Much of the joy of our rollercoaster ride to the top of the table last season was built on the fluid, attacking football that surprised so many sides in the Premier League.
After some pretty underwhelming seasons in Mikel Arteta’s early reign, opponents eyed us as an opportunity rather than an opponent to be feared and the opportunities that presented were gleefully seized upon.
It wasn’t until the final leg of last season that teams wised up enough to handle us with a little more caution and, all of a sudden, we started to toil.
This season has not only seen a continuation of that trend, it has seen sides approach us with something more, something altogether more miserly – the deep block.
Notoriously dour and difficult to play through, the deep block is designed for one thing: to prevent the opponent scoring. As such, we have been forced to work twice as hard for every point as team-after-team has given up any premise of attacking intent in favour of hunkering down.
Thomas Frank’s Brentford were the very epitome of that mindset.
Frank is a shrewd operator and knows how to maximise the limited assets at his disposal but even he saw no advantage in attempting to take it to Arsenal on Saturday. He opted instead to sit back and bide his time, waiting patiently for a mistake or misstep while keeping Arsenal well and truly wrapped up at the other end.
In fairness to Frank, it almost worked.
But for some quite remarkable goal-line recoveries from Declan Rice and Oleksandr Zinchneko, the Gunners might have left north-west London with nothing to show for their efforts.
As it is, Arteta has moulded a side that is as effective in defence as it is in attack – perhaps even more so – and that meant our hosts were denied, even when we contrived to gift them some guilt-edge opportunities.
Then, with the clock ticking down to full-time, Bukayo Saka produced his customary rabbit from the hat, planting the ball straight into the path of the wily Kai Havertz, and the deadlock was broken. Even with five or so minutes left, there was no way back for a Brentford side built for one purpose – a clean sheet.
With their primary objective foiled, the Bees had no time to respond and lacked the tools to make an impact even if they did.
It wasn’t Arsenal’s most fluid performance but they were value for the win and, at the end of the day, that’s all that matters.
Sadly, I think we have to accept the fact that this is how most games will play out now. Space and time are at an absolute premium against teams who are more focussed on stopping us playing than they are on playing themselves.
For the foreseeable future, we will have to find new ways to win against teams who sit in the dreaded low block and that means chances will be fewer and patience will need to be greater. It won’t make for good viewing but it is the reality we face now, victims of our own success.
In fairness, I think the manager knows that and he plans accordingly. The players too are practiced in patience and will rarely venture too far from efforts to pull and stretch their deep-lying opponents. Personally, I’d like to see more ambition in possession, a greater willingness to run at an opponent or take on a shot in a good position but I understand why the manager insists on the type of football he does.
Leaving that aside, though, we have reasons to be cheerful. We got the win our efforts deserved and we moved top of the table in doing so. Havertz got himself on the scoresheet to ease some of the pressure on his shoulders and Saka produced yet another goal contribution.
This game won’t live long in the memory but if you can’t be happy with that, what’s the point?
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