Brentford vs Arsenal: Instant Reaction

Thoughts at full time

First off Happy New Year! I hope everyone had a nice evening and a good celebration. Let’s get into this match now.

Headline: Starting 2025 off right

When Brentford scored from their shot of the night after the play had been all Arsenal, I had to admit my head dropped and I was nervous.

Without Bukayo Saka, without Kai Havertz, with a squad that was reportedly hit with a sickness and with an overall attack that has struggled to create the inevitable pressure against teams playing in the low block, the odds seemed stacked against a comeback.

To top it off this season, Arsenal have not shown incredible numbers when behind (small sample size TBF), I think there were valid reasons to lean into worrying about how this team would respond.

Thankfully here Arsenal did have the ability to turn the game around and did so by cranking up the pressure here.

Brentford seemed like they wanted to sit deep but I don’t think that they intended to be this deep. After the goal, Arsenal often pushed Brentford to have all eleven men in the defensive third and even at times it was nearly all eleven in the box.

What this did was made it so that there was no escape for them when they wanted to clear the ball. I don’t think that this was by any means the most effective pressing game from Arsenal but did result in Arsenal starting high consistently and not giving Brentford any time to rest and regroup.

This got Arsenal their first goal of the game.

Arsenal got the ball in a dangerous spot, Brentford had no outlet and the weak clearances were blocked and it led to a Thomas Partey shot that was turned into a rebound and an equalizer.

I have never been happier to have my pessimism shown to be wrong.

From there it felt like the goal really brought back belief to the team. The start of the second half was strong generating quick pressure that lead to two corners and from the second one a scramble saw Arsenal ahead and just a few minutes later Martinelli got on the end of a loose ball in the box and it was 3-1 and as good as game over.

With a two-goal lead, it feels like there is no team better suited for that situation than Arsenal at this time. In my notebook I wrote GAME OVER and that was pretty much it, 1 shot and really nothing really threatening of note.

A great start to 2025.

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