Arsenal are ‘boring’ and massive hypocrites – but here’s why that is a good thing for Mikel Arteta

Arsenal are ‘boring’. And complete hypocrites, too. They should wear both those insults like badges of honour while Mikel Arteta fondles his set-pieces.

Happy birthday, Nicolas Jover. We did all pitch in to get you a little something but it appears to be soaked in boiled urine and salty tears.

The Arsenal set-piece fetishist won’t mind, with his big 44th surely spent watching Declan Rice’s dead-ball deliveries while optimising the positions of the candles on his cake in preparation for Riccardo Calafiori to launch it with a long throw.

It will be just another day spent ignoring the external noise blaming Arsenal for the enshittification of the Premier League, ongoing global conflicts and world hunger.

As Micah Richards once said – and Granit Xhaka subsequently thanked him for – “I just feel like when it’s Arsenal, everyone wants to lump in for some reason”. And so while many a title win has been underpinned by set-piece mastery, and free-kicks and corners have very much been a thing for an entire century and a half, it is a problem threatening the foundations of the actual sport when Mikel Arteta decides that it might be a bit silly to keep wasting potential advantages naturally built into every game.

Arsenal have scored more goals from set-pieces than any other club this season. They led the way in the last two full campaigns. Before then it was Liverpool in 2022/23 and Manchester City in 2021/22, while both sides shared the honours in 2019/20 after a brief insurgence by David Moyes and West Ham.

Trent Alexander-Arnold was rarely accused of “ruining” or “killing” the Premier League when Liverpool sensed his absurd technical ability could be refined for the betterment of the team; Kevin de Bruyne was never condemned for dragging down the quality of an entire league because he had a decent whip on him.

But with Arsenal four points clear in the Premier League and possessing a perfect Champions League record, there is an air of desperation in the search for a stick to beat them with.

Many had this down as the season in which Arteta had to deliver a trophy or make way for someone who could; having identified the most effective route to silverware, the goalposts have been moved again. And Gabriel would probably still keep the ball out or bundle it in, depending on whether his switch has been turned to ‘defensive’ or ‘attacking’ mode.

Perhaps it is a mere continuation of this Arsenal evolution. A team once mocked and derided as being too soft and not up for a fight is now among the tallest and most physically imposing. A club castigated and ridiculed for wilting against more illustrious opponents has lost one of their last 23 Premier League games against a fellow member of the Big Six and thrashed Real Madrid on aggregate six months ago. A side which was frequently accused of playing pretty football and trying to pass it in has apparently become dangerously rudimentary.

Arsene Wenger has been trying to outlaw throw-ins for well over a decade because they gave “strong” teams like Stoke “an unfair advantage”; Arteta knew that if you can’t beat them, you join them, and subsequently lived long enough to help heroic but ultimately impotent Arsenal become the villain.

Rivals and neutrals can and should take their digs. Arsenal most certainly did when the boot was on the other foot and Chelsea held them to a goalless draw at the Emirates en route to the title in 2015.

Arsenal, by the way, had one shot on target to Chelsea’s three in that game. Yet it was the visiting Blues being held to account by their pretentious hosts.

“I think boring is ten years without a title, that’s very boring,” said Jose Mourinho in the aftermath. “You know, you support a club and you are waiting, waiting, waiting, and for so many years without a Premier League title. I think that’s very boring.”

Another ten years later without a title, many more Arsenal supporters might well have since subscribed to that notion. American author Brandon Sanderson once wrote that ‘sometimes a hypocrite is nothing more than a person who is in the process of changing’, and the Gunners really are a sucker for a process.

Sir Alex Ferguson called Arsenal “boring” after the 2005 FA Cup final in which Wenger’s side again had a single shot on target – and one corner to Manchester United’s 12 – before triumphing on penalties.

It is a loaded term laced with invective and designed to insult, but Arsenal will wear “boring” as a badge of honour if it helps finally deliver on their objectives and promise again.

It translates as a lack of jeopardy or uncertainty, an absence of excitement. But only for those watching and waiting for an Arsenal slip or mistake. That outside anger and frustration only adds to the enjoyment for a fanbase which has already spent decades hearing their style and brand of football is not the most effective to win games or trophies.

There is generally always one team more boring than Arsenal: their opponent on any given day. When faced with low blocks and ten men behind the ball it is hardly a surprise that they are not more expansive.

But no club has a better goal difference, nor a greater disparity between the number of shots attempted and faced (49) in the league this season. It bears repeating: had Arsenal automatically conceded every shot on target they had allowed this season they would still be in the top half of the table with 13 points. And this is the ‘shot on target’ which would have cost them two more theoretical points against Crystal Palace:

The shot on target pic.twitter.com/7fDKiIxorm https://t.co/lgEzdR4Prn

— Paddy (@PaddyArsenal) October 26, 2025

They are a phenomenal defensive team, a remarkably productive side at set-pieces and just generally ludicrously well-rounded in every facet of the game. And as tempted as Arteta might be to confront the gallery at Turf Moor next weekend after beheading Scott Parker by screaming “are you not entertained?”, it is his job to win matches first and foremost.

Arsenal are doing so without players crucial to their open-play potency like Martin Odegaard, Kai Havertz and Noni Madueke. And they are currently doing it far better than anyone else.

READ NEXT: Arsenal and Liverpool named in 10 Premier League clubs that make no sense