Arsenal Vs West Ham United: Mikel Arteta must improve performance

Arsenal may have squeezed past West Ham United in a 1-0 victory, but their performance left a lot to be desired. As the season progresses, it is something head coach Mikel Arteta must address.

Sport is about winning. While that sentence carries far more complications than the simplistic nature of their being one winner and one loser, in the end, there is only one thing that matters. How you get there is where the detail, deliberation and debate enter the fray, but the result is the ultimate priority.

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On Saturday against West Ham United, Arsenal earned the only thing that matters, the victory and three points to keep them in the race for Champions League qualification. But dig a little deeper and their outing against relegation-threatened West Ham was not as positive as first appears.

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In his post-match press conference after the match, head coach Mikel Arteta was extremely pleased with the victory and the professionalism his team displayed in scrapping it out when the going got tough:

"“I’m really happy with the result because big teams find a way when they don’t have the best day. It’s obvious that it wasn’t our best day in terms of performance, but they find a way to win it.”"

But while being pleased at the team’s ability to win a game they did not deserve to is all well and good, as we saw with the Unai Emery era, over a larger sample size, the results of the team will converge with the performances of the team, and on that, based on their outing on Saturday, Arteta and Arsenal still need to improve massively.

In fairness to Arteta, he admitted as much when discussing the recent good run of results that his team has enjoyed, especially in the Premier League:

"“It’s only turning a corner in terms of results. A little bit in terms of the things I want to see from my team, but they were telling me now that ‘I’ve turned the ship around’, that ship still has to turn a few times more to see what we want to see. It’s part of the process, it doesn’t happen overnight, we are positive that we can keep going on this from the eight or nine weeks that we’ve been here. It will be down to the performances that we put in and it will be related to the results.”"

Per UnderStat, Arsenal vs. West Ham had an expected scoreline of 1.56 – 1.61. In other words, West Ham created the better opportunities in the game. And this does not include chances like Michail Antonio’s misplaced cutback to Sebastien Haller early in the first half. West Ham had 14 shots to the Gunners’ nine, as well as six on target to two. Quite frankly, West Ham were the better team.

While Arsenal may have run home with a crucial victory on Saturday, they cannot perform as they did for the remainder of the season and expect to win many more games. If they put in the same lacklustre showing against Man. City on Wednesday, they will be routinely ripped to pieces.

So yes, for now, celebrate the victory and praise the team’s resolve for earning what only matters even when they do not deserve it. But when forecasting for the future, Arteta will have to improve his team if they are to have much success.