London — They take great care of the Emirates Stadium carpet. When Arsenal take to the field, there’s not a blade of grass they can’t play with, and their technical prowess requires the best equipment at their feet. When Mikel Arteta’s side kick off at home, they will know there is little the ground staff can do to improve the field.
This begs the question: Why was half-time wasted by cutting back around the area that was Arsenal’s goal? It was unexplored territory, untouched by Newcastle’s boots. Eddie Howe’s side had traveled 480 miles to reach Holloway Road, but the 96-yard journey to the penalty area was too far.
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Arsenal went into the half-time interval with the prospect of completing a no-hitter with a very lively defence, not for the first time this season. None of the players in the black and white uniforms took a shot, with only Miguel Almiron managing to take a touch in the attacking penalty area. If he had done anything noteworthy with it, he would have been declared offside. This was Arsenal’s advantage in microcosm. Only by acting outside the laws of the game could the opponents really test them in the first half, which may still not be the best Mikel Arteta’s side have offered this season (Indeed, it wouldn’t have been that way without ‘that moment’ with Liverpool even close).
In the second half, Arsenal rather took the power down Newcastle’s throats, even allowing Anthony Gordon to fire home Raya in the 49th minute to further taint a shotless game. There were moments after the break when the game was close, but the intensity subsided to the point where Arteta was forced to poke fun at Jakub Kivioglu for disobeying his men. Newcastle finished the game with Arsenal only conceding their third goal in the Premier League in 2024, but Joe Willock’s lack of composure when he scored the third goal was rather a sign that his former team-mate He suggested that he was expecting a sure goal.
However, when Arsenal tried to increase the pressure, Newcastle collapsed. Like a hydraulic press being applied to a pile of gummy bears, Newcastle felt a steady, uncontrollable build-up of pressure until all semblance of meaningful structure disappeared. Bruno Guimarães could have passed the ball out of play and thrown himself onto the deck without anyone telling him to, but there was still no way to escape the mass of steel that descended on him.
“Today was an outstanding individual performance,” Arteta said. “Newcastle are a really well-coached top team so they raised the standard at the end. It’s really difficult to do what we did today and make them suffer as much as we did, so credit to the players. sea bream”
“We are in a good period. The players are performing individually and it is no secret. Things are flowing. We are scoring goals in different ways, but especially we are more I want a lot of goals. If I score one, I want two or maybe three. I love that mentality in the team.”
This was probably Arsenal’s best press in the game so far. Martin Odegaard and Kai Havertz were the main players, but neither Bukayo Saka nor Gabriel Martinelli could easily get around the flanks. In the early attacks, Newcastle were looking to break through from the wide areas, with their wingers dropping deep to mix with the midfielders and then charging forward. Declan Rice noticed that right away. Rice’s gravitational field, lurking behind the first line of press as a kind of unfettered safe haven, dragged Newcastle towards him. Within 20 minutes, he won the ball in the final third three times. By the 37th minute, Havertz had equalized.
When Arsenal got the ball back, they might not have been as sharp as they were in wins over West Ham and Burnley. There was no need for that. Newcastle lived up to expectations with the worst defense in the Premier League since the last time the two teams met. It must be a difficult task to defend his three positions in your army with nine or more troops and somehow leave gaps in space that can be exploited. Not for Newcastle.
Jorginho wandered into the final third, without any interested onlookers moving in his direction, and threw a pass into a gap behind the line that was too high for a team that had long abandoned its press. Kieran Trippier did not track Gabriel Martinelli, nor did he pick out Kai Havertz, who was on hand to put in the Brazilian’s cut-back for the second goal of the Premier League match.
Saka, who is the first Arsenal player in nine years to score in five consecutive Premier League games, has a long way to go. He was in such a dangerous situation in 2024 that it is rather understandable why young Tino Livramento had no idea where to send Arsenal’s number seven. Picking up the ball in the right-hand corner of the box, he initially shaped his way to the byline, but by that stage his full-back was repeating Saka’s incredible drive that beat James Trafford last week. It might have been. However, the ball curved past Loris Karius and, given Fabian Schaal’s careful clearing leg, it was never a good idea to force him to step on his left foot.
Shaar’s misery had a companion. Librament and Trippier were attacked by the attackers, and Sven Botman scored the first of Arsenal’s two set-piece goals before ending up with an own goal. These were not the carefully constructed moves of Nicolas Jobar, who put taller players up front and ended the rout with Jakub Kivioglu’s second shot of the season. Whether the Gunners run pick-and-rolls and screening runs or simply jump higher, few teams can find the answer. Even Newcastle, who had a lot of physical matches, were overwhelmed in recent intense matches. Asked what the problem was, Howe said it was “a mix of good delivery and players who want to attack the ball. To counter that, you have to be really aggressive in the air. We had plenty of that today. “We really couldn’t.” “I was disappointed with the goal. We knew they were coming. We should have done more.”
Arsenal’s return to the Premier League in 2024 looks awe-inspiring, starting with a headline 18 points. The deeper you dig, the more impressive it becomes: 25 goals scored, 3 goals conceded, expected goals (xG) 16.3, goals conceded xG 1.88. I promise, the size of the bubble below is determined by his xG value.
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It’s getting better somehow. Alexander Isak and his buddies won his three efforts worth 0.16 xG. Even when Newcastle have been in a slump, they have always posed some sort of threat to the opposition goal. In response to them, Disappointing defeat against Porto on Wednesday It couldn’t have been better, and the team crushed their opponents in every facet of the contest. Obviously, these players realized that they had failed to reach their overall level when they returned to the knockout stages of the Champions League. On Saturday night, they took it in stride…as they have done in many recent domestic games.
This level will not last. You can’t combine four-goal-per-game attacks with the defensive metrics of Champions League winners Thomas Tuchel’s Chelsea for four months. However, Arsenal could do considerably worse in attack and defense, even though they still have more than enough strength to fend off a mediocre team like Newcastle. If they can keep this up until they arrive at the Etihad in five weeks’ time, there’s no reason they can’t sway this title race in their direction.
