Arsenal have been accused of ‘ruining’ the Premier League because of their focus on set-pieces and Mikel Arteta’s conservative style of play.
The Gunners are currently top of the league, having played nine matches, but this form hasn’t prevented them from being the centre of negative discourse over the last couple of weeks.
Arteta’s side are scoring a large proportion of their goals from set-pieces, while they’ve conceded just three goals of any kind in nine matches this season.
This combination of factors contributing to their success has unsurprisingly not boded well for their public perception.
Arsenal’s style of play is a response to the opposition changing in recent years
Jamie O’Hara has accused Arsenal of ‘killing’ the Premier League by allowing their set-piece obsession to bleed into other teams’ approaches.
Meanwhile, Jeff Stelling claimed that watching Arsenal is ‘like watching paint dry’ this week.
While these pundits are obviously entitled to their opinion, they’re probably very wide of the mark with their assessments.
Mid-table teams have drastically changed their style of play in recent years, which has prompted a response from the top teams that is ultimately eliciting these discussions.
Five years or so ago, the majority of the Premier League would sit extremely deep against the ‘big six’, not attempting to contest possession.
They were extremely passive and would rarely stray outside of their defensive structure. This has changed in recent times.
Managers in the middle tier of the English first division have recognised that this low-block style wasn’t particularly effective over the course of a season, particularly after top sides started counter-pressing.
They’ve responded by initiating aggressive mid-blocks, which look to aggressively contest possession in the middle third.
The likes of Crystal Palace, Newcastle, and Bournemouth have done this incredibly effectively in recent years, and the top sides have subsequently struggled to respond.
Manchester City, Liverpool and Arsenal have become less effective at creating chances from open play in the last two years because of this change, and this has led to more of a focus on set-pieces.
Arteta has responded by ensuring his side are never hit in transition when these mid-table teams win possession in the middle third, as well as hugely ramping up the set-piece threat.
So far, Arsenal’s response to the change in tactical meta has worked wonders, while City and Liverpool have been left behind.
The tactical landscape will change again
Eventually, the teams with more talent will work out a sustainable way of countering what mid-table teams are doing.
This could either be by scoring relentlessly from corners, or by by-passing the midfield by going long more frequently.
This will, in turn, prompt another rethink from those managers and coaches with fewer resources. This will likely lead to the game changing once again, and there’ll possibly be a switch towards open-play chance creation being more prominent.
The game has always evolved as tactics have changed, and each tactical evolution has always resulted in the general football landscape complaining about the direction the game is moving in. At the moment, Arsenal are being scapegoated for this, but they won’t be in the future.
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