By Mac Johnson (Deputy Editor)
On Wednesday night, The Arsenal took to a pinstriped pitch in Los Angeles, California, to face FC Barcelona. The occasion was less significant than one might expect from such a clash of titans, a mere preseason friendly, but that did not stop tackles from flying nor electric football from being displayed. Xavi certainly had something to say on the matter.
Arsenal deservedly triumphed in an 8-goal thriller; as they were the better side throughout, dominating the shot maps and key chances despite seeing fractionally less of the ball than their Catalan counterparts. But the hallmark of the Gunners’ dominance was a flexibility most of us couldn’t have fashioned from our wildest dreams. Not even the one where we’re sitting next to Florence Pugh on an airplane and… well, I think that might just be me. I just think she’s super cool. Back to the point.
We’ve seen inklings of Arteta’s inclinations towards positional flexibility before. When he took over in January of 2020, his use of Ainsley Maitland-Niles as left wingback-cum-central midfielder was the first example, though it’s nearly impossible to be flexible in a 3-4-3 formation. And Arteta spent the majority of his first two seasons trying to instill positional principles, and to build a squad that could execute his base tactical vision. The team’s evolution from a 3-4-3 to a 4-2-3-1 to something resembling a 4-3-3 epitomizes that. If you want a deeper dive on flexible tactics in preseason, check out Harvey's most recent piece.
And I say “something like” because it was never a true 4-3-3. With the consistent use of the 4-3-3 came Gabriel Jesus and Oleksandr Zinchenko, two players who brought the first hints of true flexibility to the new and improved Arsenal.
Gabriel Jesus’ propensity to drift wide opened lanes for Gabriel Martinelli to step centrally, and gave our dearly departed Granit Xhaka the ability to become the £35m player we bought half a decade previously. Leandro Trossard’s January arrival allowed for the same. And Zinchenko’s inversion, I believe, truly turned us into title contenders. However, each of those formational tweaks came with a cost last season.
Last season, Jesus would often drift slightly too wide, and we would lack bodies in the centre, meaning that the pressure so cleverly created by the Brazilian’s dazzling dribbles would often lack enough support to turn the breach into a collapse. Zinchenko was a revolution in midfield, but was occasionally slow or tepid in his defensive workrate, meaning we conceded a higher-than-average amount of chances from our left flank.
The scaffold of flexible success was in place, and Arteta’s dedicated pursuit of it yielded our joint-best Premier League finish in a decade.
But evolution is the name of the game, and against Barcelona—a team who only conceded 20 goals in the league last season—we turned up the proverbial wick. It was Arsenal’s sharpest preseason performance, and it covered a number of the weaknesses shown in last season’s system.
A few years ago, I wrote an article about tactical tweaks and new formations Arteta could try to get the best out of a then-mismatched group of players. One of those formations mimicked the system I saw Pep Guardiola employ in the 2020-21 season, where Phil Foden found joy as a false-9 forward. At the time, I nicknamed it the Pinwheel of Death.
I now believe that moniker to be inaccurate, though, because I believe his system may have been bested. Mikel employed a nearly perfect Pinwheel against Barcelona on Wednesday. Much like the ceiling fan in my bedroom, his entire front five rotated with ludicrous unpredictability. Though the game started with Jesus up front, Trossard at left wing, and King Kai Havertz at the left No. 8, those positions lasted all of ten seconds in the match.
Kai Havertz drifted between the midfield and front lines, typically occupying the central focal point of our attack before returning deep to facilitate play. Ironically, his goal came from a wide left position, but he was a constant body in the box, threatening to pounce on any loose change within shooting range. Emile Smith Rowe, who looked hungry and determined upon replacing Havertz at halftime, offered a similar threat.
Leandro Trossard operated well off the left flank, but preferred to tuck in as he has throughout preseason, operating in the half space vacated by Havertz. He flitted between the lines, drove from outside-to-in in transitions, and generally was a nuisance. And yet his two goals came from a central forward position, and on the end of a driving run from the centre of the midfield. Get the idea? I’ll keep going.
Jesus was the lynchpin of the system. He executed the gameplan to perfection, playing a position so undefined I’m relatively sure he didn’t have a consistent postcode. He flitted into open areas indiscriminately, eschewing positional requirements for a buzzing, burrowing game that left the Blaugrana hapless at times. He was a true “Raumdeuter,” an interpreter of space. And unlike last season, where he isolated that interpretation to the left flank, he brought his talents all across the pitch.
When Jesus came over to the right to combine and create, Bukayo Saka often dropped deeper, which bucks a recent trend in his play style. Saka has always been at his best isolated against a fullback, and lately when combining with Martin Ødegaard.
As a result, you would be forgiven in expecting him to prioritize cutting in from the right flank onto his stronger left foot, but against Barcelona, he gained additional joy from different areas, at times creating from deep by slipping a ball around Barcelona’s fullbacks to Ødegaard, who drifted wide often, in a manner reminiscent of the Norwegian’s own creative output.
He also made a number of right-footed runs, squaring the hips of whichever poor defender he was tantalizing, then driving down the byline. He created a number of very good chances with this method too. But most important of all, he stepped up into the centre-forward role on a number of occasions, filling the space left by our marauding midfield, and providing necessary bodies in the box.
A perfect Pinwheel. Five players—Havertz, Jesus, Ødegaard, Saka, Trossard—occupied at least three conventional positions each on the night, twisting Barcelona’s typically competent defense into knots. They created space, ruffled feathers, and at times prompted recklessness from Barcalona, especially Ronald Araujo, who resorted to a number of rash challenges in order to stymie our rotational play.
And that I’ve come this far without mentioning Jurrien Timber is criminal. Playing at an unorthodox left back position, Timber looked uniquely comfortable on the touchline, but stepped his game up a notch when he inverting into midfield.
With Barcelona’s midfield block in tatters, Timber created chances from deeper areas, making darting runs and floating inch-perfect passes over the top. The Dutchman’s technical and tactical acuity was on show, even if he occasionally struggled to adjust to the left-footed passing angles required by his position.
Of course, it’s not all rosy. For such a system to work, Arsenal must score goals by committee, and while we showed all the signs of doing that on Wednesday, that sort of consistent, cross-squad form is difficult to sustain. If the performance we showed against Barcelona becomes the normal, then I have no worries. The three goals conceded are of a slight concern, especially given their transitional nature, but as our new personnel adjust to the team and system, I have no doubt that the errors that have plagued us thus far in preseason will dry up.
To be frank, Arsenal now possess somewhat of an embarrassment of riches. To produce such a performance with Martinelli and Smith Rowe coming off the bench, Declan Rice and Flo Balogun missing the fixture through injury, and without ZInchenko even present, sets a positive portent for the season. Of course, it’s only preseason, but this is not an overreaction. We now have a team capable of unprecedented flexibility, which, as we grow into our new role as title contenders and thus a known commodity, will prove crucial to any charge we might mount to top the Premier League.
Arsenal no longer have the luxury of novelty. Teams know how to play us. In order to compete with the best in the world, we have to do something different. Take Brighton manager Roberto De Zerbi. He is such a talented coach, in part, because he devises systems which break expectation, and force managers to succeed on the fly. More often than not, they fail.
The ideas Mikel employed against Barcelona are not his originally. Nothing in football is ever new, just effectively reused. But the effectiveness with which Arsenal put Barcelona to the sword in playing a system unfettered by traditional ideas of position cannot be seen as anything but a positive sign for the season to come.
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