🎯 The main takeaway: A pleasant finish but an ugly start
We got this comment in the discord and I thought it was just about perfect, “Let’s pretend the first 60 didn’t happen.”
Things can always be a bit funky coming back from an international break, especially considering that this was an abnormally long one, I don’t think that is good enough to explain just how poor Arsenal were to start this game but it sure looked like everyone was knocking off the rust here.
In the lead up to Leeds goal things were quite ugly. Leeds were beating Arsenal on shots 8 to 5, with the xG closer but still not great from Arsenal with it tied at 0.4. Arsenal had more of the ball, but Leeds looked like the team that had been more threatening. When they scored it didn’t feel like a shock or something that was against the run of play.
Thankfully that was something that seemed to wake Arsenal up.
After Leeds took the lead, it was all Arsenal after that. They equalized through Calafiori and then kept adding on. The second goal was a beautiful sequence from Arsenal and made you wonder if they secretly switched out the players during a break because the team from the first half was not capable of that at all.
There were a few more opportunities after going a goal up to make it more comfortable but the finishing gods weren’t on Arsenal’s side.
There will be things to improve on for sure from this match but the ending was positive and Arsenal were able to get back to winning ways against a Leeds team that has shown that they are hard to beat this season.
📈 The positives:
There were a few surprises with the lineup today and none was bigger than seeing Noni Madueke getting the start on the left wing. I had expected that Eberechi Eze would get the first crack at the position with Tzolis out injured but Arteta went with Madueke. I think that he repaid that trust and put together a very good overall performance, with 3 shots, 3 key passes, 6 progressive passes and 9 progressive carries.
