Third law
4-2, Leicester City, Emirates Stadium, 28th September 2024
Every action has an equal and an opposite.
Arsenal are anti-football. Arsenal are Stoke City. Arsenal are an embarrassment. Arsenal should play the game. Arsenal should open up. Arsenal should attack. Arsenal should roll over. Arsenal are ugly. Arsenal are…
With every word the noise grew. It began, as so many evil things do, at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium. Arsenal arrived there without Martin Ødegaard, without Declan Rice, without Mikel Merino - three men who, most should understand, are the team’s current midfield. Arsenal rolled up their sleeves and their hand into a fist and won on sheer force of will. They took that feeling to the Etihad and almost did the same. They were seconds away from doing what no team has done this year.
In football, noise explodes and then it sticks and people act like it is truth. Two games - two games - became Arsenal’s reality. Their identity is fixed now, shaped in their two biggest away games of the year, one without their midfield, the other with ten men, back to back, weeks from the season’s start. This is who Arsenal are; there is nothing else.
Well, here’s an alternative: Arsenal are like an elastic band. The frustration of one hundred brutal minutes at Spurs pulled the band taught. Fifty excruciating Etihad minutes pulled it further, much further, right to the edge of its integrity - it moaned and creaked and threatened to tear itself apart.
Each of these turgid away performances asks a cohort of the world’s most talented footballers to cast aside their every instinct, to play within themselves, to sit and take it, blow after blow, square to the jaw, spitting out blood, to stay standing, just stay standing, because nothing else matters, don’t punch, don’t fight, just stay up, stay up, stay up…
Most who follow Arsenal know what happens next, or should, if they’ve been paying attention. Weeks of frustration and hours of suffering are unleashed in a torrent of retribution. It happens like this so often but of course, the noise doesn’t care. It has become truth and so fulfilled its purpose.
The elastic band is let go. Twang. God help whoever takes the brunt of its whiplash. This time it was Leicester City, and God showed up as promised. His name was Mads Hermansen.
It ain’t about how hard you can hit.
All the hammering Arsenal took from Spurs and City was evident in what they did to Leicester - a statistical performance that had more in common with most 8-0 games than it did an almost-draw. It was a furious lashing, a torrent of blows that seemed desperate to inflict on someone else the pain Arsenal had endured.
Sometimes, in the pursuit of a title, an entire campaign can be derailed by such a game. A freak accident, a one-in-a-million - or, in Scott Willis’ estimations, 1% of 10,000 simulations - disaster. And Arsenal not winning would’ve been a disaster, make absolutely no mistake. They have already dropped points at home. Another occurrence, against even weaker opposition, would’ve been a death knell. It’s absurd to talk in these terms in September, but this is a league of absolute perfection, of state-owned superpowers dancing in the ruins of the records they shatter. Even without Rodri, it is hard to imagine Manchester City earning less than 85 points.
So the winning must go on, no matter the noise. “I hear a lot of people talk about us and the way we play,” Bukayo Saka said tonight, after Arsenal won yet again, this time at a smooth cruise control that saw them breeze past the French champions, one of the best teams in the world. “But for us it’s about results. Different games have different contexts. We have to do whatever it takes to win in any context.”
Against Leicester, the context was clear: batter and contain. The blueprint was well trodden, but a vital piece was still missing - the captain. Without Ødegaard, Arsenal look a different team in possession. They are less sure of themselves, less connected. Passes don’t have the same fluency or empathy; everything is a little faster, more staccato. But perhaps that’s just aesthetics, the absence of the blonde conductor worming it’s way into the brain. Something’s wrong, the game seemed to say, even as Arsenal rained in their umpteenth shot.
Batter and contain. The batter half of that equation was performed in a kind of furious daze. Without the intricacy of the Ødegaard-White-Saka triangle, Arsenal have instead formed a kind of box in midfield - yes, one of those, they’re back - except with their two forwards, Kai Havertz and Leandro Trossard, forming the top half, and either of the full-backs pairing with either of the midfielders at the base. It’s a shockingly fluid carousel of ball players and physicality. Even if the relationships aren’t quite there. Even if some passes are a little off. Ødegaard’s injury opened the door to a classic Arsenal Sticky Patch (tm), of the kind they suffered last winter. It took two or three defeats for Mikel Arteta to fiddle out a solution back then; he seems to have learnt a lesson on speed. Solutions have come quick this season, even if they’re imperfect in practice.
The contain bit - well, what is there left to say? Watch a 37-year-old Jamie Vardy, bless his socks, attempt to ram William Saliba off the ball and do a funny little pirouette as he falls on his ass. Equal and opposite forces. Wondergoals and deflections are the only tools left to Arsenal’s opponents. They have reduced teams to smack it and inshallah. Leicester scored two from 0.32xG and 25% possession. Arsenal not winning here would’ve been the true anti-football.
And that should be the noise, not whatever absolute slop falls out of Rio Ferdinand’s mouth on a given week. Positionism, relativism, box midfields, forget it all; this is a team who’s tactical style can be best described as ‘winning’. In any context. Whatever it takes.
Postcards from N5
I do find it incredibly romantic that football has reverted to the 4-4-2 as default - most top teams are playing in this shape without the ball now, which is not quite as fun as ‘all the time’, but I’m still enjoying it. Better yet, Leandro Trossard and Kai Havertz have formed a classic ‘big guy, little guy’ partnership up there. Amazing. I find football recruitment fascinating because who on earth, two years ago, would’ve put these guys together and said they’d be a defining attacking force in the Champions League? And yet there goes the ball, chipped off Leo’s boot, and here comes Kai’s glorious head, yet again. Magic.
I don’t really need to write about Ethan Nwaneri’s lil cameo. My roommates and I were off our feet the minute he touched the ball and slalomed past one, two, then pulled a save from God himself. There is always a temptation to go overboard about the shiny new toy, but right now - at least with a mounting injury list - Arteta clearly sees both Ethan and Myles Lewis-Skelly as serious squad options. At their fresh ages and at a team as absurdly good as Arsenal are right now, that feels just right. They both have years left of being teenagers. Let’s just enjoy this moment for what it is.
I’m writing late this week due to personal circumstances (my hangovers last three days now) so it’s post-PSG. I just want to say - I still can’t get used to Arsenal being this good. We made one of the continent’s best teams look distinctly average. We belong here. Not just in the Champions League, but as among the distinct favourites - has that, honestly, ever been true before? Certainly not since Thierry Henry left. It’s a miracle. Just stop and stare for a moment. Don’t let this pass you by. This is not normal. At the end of this cycle it might be decades before we feel this way again. So feel. Everything. All of it.
Just four newsletters in, I am already writing to 103 of you. Yes, many of you will just be here because I shamelessly put this publication in SCOUTED’s recommendations, fine, I’m a naughty boy. But at least some subscribed because you liked the work! What a cool thing.
I have not, yet, used my platform at SCOUTED to be particularly loud about letting people know this newsletter exists. I probably will, at some point. But, to start with at least, I wanted to build something for myself, my way, just to see if I could. Last week’s Redstory, Supermassive black hole, had more comments than most things we publish to SCOUTED’s 11,000 subscribers. It has more likes than the last column I wrote over there. This is a complicated phenomenon, but I’m choosing to conclude that I’m on the right path.
This is all to say: thanks! Thanks for being the first 103. It’s so cool to have a little audience all my own. I’m just going to keep writing and not think about it too much because I’ll get scared. Head down, keep typing, see what happens.
Some Redstorys, like last week’s, will be big, rambling, conceptual pieces. Others, like this one, will be smaller - I just have less to say. But they’ll always be here. Hangover be damned.
Up the Arsenal,
T
Well written!