Manchester United vs Arsenal: The Debrief
Arsenal start the season with a win but a performance that is lacking
There is the old cliche that Champions find ways to win ugly and get the three points when they didn’t play at their best. Arsenal won ugly here and hopefully this will be a good omen that we point back to in May when looking back at this season.
I am not fully sure that is the case (I think Champions are generally just more often teams that don’t have performance where they don’t play well) but I will take it in this situation. Last season it was pretty rare for Arsenal to lose the xG battle, where it only happened 5 times when it was 11v11 and Arsenal were still able to turn that into wins twice.
This season it is one played, and one won but I really hope to not need to come back to this often.
Let’s get deep into this very interesting match from Arsenal.
Manchester United vs Arsenal: The Graphics
Manchester United vs Arsenal: The Debrief
7 - Wins for Arsenal against Manchester United at Old Trafford since 1997-98 in all competitions in 31 matches played, winning just 22.5% of the fixtures
0.97 - Arsenal’s points per game at old Trafford over that time period, with Arsenal going 7-9-15 in those matches
-21 - Arsenal’s goal difference at old Trafford over that time period, Arsenal scored 28 (never more than 2) and Manchester United 49 (including an 8, a 6, and three 3 goals scored matches).
0 - Wins for Arsenal in the Premier League at Old Trafford between September 2006 and November 2020, a run of 13 matches without a win and the team suffered 8 losses over that run.
3 - Wins at Old Trafford under Mike Arteta, with Arsenal going 3-1-2 in his six matches as manager. That is 1.67 points per match with a 50% win rate, in the period before he took over that was 0.8 points per match and a 16% win rate.
It doesn’t fully sit perfectly with my cold calculating stats heart but even if I tell myself it is probably just randomness and us telling a story after the fact to fit the patterns we see, there are just fixtures that have that little extra about them.
This is one of those for Arsenal.
These types of fixtures are often because of the talent of the opposition (Anfield and the Etihad are good examples of those now because Liverpool and Manchester City have been historically great lately) but we can also see it at Goodson Park where Arsenal have underperformed where the talent of the teams would suggest.
Manchester United away has been a mixture of both, the matches in the first period of the Premier League were always the toughest of the season, with Manchester United the team that dominated the Premier League and it had the added weight of it feeling like the team was playing against 12 men given the atmosphere plus the way that Alex Ferguson’s aura got his team the extra benefit from referees. The later portion of the matches has seen Manchester United fall off significantly but that didn’t change that Arsenal continued to struggle in this fixture.
Mikel Arteta had this to say after the match and I thought it really resonated:
“It was 18 years, or 22 years here at Old Trafford without winning before I came, and now I go in the dressing room, we won here the first game, and we are not still happy. It's a good sign.”
The number of years isn’t right but it matches the vibe of what it felt like before he came, there was no expectation of winning this fixture. That has changed and now Arsenal expect to win this match and just accomplishing that isn’t good enough from this team.
There is a lot of truth to that, it is great to have won but there are plenty of reason to not be happy with the performance right now.
9 - Shots total from Arsenal in this match, with just 5 coming from open play
2 - Shots from Arsenal’s forwards in this match and one of them might be a bit generous to Gabriel Martinelli
0.28 - Arsenal’s xG for all of the shots beside the close range nod home that Riccardo Calafiori scored
Overall, the attacking fluency was off all game and when Arsenal did find themselves in potentially good situations in the final third they lacked the composure to execute the final ball.
We will go into more depth on this below, but Arsenal played in a different way than they had last season and it didn’t look like anything close to the finished product here.
Even the defensive side of the game, which is usually one Arsenal’s major strengths did not live up to the expectations.
22 - Shots for Manchester United in this match, this would have been the sixth highest that they recorded last season and is tied for what they had combined last season against Arsenal in three matches played, they had 5 against Arsenal at the Emirates in the League, 7 against Arsenal in the FA Cup and 10 that they generated at home.
1.6 - Expected goals for Manchester United, this would have been their 10th best tally last season
34 - Touches in the box against Arsenal, this would have been their 7th best tally last season and is more than they had combined in the Premier League fixtures last season where they had 16 and 6
Arsenal did well to keep Manchester United from generating any major clean chances here (0 big chances allowed) and limited the average quality to more speculative efforts but overall seeing this level of volume doesn’t give you the warm fuzzy feelings.
The worry that I came away from this performance was that there was real pressure that Manchester United put Arsenal under in the final minutes of the match.
Here are the stats from 67 to the final whistle (Arsenal - United):
Possession - 34.8% to 65.2%
Pass Completion % - 64.1% to 80%
Final third pass attempts - 19 to 43
Touches in the box - 5 to 23
Shots - 2 to 11
xG - 0.1 to 1.1
That is just not how you would expect things to play out for Arsenal. Even away from home I expect Arsenal to not be pushed this far back and to be bunkered in front of their goal like that.
We have seen Arsenal drop into the mid/low block previously and limit what teams can create against them and that was not what this was in this case. There was lots of danger and this is something where it felt like Arsenal were inviting the chance for variance to bite them and restart the issue of dropping points from a winning position.
There was a lot of last ditch defending in the box and there was a flash point decision between William Saliba and Matheus Cunha where there was contact on the player with no touch on the ball.
With the way that Simon Hooper had called the game up to this point, he was not giving a lot of grace towards Arsenal players on the 50/50 duels when they made contact with a United player. Arsenal were whistled for 19 fouls in this match (this would have been the most they had in a match last season) and this in the context of the match very well could have been a very painful number 20.
Overall, for this match, David Raya was a deserved man of the match in this match and he was busy and important for keeping Arsenal in this match and coming away with a clean sheet.
It is good that it happened that was from a result view but the process where your keeper is called upon to be that busy is not the ideal way that Arsenal play.
Arsenal’s change of style is apparent but still a work in progress
2.2 - Direct yards up the field per second while in possession for Arsenal in this match
1.9 - Arsenal’s average direct speed per second last season in the Premier League
5 - Matches last season where they attacked at this speed or more directly (Spurs away, Liverpool home, Newcastle away, Nottingham Forest away, and Ipswitch away)
72 - Attacking possessions for Arsenal in this match
1 - Match last season where they had this many possessions in a match, Liverpool home where they also had 72 possessions.
61.6 - Arsenal’s average attacking possessions in their matches last season, the fewest of any team in the Premier League last season
40 - Quick (1 second or less since the pass was received) pass attempts in this match for Arsenal, 13% of their total passes attempted in this match.
9 - Passing sequences of 7 or more passes, 15 passing sequences of 5 or more passes
0 - Shots from direct attacks for fast breaks
There is a clear change of style from Arsenal in this match, and it is a bit of a continuation of what we saw in the final preseason match against Athletic Club, where the team looked to play up the field more directly and quicker.
Last season Arsenal were one of the slowest in possession teams in the League and they played with full control limiting the total possessions for both teams. Here the intent to move quickly was evident, this match ended up more open and back and forth than just about any Arsenal match has been over the last two years.
Here is a nice compilation of Arsenal’s transition attacks in this match from twitter user AFC_Adi06.
The execution on these plays still requires improvement, with both the passing and the choice of runs not always looking ideal to maximize the ability to turn these into shots.
It is still early, and the team is adapting a new tactic that has the potential to add more to Arsenal’s attacking numbers. This is a positive overall move that I am happy to see and I am willing to give some grace here as the team works out the growing pains of where they pick their spots and works to become more effective on this.
Gyokeres debut shows that he will still need time to adapt
0 - Shots
11 - Pass Attempts with 5 Passes Completed
45.5% - Pass completion % on an expected completion percentage of 70.7%
0 - Key Passes
18 - Touches
3 - Touches in the box, 10 total in the final third
0 - Dribbles Completed from 1 attempt, with 2 times fouled
2/3 - Attacking ground duels
1 - Time dispossessed
3 - Miscontrolled touches
0 - Progressive carries
6 - Long Pass Received
5 - Progressive Passes Received
2 - Pass in the box Received
0 - Tackles
3 - Fouls committed
0/3 - On defensive ground duels
1 - Aerial duel won out of 6 aerial duels contested
This was not the perfect debut for Arsenal’s striker.
One of the hallmarks of Gyokeres in Portugal was that he was a shot monster, he had no matches last season where he failed to take a shot, and just six where he played 60 or minutes and only had one shot, he had more matches where he took 6 or more shots (11) than matches where he took 1 or fewer last season (6). Starting off with a blank for shots and key passes is discouraging.
What Manchester United did in this match highlights some of the ways that I think we will see teams try to deal with his potential threat.
One of the items that was a reoccurring theme watching him at Sporting, is that when he had matches where he was limited from being able to get inside the width of the box his ability to threaten was heavily diminished. That is exactly what you saw here in this match.
This is something that Arsenal implemented quite effectively when they played against him with Sporting and it is the same tactic that his former coach used here.
It will be really interesting to see how Arsenal are able to try and implement counters to this and get him into the areas where he can offer more threat. There was times where he could do better with the service that he got and there will need to be some adaption to recognizing the potential runs that he will be at his best off of.
Martin Odegaard grabs the game
44 - Pass Attempts with 31 completed, led Arsenal
70.5% - Pass completion % on an expected 76.3%
6 - Final 3rd Entry Passes completed, led all players
6 - Progressive Passes, led Arsenal
5 - Long Passes completed, 100% completion percentage
1 - Key Pass worth 0.11 xA
2 - Shots worth 0.06 xG
3 - Dribbles Completed out of 4 attempted with 1 time fouled, led Arsenal
0 - Times dispossessed
4/5 - Attacking ground duels won
10 - Progressive Carries, led all players
5 - Carry into Final Third, led all players
1 - Tackle with 0 times dribbled past and 1 foul committed
1/2 - Defensive ground duels won
1 - Interception
7 - Ball Recoveries, led all players
5 - Clearances
6.75 - Fields Gained (total progressive distance passing and carrying scaled to the length of the field), led Arsenal
On a day where Arsenal were far from their best, Odegaard stood out as one of the players that was playing at something close to the usual standards. It was not his best game by any stretch but he was pretty clearly the player out there keeping Arsenal in the match and offering the ability to get them up the field.
It is still not ideal to have Odegaard need as much on the ball time in the defensive and middle thirds of the pitch but in this match he was called upon it and provided pivotal contributions to help Declan Rice (who looked very far from his best) and Martin Zubimendi (an up and down debut) cope with the match.
The execution in the final third wasn’t there from him as much as we would want but that was a similar story for Arsenal as a whole.
If Arsenal are going to do the things we hope this season, getting more from Odegaard will be a major reason why. This performance did show that determination and after the noise about his suitability as the captain, was the type of day out that should quiet people.
Ödie's turnovers weren't covered here. He did more with the ball than most of last year but much of it ended on a Man U boot. In general, the team looked out of whack with the ball.