Arsenal go full Arsenal as Arteta hits on title-winning method in brilliant win over Brentford
That was Arsenal at their most Arsenal and that’s exactly how they need to be to challenge Liverpool for the title. A big win.
This might just be Arsenal’s best result of the season. No Bukayo Saka, no Declan Rice, no Kai Havertz, against a team that’s won 22 points from nine games at home, scoring 27 goals, including one that saw the Gunners go behind here, when anything other than a win was unacceptable in their bid to challenge Liverpool for the title, with a sickness bug said to be affecting a number of players in the squad. It was hugely impressive, and all so absolutely Arsenal.
Just as the opening goal was so definitively Brentford. They had had no shots and no touches in the opposition box before Bryan Mbeumo cut in and wrong-footed David Raya with a pulled shot inside the near post. One of their five touches in the Arsenal half up to that point in the 12th minute was Mikkel Damsgaard’s assist and they’d seen just 17 per cent of the ball.
It came through a rare mistake from Martin Odegaard, whose slack pass was well cut out by Damsgaard, who then all too easily skipped past the Arsenal captain as Odegaard attempted to make up for his error by rushing to challenge the Denmark international, heralded as Brentford’s most-improved player of 2024 by manager Thomas Frank ahead of the game. No arguments here.
The Get The Ball And Pass It To Mbeumo tactic has reaped great reward this season, particularly at the Gtech, with the forward scoring his ninth goal at home in ten games, and the Bees’ wonderfully direct and devastating style was a ball’s width away from giving them a two-goal lead.
Keane Lewis-Potter drove in from the left and struck a fierce shot that burst through Raya’s hands, forcing the Arsenal goalkeeper to dive full length to palm the ball away on his goal line. Nerves perhaps on his first return to Brentford? The home fans were smiling rather more gleefully behind him than after any old goal and no doubt would have enjoyed the blame for a second being laid entirely at his door.
But Arsenal were level less than a minute later as Brentford missed at least two opportunities to clear the ball in their own box, trying to play their way out against a side that makes it very, very difficult to do so.
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Mark Flekken will be disappointed that he failed to push Thomas Partey’s shot away from goal rather than to Gabriel Jesus, who reacted like the goal sniffer he’s consistently been accused of not being to head the ball in. Six goals in four games for him, as part of an Arsenal team that displayed its great maturity here.
Mikel Arteta has said that multiple Arsenal players need to step up following Bukayo Saka’s injury. And it felt like that was the case here after the win over Ipswich failed to curb doubts over their ability to cope without him.
Jesus and Gabriel Martinelli were both good and Ethan Nwaneri was really impressive on his full debut. There were no particularly outstanding performances – Odegaard was if anything below his excellent par – but the vast majority of them put in the sort of six or seven out of ten performances that will be enough for this talented group to beat pretty much anyone they play, while keeping enough in the tank to sustain a challenge on multiple fronts.
They went up a couple of gears after half-time, scoring their customary goal from a corner as Flekken flapped and Mikel Merino took advantage, before Martinelli scored an excellent third, controlling with his knee then striking a spinning ball into the corner. A very difficult finish made to look very easy by the Brazilian, who’s certainly moving in the right direction in a bid to be The Main Man in the absence of Saka.
All of the goals were thanks to Arsenal getting bodies in the box. They weren’t flowing moves from back to front – The Arsenal Way, if you like – but keeping the opposition camped in their own box, winning the ball back high up the pitch, having players in positions where goals are scored from and those players reacting quickest to bouncing balls is a far more reliable method of scoring goals and winning games than the liquid football we were accustomed to under Arsene Wenger and indeed in previous iterations of Mikel Arteta-led teams.
It doesn’t make for an aesthetically pleasing spectacle a lot of the time, but Arteta won’t and shouldn’t give a sh*t. The watchability of the team was always going to take a further hit with Saka out anyway and when playing this way leads to such a comfortable win over a side that’s only been beaten once at home all season then it’s clearly worth sticking with.
Make no mistake, this was a very big and very impressive win for Arsenal, who showed they have the mettle and the method to stick with Liverpool.
