300,000 passes

When Arsenal travelled to Everton in December, they took a cautious approach in possession. This was, I think, for a few reasons. Firstly, in the preceding fixtures the Gunners had played games that were far more transitional than I think Mikel Arteta would have liked.

They had squeaked past Wolves at Emirates Stadium the weekend previous thanks to a stoppage time own goal. Arsenal lost control of the match at 1-0 and allowed a late Wolves equaliser (a sin they would repeat against the same opposition, this time without reprieve, a few weeks later).

They had beaten Club Brugge 3-0 prior to that, but the Belgians managed 18 shots and just a shade under 50% of the possession in that match. Arsenal made 477 passes in that game and Brugge made 474. And immediately prior to that Arteta’s side lost 2-1 at Villa Park where they conceded 15 shots and made 443 passes with 84.9% accuracy.

One week before that chastening stoppage time defeat in Birmingham, Arsenal had gone to Stamford Bridge and drawn 1-1 with 10-man Chelsea who outshot the visitors by 11 to eight. Arsenal made 463 passes at 84.9% accuracy that afternoon. When they travelled to the Hill Dickinson shortly before Christmas, they focused on regaining their technical stability.

They made 654 passes at Everton with 87.9% accuracy. Part of this improvement was down to the recoveries of William Saliba and Gabriel, who had both been missing during December. But a lot of it was down to choice. Everton are a team who tend to thrive on broken play and try to get their crowd highly engaged.

Arsenal started Martin Odegaard that evening while Eze and Madueke were unused subs. After the game, Arteta said, ‘We know how they use their keeper and put people forward and come at you with the long balls and the game becomes more chaotic.’ The plan was very simple and easy to see, keep the ball, don’t give away fouls and free-kicks, don’t allow transitions, don’t allow the crowd to become involved.

Arsenal average around 404 passes per game in the Premier League this season, so it was quite a jump to 654 at Everton. They also average around 10 fouls per game and at Everton that dropped to five. One of Arteta’s more famous quotes during his Arsenal tenure came after a topsy turvy 3-2 win away at Watford, in which his team twice allowed Watford back into the game after leading 2-0 and 3-1.

‘I didn’t like how we were controlling the game,’ he said. ‘We were allowing spaces against the team who, if we kept allowing that, we were going to suffer. I knew that. We had to put that right and we did it for certain periods. Then in the last 25 minutes, we lost it again. We have to show that maturity, understanding and capacity to control the game how we wanted to.

‘At 3-1, after, we had to make 300,000 passes in the opposition half and when they have the right moment to come at us, then we can attack them. We didn’t do that. The game was open and you had the feeling that the game was open right until the end.’ I revisit this quote often and I revisited it again after Tuesday night’s 1-0 win over Sporting in Lisbon.

Arsenal made 510 passes in this game with an accuracy of 91.6%. Post-match, Arteta had referred, several times, in his pre-match press conference to his team’s ‘identity’ after cup defeats to Manchester City and Southampton. The period in early December when Arsenal started to lose technical control of games coincided with the absences of Saliba and Gabriel.

In the recent cup defeats, goalkeeper rotation has been a decisive factor in some of that loss of technical control. David Raya came back into the team in Lisbon and left with the Man of the Match award in his kitbag. ‘We took the game where we wanted,’ Arteta said tellingly after the game.

‘We knew as well that it’s a team extremely dangerous when they have space to run and they have two situations where David had to intervene in a brilliant way.’ This game was very similar to Everton away in December with the same result. The template was to play ‘keep away’ with the opposition.

No transitions, quieten the crowd, keep the ball and wait for the right moment. I understand why this brand of football doesn’t always quicken the pulse but, as I have set out many, many times before, I am entertained by Arsenal winning games and that means being difficult to beat.

I understand why the wider world maybe doesn’t care for this style but I couldn’t give a fish’s tit about what the ‘neutral’ wants. NB, there is no such thing as a ‘neutral’ anyway, everyone is informed by their biases with an emotional subject like football. The common factor for the ‘neutrals’ that chide Arsenal’s style is that they generally do not want Arsenal to win games or titles. What those people want from Arsenal is utterly meaningless to me.

I also just don’t believe that so many people genuinely care about the style of football played by the team on top of the Premier League table. I cannot ever remember caring or spending any energy on this topic when other teams have topped the table and I simply do not believe this to be a genuine concern for a lot of the people that talk about it. I think they are being deliberately disingenuous for engagement.

I think it’s different when folk are discussing tactical and stylistic trends across the league more broadly, of course. It is also worth remembering that seasons are largely attritional, it’s just that pretty much every game is televised nowadays so that we see more of it. (See below this brilliant video from Adam Cleary).

Humblebrag alert, I was at all 49 of Arsenal’s games during their unbeaten run between May 2003 and October 2004 and there was quite a lot of attritional football played. It’s just that 17 of Arsenal’s 38 Premier League games were televised in the UK that season. This season it will be double that and that’s without mentioning global TV deals that mean all games are now televised for fans across the world.

It’s not as different now as you think it is! But I do think it to be interesting that when Arsenal need a reset, this is where Arteta goes to, technical security, don’t give the ball away, don’t allow chaos to ensue. Sporting and Everton are strong examples of teams who thrive on transition and a fiery home crowd and, in both games, Arsenal opted for submission rather than knockout.

As with everything Arteta says, when he raged at his team for not completing ‘300,000 passes’ on that afternoon in Hertfordshire in March 2022, you know that he meant it. He associated the lack of control with a lack of maturity and game management in his team. What we are seeing is the culmination of that journey.

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