Arsenal’s blunt attack leaves Mikel Arteta with some big decisions to make
I’m sitting writing this at the airport in Milan, waiting to catch my flight back to London after seeing another defeat for Arsenal in European competition.
Last night’s result at the San Siro was the third successive 1-0 defeat I’ve seen for Mikel Arteta’s side on the continent, following the losses by the same scoreline at Porto and Bayern last season.
Even the game I didn’t travel to this season, the draw at Atalanta, saw them fail to score which kind of sums up where Arsenal are right now as we head towards the end of 2024. They are a team that has lost its way in front of goal.
Their recent lean spell is far from fatal. We are only in November after all. But it is increasingly worrying and if they don’t find a way out of it soon, then a season that promised so much is going to fizzle out early in hugely disappointing style.
Arsenal were better at the San Siro than they were at Newcastle, let’s make that clear. And on another day they would have run out deserving victors against Inter Milan.
But at the moment things are just not going for them in front of goal. They are struggling to create decent chances despite having plenty of the ball and when they do manage to get a sight of goal, they are not taking advantage of it.
Yes, they were unlucky with the two penalty decisions last night. They should have had a spot kick when Yann Sommer nearly took Mikel Merino’s head off and the Spaniard was then harshly penalised for the crime of having an arm that a ball was kicked onto from point blank range.
But they had more than enough of the ball in the second half to ensure they still left Italy with something. The fact is though, they just didn’t do enough with it to really hurt Inter.
The Italians defended very well, heading away cross after cross and they made a couple of crucial blocks when they had to.
Other than that though, Sommer had a relatively comfortable night, when he wasn’t charging out and punching people in the head.
Arteta said he was proud of his players after the game and that it was the best European away performance that he had seen from his team.
I think that is certainly pushing it, although recent away displays on the continent from Arsenal have not exactly set a high bar. You have to go all the way back to Eddie Nketiah’s goal in the draw at PSV in the group stage last season to find the last time Arsenal scored on their travels in the Champions League.
Something has to change. Arteta has to find a way quickly of turning round this poor run of form. Martin Odegaard’s return should help, but it’s highly doubtful that the skipper will be deemed fit enough to start at Chelsea this weekend.
So something else is needed. Yes Ethan Nwaneri is young, but so what? He’s shown he’s more than capable of performing and giving Arsenal some quality going forward that they have been lacking. He only got a handful of minutes at the end at the San Siro, but that was still enough for him to manufacture a good shooting chance thanks to a very neat drop of the shoulder.
Chelsea may be a big game, but I just don’t see it troubling Nwaneri. Arsenal are crying out for someone like him right now, so why not use him more? Mikel Merino is clearly struggling and offering very little as a result and the same could be said of Leandro Trossard.
The latter was really poor at the San Siro, just as he was at Newcastle and was very fortunate to stay on the pitch as long as he did.
There is still a lot for Arsenal to play for and they are still well positioned both domestically and in Europe. But they can’t afford many more poor results. They need to find that spark again and it has to happen very quickly.
Stamford Bridge on Sunday would be a good start.