To be honest we have 18 goals and 11 big chances, it means that we have scored goals off penalties and deflections and have been significantly luckier. This is not sustainable…. If I was Arteta I would be worried that we are lacking firepower in the striker department and our reliable creative players aren’t delivering as they used to. Odegaard and Saka haven’t been the force they were last season. In fact our players aren’t in top 10 in goals scored and assists.
Defensively we are solid now… but come January transfer season, he needs to add some power to the frontline.
This may sound unpopular and I am no way shitting on the manager or the team, just a stat that I am trying to wrap my head around…. Happy to be change my mind.
I would hold it with the “we’re solid defensively”, still concede too many easy goals and give away the ball in our own half.
The truth is Arteta is in the process of figuring out how to best replace Xhaka, he gave us the perfect balance in midfield with his not only great passing and workrate, but his tactical intelligence which got the best out of everyone around him. We have no equivalent, and Rice is quite bad in that left CM role… so Arteta needs to find some alternative way to structure our midfield which will make us less vulnerable in transition but also still very good at progressing the ball forward and exposing open spaces. At the moment we haven’t got either, it’s not so much about our attacking players as a dysfunctional midfield at the moment which isn’t able to have good possession in the opponent’s half and our attacking players don’t receive the ball in good areas… we simply create few chances and not very good ones, we mostly rely on set-pieces and a bit of luck at the moment. Hopefully Arteta and co. find a way to maximize what we’ve got in midfield but it always looked awkward with Havertz or Rice replacing Xhaka, neither can fill the role he had, so we have to adapt more or less the whole team.