Time to rediscover Arsenal’s right-hand reliance

Good morning all. Andrew is on his way to Lisbon this morning so I’m here in his stead to get us through to matchday in the Champions League.

I don’t know about anyone else, but I’ve spent a lot of time since Saturday oscillating between trying to calm my own nerves and trying to tell myself I’m not crazy for being so nervous. Ultimately, the issue is that we just have to sit around and wait for the rest of the season to unfold, so we continuously fill in the blanks of the next two months – the things that haven’t happened yet – with our best guesses, estimates, and assumptions. And, if we’re honest, our hopes and our fears.

It’s a bit mad to think that the last time an Arsenal player kicked a ball in the Premier League was Max Dowman, scoring his goal against Everton. Dinos Mavropanos scored with West Ham’s only shot against Manchester City later that evening, they also haven’t played a league game since, and it felt like everything was going to be great.

Wrong.

Arsenal remain nine points clear in the Premier League (albeit City have a game in hand) and are about to play a Champions League quarter-final, having beaten Bayer Leverkusen at home a few days after that win over Everton, but are out of both domestic cup competitions and that, with some negative injury news along the way, feels like it has changed everything, when it really hasn’t.

Things can change very, very quickly in any direction and even when those changes come, they often aren’t as big as they feel.

Still, it was hard to watch Arsenal on Saturday and feel like something a bit different, a new impetus, is needed right now. That lineup didn’t reflect any we’re likely to see again this season but the game did look a bit too much like too many games over the last few months, with the team struggling to create clear chances when in need of a goal.

There will likely be changes in Lisbon, hopefully we have Jurrien Timber, Declan Rice and Bukayo Saka all available again, and I’m also looking to Martin Odegaard to drag this team in the right direction. The captain had a lot of bright moments against Southampton but his generally positive performance was largely overshadowed by his scuffed shot in the first half and the backheel that saw Southampton break forward and eventually open the scoring.

Now that backheel wasn’t good, it didn’t come off, but I don’t know if we can beg for more creativity and less predictable football and then be upset with a player for trying something like that near the opposition goal. Sure, you don’t do that on the edge of your own box, but at the other end of the pitch it should be a case of low risk and high reward.

Overall Odegaard had a positive influence and when we discuss whether Arsenal do enough in open play, I don’t think we’ve spent enough time talking about his lack of involvement due to those persistent injuries. The captain has played an hour or more in just eight Premier League games this season. He’s shared the pitch with Saka for at least an hour just six times.

If we want to interrogate our lack of creativity and Saka’s lack of output, that needs to be highlighted as a major reason.

In 2023-24 they created 40 open-play chances for each other, the most of any pair of players in the Premier League. Go back further and they consistently connect with one-twos, more often than almost any pair in the Premier League over the last decade, with Saka often on the receiving end of those passes in the opposition box. An Arsenal side that hasn’t clicked has badly missed its most reliable partnership this season, it needs those incisive runs and passes, those changes of speed and direction around the opposition box.

Reliance on the right-hand side was often criticised in recent seasons but Arsenal did it because it worked. Unfortunately, the parts haven’t been there often enough over the last two years and Mikel Arteta still hasn’t cracked the formula on the left to make up for it, though Riccardo Calafiori does tend to make things flow better out there.

Whether we’ll see Odegaard and Saka on the pitch together in Lisbon remains to be seen, but if we can it could be a huge boost not just tomorrow night but also for the next couple of months. I’ll certainly feel a lot better about our chances if you could promise me the pair of them would both start consistently between now and the end of May.

Updates on the team will trickle through during the day in the form of training photos, news on who has travelled, and finally Mikel Arteta’s press conference. The headlines from that will be on arseblog.news this evening.

For a bit of context: this is only the third time in our history we’ve ever made it to the quarter-finals of a European competition three seasons in a row, the last time coming from 2008-10 in the Champions League.

Things could be a lot worse. By the end of this week, they could feel a lot better.

Have a good day all, for anyone who has the day off, I hope there’s a chance to relax or get up to something enjoyable, and Andrew will be back at the keyboard from Lisbon tomorrow!