenal to open games up and attack space. If you add Zubimendi (and combine him with Myles Lewis-Skelly or Calafiori) for that, and you add more runs in behind at the other end of the pitch, suddenly opponents become more stretched.
By now it’s clear that this is an excellent Arsenal team, but having half of that team missing for months in 2024/25 was always going to put a ceiling on what they could achieve. Get players fit again, add a different type of midfielder and a different type of attacker, and there are plenty of reasons for optimism. The team that won 89 points just over 12 months ago is all still together.
Let’s get them on the pitch together more often next season and see how far a couple of additions can help take them.
