Arsenal must ‘unlock’ first-half goals conundrum – Suburban Gooners

Morning Gooners, is everything okay?

I have to admit I was a little sad that I didn’t watch last night’s crazy football match, Man United 4 – 4 Bournemouth. This looks like a Christmas game where I saw Jamie Carragher describe it as “the best of the season”.

Of course it was. There were lots of goals, one team winning, then the other team, then the other team again before settling for a draw. For neutral (nothing like that) it was a Barnstormer and for Sky it was Exactly what they expect from a football match to advertise »The Barclays.”

But for Bournemouth and United fans, I bet it was a bit of a nightmare. Both teams will leave this game feeling like they should have won and both of these teams will likely walk away with a feeling of dissatisfaction in their mouths and minds.

And I thought of our 4-4 against The foam and I tried to put myself back in that position when this happened to us and how I felt. And it was maddening to even think about it now. There are other matches, like the 4-4 at Newcastle, but which smacked of questionable refereeing. There was the 4-4 at Anfield that Arshavin was in, but I feel like at that point both teams weren’t really in contention for anything, so it wasn’t a risk. So it’s this 4-4 against Them it occurred to me.

Now, I fast forward to today and how Arsenal really aren’t a team that Sky Sports and TNT Sport want to hang their “big Premier League commercial” schtick on, because apart from the last few weeks, we’re not exactly a team that plays basketball games, are we? Last weekend saw some late drama, but that was because Arsenal were complacent for a while. Villa Park had great drama and was described as a ‘great game’, but that’s because it was a bit of an anomaly; Arsenal don’t usually play the way the opposition wants them to and Villa always want that type of game, where it’s a bit of an end-to-end. This is why they make this great journey; no one is actually blocking Villa from what I see. The wolves didn’t do that when they faced them. We didn’t do it. This is not the case for West Ham. So you get these games. I also think to some extent it’s the same with City, because Palace tried them last weekend, Fulham did it in the 5-4, and Leeds also almost snatched a draw.

This is what happened to us in our first season where we competed for the title in 2023/24. The teams came to us because they saw a team that, two years before, was still a work in progress. Now they see a team that doesn’t give up too much, but also a team that, if you block low, there’s an outside chance that you can thwart a draw or score with your one chance. So the evolution of this Arsenal team is to take that ‘next step’ and actually put the metaphorical boot on their opponents’ necks.

I think we need to find a way to score more goals in the first half. We have 30 in the Premier League this season, including 13 in the first half. Not bad, almost half, but City scored eight more than us and six of those eight were in the first half. When you score first, especially against so-called weaker opponents, it stands to reason that you have a greater chance of winning the game (this blog is a few years old but goes into a bit more detail and I think it’s still relevant). But Arsenal are such a good defensive unit (although we’ve seen a few cracks appear recently, I think we can all admit that) that when we score first, the game more often than not feels like it’s almost won. If the psychological blow is dealt early, it completely changes the appearance of the match. This season we have scored first in almost half of our matches (seven). Conversely, Man City have scored in 12 of their 16 matches so far. This means that as the game opens up, they have an opponent who needs to come out, so they have a better chance of scoring more goals. This is what Arteta must unlock.

I’m just a football fan. I’m not one of your in-depth, in-depth analysis fans who can analyze hours and hours of data and come up with a hyper-intelligent answer. If you want that, check out the incredible Billy Carpenter on Substack – he’s awesome. I like to dabble around and take a look at FBref to see if some numbers give me a little story, but that’s just the first line. But in my simple eyes and with my simple feelings, I feel like the only way Arsenal can unlock this league and win it the way I would like us to win it – like Liverpool did last season – is to find a way to unlock games. Just looking at the eyesight I have, and that of some of those around me in Block Five with whom I go to games, tells me/us that we start games too slowly, too methodical in our construction. Too often we overshadow our opponents. It’s almost as if Arteta sometimes says ‘just look at the other guys for 15 minutes so I can see how they are organized tactically, then we’ll adjust it accordingly to see if we can win the game’. I know it’s clearly not what Arteta says to them, but again, that’s exactly what it feels like as a fan when you’re in the stands watching the game with the raw emotion and nerves of needing to win the game. I feel like there’s an inherent caution in this Arsenal team in the first halves of matches and if there’s anything I’d like to see a little more of, it’s that we maybe push the boundaries of that caution a little more.

It won’t happen, I don’t think, because I think we would still see a few more cases like that moment in the first half on Saturday when Hwang suddenly scored on goal because we had all the Bar-Raya players on the edge of their box. I’ll bet anyone (not that we’ll ever really know) that Arteta has rewatched this moment about 50 times and will definitely replay it to his team this week in training. There will be a “if you assholes EVER do something like that, I’m going to whip your ass so hard…” when talking to London Colney that way, that’s for sure.

The positive thing I took away from reading this Telegraph article yesterday is that it seems players are now selfish when it comes to critical analysis. Arteta will be angry, but he will also be happy internally that the players know when standards are not being met and reading this has reassured me that they will all redouble their efforts this week to ensure there is no repeat of Wolves’ situation.

But that doesn’t quite put into place what I think is the final piece of the puzzle to get Arsenal to the level where even City shrug their shoulders in disbelief that they can catch us. We got him about six weeks ago without the number of injuries and the clean sheets were piling up. But it was never sustainable. So I think we need to find a way to unlock more goals in the first half. And that’s something I hope Arteta, the coaching staff and the analysts are all working to resolve.

Well, that’ll be it for today I think, so have a good time and I’ll see you all tomorrow.