Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
LACK OF THE NET
Arteta shoots from the lip at his goal-shy strikers: Possession is nine-tenths of the bore
FOR the Blank of England club, it was another barren trawl and Mikel Arteta looked suitably baffled.
After their 10th defeat – and ninth failure to score – in 23 Premier League games, midtable Arsenal are on the road to nowhere. The Gunners press hard enough but so does a rolling pin when you make pastry.
Their football is pretty enough but so are the patterns on your Laura Ashley curtains.
Boring, boring Arsenal? No, but this season they are just not scoring, scoring Arsenal – and their lack of ruthless instinct in the box is driving manager Arteta to distraction. Not since 2005-6, when Arsene Wenger’s side drew 11 blanks in 38 games, have the Gunners suffered so much goalless frustration – and that season they had the consolation of reaching the Champions League final.
At Villa Park, where they were beaten by
Ollie Watkins’ 100th career goal after just 74 seconds, Arsenal had nothing to show for
66 per cent possession.
Instead of an assassin’s creed, they brought water pistols to a gunfight.
Arteta said: “I’m not really interested in the possession – it’s the positions that we take with that possession, the spaces we attack and how many chances we create. It’s about the final pass, the final move, the one-on-one situations where of course you have to hit the target, the cut-backs, the deliveries into the box.
“All those things we have to improve because with the numbers we produce in the final third, we have to be hitting the target at least 10 or 12 times.”
Arsenal finished with six attacking players on the pitch and yet none of them could hit a barn door with a muckspreader. Since he signed a new contract in September, Pierreemerick Aubameyang’s output has tailed off. Loan signing Martin Odegaard and £72million disappointment Nicolas Pepe both missed glorious chances at Villa Park. Arteta groaned: “You have to hit the target to win football matches. We should have won the game comfortably but they were better in both boxes.”
You have to go back to 1983-84, when 10 defeats in the first 17 league games cost Terry Neill his job as manager, since Arsenal turned losing into such a regrettable habit.
Contrast their irritation with Villa, who have already matched last season’s points tally in 21 games. Watkins (left) scored twice in Villa’s 3-0 romp at the Emirates in November and Dean Smith, the manager who signed him twice, is not surprised the £28m striker he poached from Brentford has prospered.
Smith said: “The football Brentford played last season was often of Premier League standard, so we knew he was ready to come in and do well.” Never mind Ross Barkley’s strop – kicking a water bottle in frustration when hooked – if Watkins is not on Gareth Southgate’s radar, the England chief ’s sonar system is on the blink.