Ten wins out of 11 games. It was a statistic Mikel Arteta stressed twice in his six-minute post-match press conference after Arsenal’s eye-gougingly dull 1-0 win over Nottingham Forest at the City Ground, like a man who’d been rehearsing lines in the mirror.
He is right, of course, although if we’re being picky, one of those was the Community Shield, which isn’t a real competition, and another was the Carabao Cup. One game was on the first day of the season at home to newly promoted Coventry, and of the remaining eight games – one of which was that chastening 3-0 defeat at Brighton – it is hard to pick one in which Arteta’s team were truly impressive.
Arsenal have now failed to score a first-half goal in their past six games, and this was the worst 45 minutes in the streak. They dominated the ball with 74 per cent possession but that is not the same as dominating the game, and by half-time Forest had mustered five shots while Arsenal had attempted only three, with none on target.
The natural temptation here might be to blame the lack of a world-class striker in a world-class squad, and certainly there are games when it feels like a glaring lack of foresight not to have signed someone else this summer. Kai Havertz drifted around the fringes, missing the target with two decent chances before being replaced by Viktor Gyokeres in the second half, a goalscoring beast for Sweden who is still not entirely convincing for Arsenal.
But really this was a first half where Arsenal’s entire approach was found wanting. Eberechi Eze did very little on the left touchline, which isn’t his game in fairness, and he was hooked at half-time for Noni Madueke. Bukayo Saka was only slightly more effective on the other side, looking shorn of something, be it confidence, sharpness or simply new ideas against a deep back five.
Stationed as the deep-lying playmaker, Declan Rice was too risk-averse on the ball and, in front of him, Martin Odegaard and Bruno Guimaraes showed neat touches but made very few runs beyond Havertz to move Forest’s firm lines, which perhaps explained why Rice was released forwards in the second half. Riccardo Calafiori kept coming inside and getting crowded out in the centre of the pitch, looking like a magnificent race horse on the tube at rush hour.
Arsenal finished the half with 331 passes at a completion rate of 91 per cent, which summed up their caution. It was a dynamic forced in part by Forest, of course, who were happy to see Arsenal have the ball in areas of low threat. But Arsenal have faced this type of problem many times before and as champions there will be many more, and the worrying part was that they didn’t have the tools to solve them.
They did eventually find the answer, after 80 minutes of watching paint dry, when Madueke’s deflected strike squirmed past a stranded Matz Sels. By that point Arteta had brought on his “finishers”, who proved decisive just as they had against Sunderland, and Leeds, and Lille.
It is a phenomenal weapon to be able to bring on World-Cup winner Mikel Merino, as well as Madueke, Gyokeres and Jurrien Timber. Put another way, how many other teams could afford to leave Max Dowman, Martin Zubimendi and Myles Lewis-Skelly wrapped up on the bench?
And Arteta is right, of course. Ten wins from 11 games. A perfect start to the Champions League campaign. Second in the Premier League, behind only the sanctions-elect. Arsenal are still defensively strong and the Gabriel-Konsa partnership was immense here, despite some testing moments. Rice was excellent on the cover.
Perhaps this is a legitimate way to defend the title without an elite goalscorer, to suck the life out of your opponents, denying them the ball, neutralising the game, waiting for the perfect moment to send in the second echelon. Perhaps results are really what matters now, accruing the points and building table pressure.
But we are entitled to expect a little more from the champions, particularly at this stage of the season when the trophy tension, and the calendar intensity, are both at their lightest. Because after 11 games, and 10 wins, the most convincing performance of them all came from Brighton.