If Arsenal have the makings of Premier League champions, they aren’t playing like it right now. The Gunners are without a win in their last three league games, taking just one point from a possible nine. Defeats to Bournemouth and Newcastle United have rocked Mikel Arteta’s team and their title challenge. Capitulating last night to an admittedly strong Inter Milan side in the Champions League surely won’t help morale.
Arteta is understandably reluctant to write off Arsenal’s championship chances, pointing out that the season is still at an early stage. “After 10 games we are not going to find the answer now,” he said after Saturday’s loss to Newcastle. “It is not about winning the title, it is about being our best version every week. We have to put it right on Wednesday [against Inter in the Champions League].”
Nonetheless, Arteta must recognise – and address – the problems Arsenal are currently suffering from. It might only be November, but the Gunners face a crossroads in their 2024/25 campaign. If things aren’t straightened out soon, Arsenal’s entire season could slip through their fingers. That is a very real possibility.
Martin Odegaard’s injury has done more to derail the Gunners than anything else. The Norwegian is Arsenal’s primary inventive force in the centre of the pitch and they don’t have another player in the squad who can create like he can. Without Odegaard, Arsenal have been a much easier team to defend against.
This has placed greater pressure on Bukayo Saka to provide attacking threat down the right wing, but he too missed a series of games through injury recently. Arsenal have spent a lot of money building out their squad depth in recent transfer windows, but Odegaard and Saka remain irreplaceable in terms of what they offer.
To compensate for Odegaard’s absence, Arteta has shifted Arsenal into a 4-4-2 shape. This has paired Kai Havertz and Leandro Trossard as a front two with the duo given the freedom to drop into central midfield to outnumber opponents. This was something the Gunners did to good effect in the recent 2-2 draw against Liverpool.
However, with Havertz and Trossard in midfield Arsenal sometimes lack a penalty box presence. The landscape is different when Odegaard is in the team because Havertz in particular doesn’t have to worry so much about build-up play and can instead focus his efforts on finding good scoring positions inside the opposition box.
The injury to summer signing Riccardo Calafiori has also played a role in destabilising Arsenal. The Italian international had made a profound impression at left back, giving the Gunners another attacking dimension with his runs into the centre of the pitch. He’d even made it part of his game to get in between the lines as something of an auxiliary number 10.
Now, though, Calafiori is sidelined, while defensive rock Gabriel Magalhaes just made his re-entry last night after several matches away. Arteta is having to rebuild his defensive line game-to-game. This has been an issue for an Arsenal team that had earned itself a reputation for being the strongest defensive outfit in the Premier League. Amid these problems, they have failed to keep a clean sheet in six league games.
There’s still time for Arsenal to turn around their faltering season, but Arteta would be ease up on the defeatist rhetoric of recent weeks. The Spaniard has questioned refereeing decisions in several games, perhaps in an effect to deflect from the performances of his players, but it has led to a sense of malaise around the Emirates Stadium. That must be lifted.
Edu Gaspar’s surprise departure as Arsenal’s sporting director is another obstacle the Gunners must clear if they are to continue on their upward trajectory of the last three seasons. The Brazilian was a key ally for Arteta within the Gunners’ sporting structure and it remains to be seen how this change will alter the club’s course.
Right now, though, Arsenal’s focus is on reversing their current poor run of form and salvaging their Premier League title challenge. Odegaard’s impending return would be a boost, as would the availability of Calafiori. Even if Arsenal have to wait even longer for their injured contingent to return, though, Arteta and his players must accept the situation they’re in and seek to handle it better.
