Spurs 0-1 Arsenal: The Debrief

Arsenal win the away North London Derby for the third time in a row

Coming into this match Arsenal were not in a pretty spot.

Arsenal were missing 6 first team players through injury or suspension. They were without Declan Rice, Martin Odegaard, Mikel Merino, Riccardo Calafiori, Oleksandr Zinchenko, and Takehiro Tomiyasu.

By TransferMarkt estimates that is €398 million in player value that was missing from the Arsenal team and what would have probably been the ideal first choice midfield in most matches.

Things were looking down for Arsenal and it required Arsenal to compromise on style to prioritize a result in what was a pivotal 8 day period with 3 tough road games.

Arsenal won’t get a prize for how the played or glowing reviews from the pundits but they did take care of business and started things off with a win and keeping North London the proper color.

Spurs 0-1 Arsenal: The Graphics

Spurs 0-1 Arsenal: The Debrief

7 - Shots for Arsenal in this match

20 - Times under Mikel Arteta that Arsenal have been held to 7 or fewer shots in the Premier League. It happened just once in the last two seasons.

0.7 - Expected goals for Arsenal in this match

33 - Times under Mikel Arteta that Arsenal have been held to 0.7 or fewer expected goals in the Premier League. It happened just five times last season.

Arsenal have not found their attacking mojo yet this season. In a way it is very similar to the start of last season where it took until really November for the attack to gel and until January for the goals to actually start coming. That isn’t too unusual, Mikel Areta seems to have a complex system and it takes time for new players to adapt.

Last season the big culprit was Gabriel Jesus injured and adjusting to 2/3 of a new midfield.

This season two of the new signings that were signed to freshen things up have not played, compounded in this game with injury and suspension to what many would call the entire first choice midfield.

Through a small sample size of just 4 games (with some tough ones in here) Arsenal have looked like a League average attack.

I am not worried yet and it might take a similar amount of time to last season for things to click. This match (and the next one) in particular are probably/hopefully going to look like outliers this season given the opponents and injury situations.

It is something I am noticing and will be watching.

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Arsenal conceded territory but not control

99 - Touches in the final third, this ranks 41st when combined with this season and last season’s totals.

229 - Touches in the final third, this is the most since Spurs last season where they had 240 touches in the final third. This is the 9th time since Arteta has been the manager in the Premier League that a team has had 229 or more touches in the final third against Arsenal.

25.8% - Arsenal’s share of the total final third touches

Arsenal played this match in a very different way than “normal”. They came as close as Arsenal can to abandoning the short passing game, they went medium or long on their passing 54% of the time.

Arsenal played directly and looked to take more risks moving the ball up the field over the more usual plan of keeping the ball and methodically moving the ball up the field. Some of this was that Tottenham really sell out pressing hoping to win the ball back quickly and some down to Arsenal missing Rice and Odegaard for this match.

11% - The percentage of Arsenal’s buildup play that was a long pass

96% - Arsenal’s actual passing completion percentage compared to expected completion percentage in buildup

11 - Arsenal had just 11 possession sequences with 7 or more passes, typically Arsenal will double or triple that total.

With a double pivot of Jorginho and Partey I had hoped that Arsenal would be able to have more of the ball but for long stretches that was not really the case. The two players didn’t have a great day on the ball and had just one pass each between themselves (2 total) and 43 combined passes.

Looking at the team as a whole there are a lot of low pass completion percentage numbers here and many players completing fewer passes than expected.

With Spurs pressing aggressively (especially for the first 30 minutes) and Arsenal looking to play quickly up the field that did mean that Spurs dominated where the game was played, with the majority of the action happening on Arsenal’s side of the field.

I would argue that even with this tilt, Arsenal were outside of a couple moments never really under that much pressure and did an exceptional job of keeping Spurs from access into the most dangerous areas of the field.

When you look at the pass map for Tottenham in the final third there is a lot of possession, but it lacks a cutting edge.

The biggest standout in this for me is that Arsenal seemed content to let Spurs have the ball wide, trusting the fullback/winger combo to do enough to limit the potential danger from those zones and to keep access into the middle at a premium.

The wide players did do a solid job keeping Spurs to creating minimal threat. Spurs attempted 31 total crosses in this match, and 24 crosses from open play. They completed 8 (7 from open play) and generated just 3 shots (all headed) with the most dangerous one the Dominic Solanke chance that looped just wide (12% chance).

Tottenham’s wide players were kept quite.

Brennan Johnson was fairly threatening in this match, leading Spurs in goal probability added. He was a handful running at Jurrien Timber but he did well to not be beaten and was kept in front to limit his ability to create for himself or a teammate. He led Spurs with 4 shots but all were low quality chances (none were rated at over 7% by my model) with plenty of bodies in the way.

People have told me that they didn’t think Ben White had a great game and he certainly had a bad moment on a deflected pass but overall I think he did a solid job keeping Son Heung-Min from having much of an impact at all. He set up one shot (the early moment of danger to Dejan Kulusevski) and took just one shot (a 96th minute speculative shot from 30 yards out that was blocked).

He had one other entry into the penalty box and was kept from creating much threat at all ranking 7th for goal probability added for Tottenham in this match.

When Spurs did on occasion get the ball into the central locations, it was almost always under immense pressure and resulted in very little actual threat created (they actually lost threat here with them losing possession or needing to pass to a less dangerous zone).

in the areas of the pitch where teams are most threating to Arsenal’s box Spurs were really limited. They completed just one pass into the box and set up 3 low quality chances.

15 - Shots for Tottenham in this match

0 - Big Chances for Tottenham

0.7 - xG created for Tottenham, this is just the third time that under Ange Postecoglou that they have been held to 0.7 or fewer expected goals.

0.05 - xG per shot for Tottenham, this is the lowest total that Tottenham have had under Postecoglou

For the flaws that this match had as an attacking performance, the exact opposite is true for what it was able to do as a defensive performance. Arsenal don’t always bring out this nasty mid/low block but when they do, that is generally it for the team that they are up against attacking. Spurs matched their average this season for field tilt but were held to lows on deep touches, xG, and progressive passes.

Possession without a purpose.

That was very much the case in this match. I have seen Arsenal hold on to leads late and felt worry and anxiety but in this match, with how Arsenal were able to keep Spurs at an arms length it was about as comfortable a viewing experience as was possible with a single goal lead.

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Martinelli frustrates but shows flashes of progress

1 - Shot, 0.23 xG

2 - Chances created, 0.15 xG assisted

2 - Progressive passes

6 - Progressive carries (led Arsenal)

3 - Carries into the box

6 - Dribbles completed (led all players)

3 - Tackles, with 0 times dribbled past. 3/4 on defensive ground duels

2 - Blocked passes (one high pressing, one a cross in the box)

6 - Ball recoveries, 2 high up the pitch

There seems to be a mixture of opinions on Gabriel Martinelli in this match. People who focus on end product or results will probably come away feeling that he played poorly. He had the biggest chance of the day when he was able to get behind the Spurs high line and got caught in between the choices where he could take the shot or square it to Bukayo Saka.

If he was going to square it, it probably needed to be early given that Destiny Udogie was recovering on him quickly and Saka needed to hold back to stay on side. Martinelli chose to go for the shot, it wasn’t the wrong decision (even if the pass is probably the higher xG choice here) but it did seem like he rushed himself to where he wasn’t in an ideal spot forcing Guglielmo Vicario to commit to how he was going to block the shot. He also failed to get too much power on the shot and it ended up being a relatively easy save (88% expected save percentage).

Without a doubt this is a major moment in the match and if Arsenal don’t score on a corner later in the game it might get even more scrutiny. It was also just a 1 in 4 scoring opportunity, the choice to pass the ball to Saka is probably in the 20-45% scoring chance range (it is probably 65-80% to be completed, Saka probably gets a shot off 70-80% of the time there and from that spot it is probably a 50-70% shot at goal) and more often than not both choices end without a goal being scored. It was just the biggest of Arsenal’s three real good looks at goal in this match.

One of the other ones, also came from Martinelli where he beat his man, drove into the box, got his head up and put a very good cross in for Kai Havertz that required a good save/goal line clearance.

For people who will look at things at a higher level and focus less on pure end product it would be a very positive game from Martinelli. He was Arsenal’s most threatening player and from open play was that by a healthy margin.

Ultimately I try to take a mix of the two here. Martinelli did a lot of good things in this match and it was important to have his threat behind the line and his defensive output on the wing. He executed well in one of his high leverage situations and less so in his other one. This comes out as a positive but still just short of my (very high) expectations for him.

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Gabriel LIVES for defending

7 - Clearances (led all players)

2 - Blocked shots

2 - Tackles, of 3 attempted and 0 fouls committed

2 - Blocked passes and interceptions

One of the takeaways from this match was that not only do Arsenal defend well, but they look like they enjoy doing the defensive dirty work. The player that I think most embodies this is Gabriel and this was a match that looked to be right up his alley. He was often the free player defending the box and sweeping up, with Solanke looking to try and pick on William Saliba more often. This allowed Gabriel to handle the multiple balls that were played into the box by Spurs and to do so with little fuss.

On the ball like many of the Arsenal players it might have been the strongest statistical match but he did well and had the highest impact moment getting on the end of a Saka corner to thump home the winner.