Arsenal survive Turf wars

It's Sunday morning, and what a good Sunday morning it is. A second consecutive Saturday 3pm kick off resulted in a second consecutive 1-0 win for the Arsenal. It was by no means perfect, but when is a trip to Burnley ever that? 

Mikel Arteta sprung something of a surprise with his line up by forgoing a second holding midfielder to partner Thomas Partey, instead opting to start with almost a front 5 of Odegaard, Smith-Rowe, Pepe, Saka and Aubameyang in a formation similar to the 4-3-3 that ended the win against Norwich. Although slightly surprising at first, I think it made sense. My predicted lineup had us with Lokonga in for Pepe in a 4-2-3-1 due to my belief that controlling the midfield battle would be key. But when you lookat the players that started I think it is clear that Arteta expected us to dominate possession and picked an XI best quipped to do that. The fact it didn't necessarily pan out that way is neither here nor there, but I think it offers an insight in to how we may well set up going forward.

As for the game itself, it never really clicked going forward for Arsenal, with many moves breaking down in the final third. It took a moment of real quality from Martin Odegaard to break the deadlock and score what turned out to be the winner. His free kick from 25 yards was excellent and just looked great. The flatter trajectory of the ball once struck just looks better to me than a free kick that is lifted up and then down. Don't ask me why, I just prefer it. one of the criticisms people had of Arsenal signing Odegaard over James Maddison was the output of both players in terms of goals and assists, so to see the Norwegian strike here is a real step to silencing the doubters. Also worth noting that Maddison has not registered either a goal or assist since February. There are of course injury mitigations to that, but it is still a point worth noting. 

The second half was something more of a backs to the wall job, but although the counter attack never really got going, Arteta would have been delighted with the resoluteness of the defence, and in particular Gabriel and Tomiyasu. Both of whom were dominant aerially and coped well with the physicality of the Burnley strike force. Aaron Ramsdale, making his second league start, was also commanding, claiming everything in the air and barking out orders to those in fornt of him. It's really refreshing to have a goalkeeper showing solid leadership traits. Even more refreshing to see several twitter accounts who criticised his signing before he had worn an Arsenal shirt back tracking. It is starting to look like there is a solid foundation on which we can build.

There was one moment of controversy, when an under hit Ben White back pass led to Aaron Ramsdale bringing down Matej Vydra. The referee pointed to the spot and on first viewing you could kind of understand why. It's one of those where if the Arsenal player goes down, you scream penalty all day long. But replays showed the keeper clearly won the ball and the referee overturned his original decision. VAR has taken a lot of criticism in the past, but here was an example of how it can work well.

From there we saw out the win without too much fuss. As I mentioned, Arteta will be delighted with the resilience and fight that was shown in the second half. The team really looked like they were playing for each other and were willing to fight for the win.

I know there are still criticisms of the manager and how we are playing. It is only two 1-0 wins, 2 goals in 5 games and only 1 of them in open play, and I am not pretending that everything is now perfect and that Arteta should be given a new 5 year contract. But he has seemingly laid the foundation from which the team can build on going forward. There are legitimate concerns about how we are attacking and I get that. But I believe that the wins are breeding confidence, and with that confidence the attacking freedom will come. So often yesterday we were one misplaced pass, one wrong decision away from creating a chance. New partnerships are being formed and I hope that they will start to bear fruit really soon.

Next up is a home tie in the League cup against AFC Wimbledon. With a North London Derby just a week away it is likely to be a much changed line up from the one that featured yesterday, but it is still an excellent opportunity to further build momentum. By the time the game rolls around next Sunday, we could be only points behind, and with an injury hit Sp*rs playing Chelsea today, there is a real chance that their goal difference could take a bit of a knock, leading to the possibility that, having ceded a 9 point start, we could finish next Sunday ahead of them lot. There's a lot of maybes there, but who would have thought that just 1 week ago?