Three Ways Arsenal Stopped Mikel Arteta’s Eyes From Being ‘in Pain’

After a tortuous three weeks agonizing over defeat, Arsenal made Mikel Arteta wait another hour before finally showing their best face against Leeds.

Arsenal had to come from behind to move level on points with Manchester City at the Premier League summit. | Sebastian Frej/MB Media/Getty Images

LONDON—There were many things Mikel Arteta stewed on over the three weeks since Arsenal’s humbling 3–0 defeat to Brighton & Hove Albion.

The quality of Brighton’s press, the flaws of his own players in possession and quite how confronting Fabian Hürzeler now looks without his toupée all offered food for thought. But it was the desperately unforgiving margins of the Premier League which stuck in his stomach. Arteta learned “how thin the line is, from being exceptional to becoming very average.”

For the first hour of Saturday’s return against Leeds United, it would have been charitable to describe Arteta’s side as very average. With the visitors 1–0 up at the hour mark, thoughts among the almost silent Emirates Stadium turned back to a display against Brighton which left Arteta to lament: “My eyes were in pain.”

Yet, as is the case with so many exceptional teams, Arsenal only needed to approach their best for a sustained burst to still sneak out of the contest with all three points.

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Urgency

Arsenal fans enjoyed the win. | Sebastian Frej/MB Media/Getty Images

Lunchtime kickoffs can always be sleepy affairs. There was the unusual edge of Manchester City’s guilty verdict hanging in the air ahead of kickoff. Replica Premier League medals won against “those cheats” were being sold by vendors outside the ground at a marked-up price. But that was soon blown over by the crisp gusts of wind rattling underneath the Emirates roof.

The Gunners sluggishly trudged through their return to club action. Across the opening hour, Arsenal had registered more offsides than shots and found themselves deservedly trailing to James Justin’s thump into the top corner. Even the way that Gabriel tried and failed to clear that effort off the line, aiming a glancing header into the side-netting rather than simply blocking it, was systemic of Arsenal’s sloppiness.

Everything about the goal was lackadaisacal. Tarik Muharemović started the move for the visitors by stumbling over the ball. Without any red shirt in the same postcode, he had time to regain his footing, adjust his hair, reply to any unread texts and then play a pass to an unmarked Gabriel Gudmundsson.

In stark contrast, Arsenal’s eventual winner began with Bruno Guimarães taking a free kick so quickly it almost caught Martin Ødegaard by surprise.

There’s nothing like a deficit to send a jolt of electricity through a dozy team. While the Emirates crowd were caught between groaning and goading immediately after Justin’s 55th-minute opener, Ødegaard had the ball on the center spot awaiting a swift restart.

Just seven minutes later, Noni Madueke continued to drive forward, willfully unfazed by the sight of Bukayo Saka prone on the turf inside Arsenal’s half, to send the ball into the box which ended with Riccardo Calafiori bundling an equalizer through Leeds goalkeeper James Trafford.

“It’s down to their mentality,” Farke stubbornly admitted while hailing Arsenal as “the most consistent team in Europe.”

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Invention

Riccardo Calafiori made the difference once again. | Catherine Ivill/AMA/Getty Images

Arsenal’s rigidity can be a blessing and a curse. It’s a quality which affords them the best defense in the Premier League, but one which can also hamper their attacking threat. That tendency was abundantly apparent against opponents as well drilled as Leeds.

Daniel Farke’s side bounced into Saturday’s clash with the fifth-most Premier League points across the past 10 months, losing just five of their previous 30 top-flight matches—the same tally as Arsenal. "We haven’t won the lottery,” the Leeds boss scoffed. “It’s not coincidence.” At one point it felt as though the Gunners would need a quirk of fate to even test Leeds’ resolve.

In the end, it took Arsenal’s agent of chaos to force the breakthrough. Calafiori is a player Arteta credits with “a special energy, a special aura around him that makes him different.” The left back with the soul of a striker sniffed out where the ball would drop, arriving on the penalty spot to nod snaffle up a downward header from Ben White. That both Arsenal fullbacks combined within the confines of Leeds’ six-yard box demonstrated how expansive the hosts were willing to go.

Calafiori didn’t touch the ball in the buildup to Guimarães’s winner but it was his dart which distracted Nico Elvedi long enough to open up room for Declan Rice’s run into the box. The onrushing midfielder, freed to roam further forward after a chiefly defensive brief across the opening hour, rolled an impish flick into the stride of Guimarães, who deftly picked out the bottom corner.

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Depth

Bruno Guimarães got the winner. | Charlotte Wilson/Offside/Getty Images

It’s still remarkable that Arsenal’s $100 million recruit can afford to be brought off the bench to win the game. The Gunners don’t necessarily have the absolute best players in the division but they undoubtedly boast the deepest collection of talent in England, if not Europe.

“I think all the players who were on the bench today expected to start,” Arteta admitted. The tide had begun to turn before he turned to his substitutes, but those “finishers” sealed a win an thinner squad would have had no chance securing.

Beyond the headline introduction of Guimarães, Arteta can take confidence from the performance of Madueke. Drafted in to make his first Premier League start of consequence since April, the left footer stationed on his unfavored left wing was one of Arsenal’s brightest performances.

Kai Havertz, Ødegaard and Saka all squandered chances set up by the forward trusted to stand in for the injured Christos Tzolis. “He deserved the chance that he got, he grabbed it with both hands,” Arteta gushed about the “best player in training over the last 10 days.”

Such was Arteta’s confidence in the divisive 24-year-old, he was trusted to stay on the pitch as the Gunners went in search of a winner while Eberechi Eze—an England international chosen ahead of Madueke by Thomas Tuchel this fall—watched on from the sidelines.

Arteta admitted that Arsenal went into Saturday’s fixture “with something to prove.” While it will take more than 15 bright minutes at home to Leeds to underscore their status as title favorites, they did remind everyone, including their bitter manager, that they will once again be in the conversation.

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