Mikel Arteta’s Arsenal career could come down to misfired midfield gamble

Watching Arsenal over the past couple of seasons has been a chore most of the time. Be at Unai Emery’s ‘tactical flexibility’ days or Mikel Arteta’s ‘tactical structure’ madness currently, we, as Arsenal fans, have had little to enjoy in terms of our club’s performance on the pitch.

Yes, we won the FA Cup last season on the back of some solid performances and have also turned up in a few (just a few) matches this season, but overall it has been a sad turn of events. Arsenal’s weak midfield is one of the major reasons for this predicament.

In nearly all of his press conferences and meetings, Arteta has often said the right things. He comes across as someone who has clear ideas for the team and generally knows what to do to get the side to the next level. On the pitch though, the Gunners have been extremely one-dimensional. If one of Bukayo Saka, Emile Smith Rowe or anyone else has a good day, Arsenal may get a result. Otherwise, we are treated to drab and dreary performances like those against Aston Villa, Liverpool, Wolverhampton Wanderers and Everton.

Considering the slide from the Premier League‘s ‘top four’ to ‘top six’ to ‘top half’ (hopefully), one of the biggest differences between an Arsenal team since the start of the 2019 season and an Arsenal team prior to that, is the near complete absence of goals and assists from the midfield.

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Mikel Arteta’s career as Arsenal manager could come down to misfired midfield gamble

Players like Aaron Ramsey, Santi Cazorla, prior to that devastating injury, and Mesut Ozil, before his rapid decline, provided a number of goal contributions from midfield, often giving opposition defenders way too many goal-scorers to contend with.

Currently though, the opposition often only need to worry about containing one or maximum two Arsenal players on the pitch. Across the midfield, Granit Xhaka is not a major goal threat while Thomas Partey is hopelessly far away from opening his account. Dani Ceballos has two goals in his entire Arsenal career, while the loaned (read: exiled) duo of Matteo Guendouzi and Lucas Torreira have a combined five goals in 170+ appearances between them. Mohamed Elneny also doesn’t boast goal scoring in his repertoire. None of these players provide enough assists from the midfield either. For context, Santi Cazorla contributed 29 goals and 45 assists in just 180 appearances.

This brings us to Arteta’s biggest failure of this season – his gamble between Partey and the botched transfer saga involving Houssem Aouar from Lyon – to bolster his midfield.

For large stretches of the 2020 summer transfer, the rumor mill was rife with reports linking us to both Partey and Aouar. The general consensus was that we should try to get them both, with most fans feeling that Aouar, with his goal-contributing abilities, would be the better choice as he could become Arsenal’s version of an Ilkay Gundogan. With Ramsey gone and Ozil as good as gone, Arteta needed a goal-scoring midfielder to pick up some of the slack.

In the end, it was clear that Arsenal could go only after one of the two players and got the Partey deal done. However, between injuries and a wretched patch of form, Arsenal have not been able to see the Partey who ran Atletico Madrid’s midfield. Even if he comes good in the upcoming seasons, he is not going to be a major goals contributor. That isn’t his game.

This has led to Arsenal to record some harrowing statistics this season:

• 12 out of 33 PL games where they scored ZERO goals.
• 9 out of the remaining 21 PL games where they scored just ONE goal.

That basically means that 21 out of 33 PL games this season, Arsenal have either drawn a blank or scored just once. Glancing at Orbinho will give even more context into how bad this season is turning out to be.

That is relegation form.

Arteta’s tactical structure, injuries to key players like Kieran Tierney, a lack of form for players like Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang and Willian while Arteta’s own decision to send out those midfielders with an X-factor like Guendouzi and Joe Willock, have not helped. Even considering these factors, the season would not have been as horrible if he had at least one goal scoring midfielder.

Credit where it is due, Arteta tried to help the situation by making ESR a key cog in the team and also bringing in Martin Odegaard to help with the creativity and goals. But it all feels too little too late.

As the situation stands, Arteta may not survive the season if Arsenal can’t win the Europa League. And amidst a plethora of things the fans hoped Arteta would have done differently, buying that goal-scoring midfielder would be top of the list.