Defence to the fore again as Gunners toil on Champions League bow

Atalanta 0
Arsenal 0

It’s not what you would call a classic.

There was more than an air of pragamatism to Arsenal’s display in Bergamo on Thursday night as they opened their European campaign with a largely uneventful draw.

I say ‘largely uneventful’ because, of course, there was a penalty that might have swung the game decisively in the home side’s favour, only for David Raya to produce a quite stunning double save to secure a point for the Gunners.

For all the doubts about the signing of the Spaniard and his subsequent supplanting of Aaron Ramsdale, he has been superb and is no less important to this side than the four players in front of him who have rightly received credit for their own excellence.

It was the stand-out moment for Arsenal in 94 minutes of action and, while more than worthy of mention, is speaks volumes about how the match panned out. That’s not to say Mikel Arteta’s men were overwhelmed, more that they lacked the ability to control the game and be effective in the way we are accustomed.

And while the absence of Martin Odegaard will have much to do with that. the players on the pitch should have been able to keep the ball better, find more space, play smarter passes and progress the ball with some sort of coherence. As it was, we opted far too often to just play long and that, more often than not, resulted in the ball coming back at us.

We were badly bogged down.

As we are likely to be without our captain for at least six weeks, it’s an issue the manager is going to have to address because we will need to do more to win games. Scoring set pieces and being solid is one thing – and it is capable of being extremely effective – but there will be a need to go out and win games in a more active, ambitious way and that was lacking last night.

Taking Emile Smith Rowe and Fabio Vieira out of this squad wasn’t an issue in and of itself but failing to replace them adequately certainly has been. Ethan Nwaneri may yet turn into a mainstay of this Arsenal’s side for a decade or more but, clearly, the manager doesn’t believe he is ready to step into the breach now. That’s an issue.

We need someone who can link with Saka and Ben White on the right, we need someone with an eye for a progressive pass, who can lead the press, who can link play across the midfield, who can bring the front three and the midfield together and bridge the gap between them. At the moment, there’s no obvious successor to the role and we’re going to need one.

There are other issues. Gabriel Martinelli had Arsenal’s chance of the match, the opportunity to win it late on by finishing off a quite brilliant move which started from deep. When composure was needed, however, he shanked his shot high and wide with the goal begging. Despite smart movement from the young Brazilian, the finish was symptomatic of his current malaise. He hasn’t been at his best for quite some time and the miss was a bad one. The questions around his starting berth will only get louder for as long as the funk continues.

Overall, though, we did ok. It wasn’t a bad performance per se but it was certainly ineffectual. Europe, as we learned last season, is a whole different ball game to the Premier League – you need to be much smarter. Perhaps in some way, that’s what we were doing last night in staying compact and difficult to break down but it doesn’t feel like a sustainable way to do business.