Fans love to honor and immortalize their top scorers so that their legacy lives on forever.
So when you put it that way, it might not be all that strange – or deeply cringe-inducing – to see the black and white mural of Arsenal’s long-time coach Nicolas Jover appearing alongside other club legends in the Hornsey Road tunnel outside the Emirates Stadium. .
Since the start of last season, Arsenal have scored 31 goals from set pieces, excluding penalties. That’s the same number of goals in that time as Mohamed Salah has scored for Liverpool. Only Erling Haaland and Cole Palmer scored more.
It is no longer a secret that the Gunners are the kings under manager Mikel Arteta. A quick search on social media and you’ll soon find images of the Spaniard dressed in a baseball cap and tracksuit, like former Stoke boss Tony Pulis.
Their last three league goals have all come from corners and the question is whether they are relying too much on that now, especially when their opponents are doing everything they can to find ways to stop them – and they are.
In the same way that analysts think of ways to stop Haaland or Salah, clubs are now looking for ways to cut off the flow of Arsenal goals from corners.
Arsenal have scored 31 goals, excluding penalties, since the start of last season
Coach Nicolas Jover has been immortalized with a mural outside the Emirates
However, Sean Dyche’s Everton had to deal with the threat of Arsenal in their goalless draw
Sean Dyche’s Everton, corner fans themselves, dealt with Arsenal’s threat in the Emirates with old-fashioned vigor and desire on Saturday. The Toffees have scored 50 percent of their goals from set pieces since the start of last season and know how to defend them too. Arsenal managed just two attempts on goal from their eight corners in the goalless draw.
The Gunners’ victory over Monaco three days earlier in the Champions League was much more interesting. Arsenal like to crowd the back post to cause the necessary chaos so that Gabriel can run free and get in the deliveries of Bukayo Saka or Declan Rice.
Monaco thus left three attackers high up the pitch with two on the halfway line, forcing three Arsenal players to trudge back and mark them due to the threat of a quick counter-attack.
Unlike champions Manchester City at the Etihad, where Gabriel nodded, Monaco also tried to mark the pack man by man rather than by zone. Other teams have tried that in the competition and still gave in. For Monaco, both tactics worked.
Arsenal are far from being worked out in set-pieces. But teams are looking for ways to stop them, meaning Arteta needs to do two things: continue to develop set-piece routines and, crucially, improve at scoring from open play.
They do the first. Mail Sport revealed after Arsenal’s win over West Ham that Gabriel had ditched his usual attacking run from the penalty spot, as he did at the Etihad, and instead started his attack as part of the back-post brigade. They will have to keep mixing things up.
However, it is their decline from open play that is their real problem and the problem that will likely cost them the title if they don’t solve it. Because when set-pieces don’t work, Arsenal are short of ideas.
Nearly a third of Arsenal’s goals this season have come from set-pieces, and that doesn’t even include penalties. Only Everton, Palace and Nottingham Forest score a larger proportion of their goals this way.
Mikel Arteta and Jover will have to continue to change as teams adapt to their set-piece strategies
Arsenal only scored 18 goals from open play. That’s less than eight clubs, and one of them is Wolves. Their expected goals (xG) from open play is even worse, at just under 17, which is about the same as West Ham. With those numbers you can forget about winning a Premier League title.
But what went wrong? Last season, Arsenal scored 59 goals from open play, the fifth most in the division. Currently they are on track to reach about 43.
As Thierry Henry noted on Monday Night Football, they have become far too predictable with the ball. Too often they choose the easy option.
Brave players from top teams try to split the defense with their passes, playing the ball through the opposition lines of midfield or defense.
Arsenal’s midfielders have made 112 passes between the lines this season, behind ten other clubs and 15 fewer than Chelsea’s midfielders, 18 fewer than Tottenham’s, 33 fewer than Manchester City’s and, astonishingly, 61 fewer than those from Brentford, the highest in the division.
They are also too dependent on star men Saka and Martin Odegaard.
Saka has created 27 chances from open play in the league this season, the most of any Arsenal player. Only Palmer, Bernardo Silva and Dejan Kulusevski have created more.
Odegaard is second on the list of Arsenal creators and has missed seven league games due to injury.
Bukayo Saka has created 27 chances from open play, the fourth most in the top flight
The Gunners are too dependent on Martin Odegaard and Saka to create their chances
That is especially devastating for the Gunners’ left wing duo of Leandro Trossard and Gabriel Martinelli. They each created fourteen chances. Five Bournemouth players have more than that, as do four from Palace and four from Fulham.
For Martinelli, a player who scored 21 goals and provided nine assists in the previous two seasons, that is a sharp decline. He creates much less, takes fewer shots and is much more wasteful on the ball. It leaves Arsenal one-sided. Nearly 48 percent of the Gunners’ chances from open play were created down the right.
Even if you compare that to title rivals Liverpool, where Salah flies down the right wing and produces bigger goals and assists than ever before, the distribution remains much more evenly distributed across the left, right and center channels.
That keeps opponents guessing, meaning the defense must be alert to attacks from all angles. Arsenal just don’t do that and it affects everyone.
Saka and Odegaard still lead the way in their involvement in open sequences of play that end in an Arsenal effort on goal, whether that be themselves, creating the chance, or simply playing a pass in the build-up, but even then, their numbers has fallen.
Odegaard’s has dropped from 7.7 involvement per game to 6.4, Saka’s from 7.5 to 6.5. Last semester, Trossard, Martinelli and Gabriel Jesus all averaged above a six. This season, only Saka and Odegaard do that. Martinelli now has an average of just over four – less even than deep midfielder Mikel Merino.
Arteta recently picked up a few bottles of water during a press conference to try to illustrate how he sees Arsenal’s playing style.
Gabriel Martinelli and Leandro Trossard each created just fourteen chances from the left wing
‘You see that these (the first bottle) are set pieces and that this (the other bottle) is open play. I look at it as if (the first bottle) is open play and set pieces. It’s all part of every playing style.’ His point was that the way Arsenal play in the open gives them the set-pieces from which they have thrived.
That may well be true. But if Arteta wants to lift the Premier League trophy in May, he cannot rely on one thing leading to the other.
To become a champion, he needs both to flow.