“You are like a young Sergio Ramos, only with the left! I would put you in front of the back four; you would be like Marcel Desailly, only with more quality on the ball,”
Fabio Capello said this to Riccardo Calafiori after his late, game-changing introduction to last night’s Champions League match against Bayern. The Italian made an immediate impression, working his way into a position to whip a low cross across the penalty area for Madueke to tap in for his first-ever Arsenal goal. This was not a moment about individual excellence; this was the sign that this Arsenal team is really serious about being the best team in the world by 2025.
Replacements don’t view their twenty-minute cameos as an insult to their genius; they see it as a time limit on their ability to shine for the team. Madueke, Martinelli and Calafiori were all anointed impact players, and they had an impact. Martinelli, who finished the match late, took advantage of the gift of the suicidal high line that Bayern played. The Brazilian, fresh back from injury, rifled his first touch past a Manuel Neuer in no man’s land and swept a training ground warm-up pass into the empty net.
Arteta went to war against Bayern. His starting XI had two rotations: Myles for Calafiori and Mosquera for Hincapie. The manager is a sick man; he wants to win everything and push his team to the limit, and the limits were pushed. Bayern got all the possession they wanted, and we waited to find holes in their shaky defense. And as predicted yesterday, brutalism was the main approach.
Kompany decided that static zone marking was the way to beat the threat of players racing through the six-yard box from the back post. It wasn’t a good plan. Bayern’s players were nervous and flat-footed, allowing Timber to nod in an early cross with a cross.
Arsenal had just 25 minutes left, normally a worrying sign, but not when Arteta is the manager. Bayern had done nothing with their possession and looked stunned… until they didn’t. They fought back with a magical goal. A long diagonal Kimmich ball to Gnabry caught Myles napping; he didn’t get close enough to the experienced German who crossed in one go to 17-year-old Lennart Kyle, who finished as he has done over the past month. You could hold your hands up and say, “Shit, one of those things,” or you could say Myles needs to tune in harder in big games because that’s what happens: maximum penalty for quarter chances.
The real nightmare happened at 38 minutes; Trossard left the field with a calf injury. He will now be out for three to four weeks. We are losing a player in red-hot form, and we are accelerating the return of players. I suspect the coach wanted to integrate slowly.
Mikel Arteta has only one weakness as a manager: he is terrible at managing loads. The man is way too emotional. He now has a crazy sidekick named Gabriel Heinze, who looks like the kind of friend you had in your life who would make you jump off beach cliffs to impress girls. When things get exciting, Arteta wants all his favorites on the pitch and doing crazy, intense things.
I can well imagine the comments and the texts I get, repeating this after a huge win, but winning doesn’t change anything for me. We’ve watched the same movie play out season after season, and today, even after I voiced my concerns before the game, I still got the same responses: “What choice did he have?”
My friends, we can’t keep defending things like this when we are having success with Mikel Merino as our number nine. There is always a choice. We’ll never have a roster that’s expensive enough that we won’t have a little dip when we rotate. If Zubimendi, Rice and Timber get hurt, guess what? We can field an XI and everything will be fine. The key is this: don’t let the laws of physiology force your hand into rotation. We’ve had a ton of injuries this season; Arteta has already broken Gyökeres, and now we have lost Trossard. You can’t expect players to deliver the level of intensity they need to perform three times a week. Enzo Maresca is not at Arteta’s level, but he has made 102 changes to his squad this season. He has managed the team load very well, even if he was criticized by fan media and pundits for being too extreme with the changes. Why? Because he knows that the season is long and it is not possible to play against your favorites every week without consequences.
Prioritizing is such an important skill in football, and Arteta doesn’t have it. The only thing standing between Arsenal winning the league this season is availability.
Back to the game. Madueke got the nod to the left, indicating he was the fittest of the returning players, and he played as if he wanted full attention on Sunday to do some things for Chelsea.
Declan Rice was an absolute monster. He never gave up. Somehow he came out more energetic for the second half than he did in the first half. The man has turned from a golden retriever into a beastly Rottweiler. When did he decide to shed the nice image? Punching and fist bumping Harry Kane. Who is this monster? A friend described his style as utterly demoralizing to the opposition. It’s true; the man is a freak athlete at the height of his powers. We knew he was good, but before this season he had no edge. Now it’s like watching Patrick Vieira rule a field.
We also have to give flowers, chocolates and Moonpig singing cards to the Sociedad boys. Mikel Merino and Zubimendi are just ridiculously high quality in their positions. Merino does God’s work as a defensive false nine. He works, runs, blocks, tackles and makes everyone around him look like heroes. The only thing missing from his game was a little sauce from the set pieces he shook up. Zubi, who roused the crowd, set the pace from deep and allowed Declan the freedom to bully and rage? Yes, please. What a signing. Declan and Zubi have only one fault: Arteta doesn’t drop them. Norgaard is clearly not interesting to Mikel, and that’s a problem.
It’s rare to finish a game of this magnitude and not feel the need to write an opus about Saka and Eze. They didn’t score, but I don’t think they needed to. They offered control and a lot of quality that flew under the radar. Eze in particular provided a lot of that pre-assist work that kept the team running. The pair also got actual assists: Saka from the corner and Eze releasing Martinelli for the third. They are both absolutely classy. In its own creative category. Eze in particular just looks like he was built for this level… quite shocking. It wasn’t until he was 27 that he took a big step. Sensational signing.
Timber: the best fullback in the world right now. He just has it all. He reinterprets a position that has developed like crazy in recent years. It is not just an inverter. He is a real chaos bomb, threatening all over the field. He has incredible intelligence, absurd athleticism and world-class leadership. I think he is our most important player, and again the point is that Arteta agrees, and that means Ben White is just sitting on the bench collecting dust when he should be getting minutes to protect the long-term prospects of our best player.
Am I whining too much about this freshness thing? NO. Not me. Stop letting yourself be captured by the moment. We have to be strategic here.
But Arsenal. My word. What we see is nasty. All the pain of the past twenty years has been channeled into a team that refuses to be defeated. I think it was pretty clear that last season, despite all the injuries, we had the best system in the world. The summer felt like Josh just said: F**k it, we need to fill in the gaps and let Arteta do his thing. The gaps have been filled and despite terrible injuries again we are the best. Better than all the rest. Better than anyone else.
How much more evidence do we need? Bayern Munich have been a machine this season. They beat PSG with ten men, beat Club Brugge, beat Bayer Leverkusen, beat Chelsea and were six points clear in the table. They topped the CL Super League and we made them look great. We were stronger than them, better on the ball, better coached, better at defending, and we destroyed Harry Kane to a degree I’ve never seen before. No shots, no assists, no chances created. Things were going so badly for him that he dropped to position number six to hit the ball, and Mosquera and Saliba followed him there and stole the ball from him. It was like watching a YouTube boxer beat up a big one. I had to look away every now and then.
Arsenal limited Bayern to two shots on target, under $1\text{ xG}$. Arsenal had eight shots on target and all those chances were big chances. We created 2.72 xG against the best team in Europe outside England. Do you have any idea how fucking crazy that was?
I’ve never seen a team of that breed expose a weakness so brutally. Bayern don’t like set pieces, so we armed them to damage them psychologically. It was like putting a child who is afraid of the dark in a closet with the lights off. Neuer’s face looked as if he would have preferred the cupboard. The class divide felt like an FA Cup third round match, not a battle between the big dogs in the Champions League.
So we are on 15 points, with three games to go. Remember, last season 16 points qualified for the top eight. We have to navigate through Bruges, Inter and Kairat. I think we are in good shape. It looks very likely that we can avoid that nightmare in the preliminary round and play the second leg at home. That’s a good space to be in.
There is a friendly happening behind closed doors. I’m not sure why the rumor is about Manchester United when we have Watford next door, which seems a much more normal choice, but that will open up the bench to sit much deeper this Sunday… and also get some minutes in legs they haven’t had. GOOD NEWS.
There is still a long way to go this season. A lot can go wrong. We will lose games, suffer injuries and have terrible moments of luck. But the foundations have never been stronger. We have vast amounts of experience, from top to bottom, and our players are all heading into their prime. This season will undoubtedly end with a major trophy. I’m glad I write for you regularly.
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#ARSENAL #DESTROYS #BAYERN #MUNICH