Mikel Arteta Doesn’t Agree With Analysis Of His Team’s Profligacy

By The Editor
on 18th December 2024

Arteta feels narratives are being forced…

Arsenal boss Mikel Arteta disagrees with the superficial analysis surrounding the team’s lack of goals in recent Premier League games.

We dropped two points at home to Everton, failing to score for the first time at the Emirates Stadium in the league this term. It also marked three games without a goal from open play as our overreliance on set-pieces was laid bare.

Arteta has continued to contest that he doesn’t separate open-play chances from those we create from dead-ball situations, arguing that one is the consequence of the other.

While that sentiment is understandable, the game against Everton proved that given how low the margins are in terms of conversions from set-pieces, we need to be more of a threat to opposing teams’ goals.

The Spaniard feels that the analysis in this country is very superficial and basic, telling reporters that he does a little more digging than just coming to conclusions after a goalless draw against Everton.

“That’s always the narrative,” Arteta said when asked about an overreliance on set-pieces (via Arsenal Media).

“When you score five goals, then another five and another three, you’re not going to talk about it. When you concede, now you don’t have that many clean sheets.

“When you don’t score a goal you’re going to come back to that. That’s normal, that’s the narrative, but for us it doesn’t change. We want to improve regardless of if we score three or five.

“Even though we didn’t concede anything on Saturday, there are still things defensively I want to do better. It doesn’t change our work.”

When Arteta was tasked to answer how he analyses the fact that we’ve scored fewer goals than we did at this stage last season, he said: “Very different to that obviously. The depth of the analysis, that’s what I’m interested in.”

Our ability to score a number of goals is usually linked to how quickly we can break the stalemate and force the opposition to come out and open spaces.

The problem is that we often rely on a set-piece or a flash of magic from Bukayo Saka to break the deadlock in a game.