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The start of the Premier League season has been an exciting one for Arsenal and their fans. Before the World Cup break, the team paces one of the best leagues on the planet with 37 total points, five more than second place Manchester City. Arsenal has certainly set themselves up for exciting possibilities once the campaign resumes.
It has been a long time since Arsenal has been this much of a contender in the Premier League. The club has not finished in the top three of the final standings since the 2015-2016 slate and have placed no better than fifth since that year.
If Mikel Arteta’s team is going to be able to sustain their standing in the rankings, they will need to focus on three key aspects moving forward.
Second Half of Games
At this point in time, Arsenal fans are looking at the second half of the season, but the more simplified focus for everyone involved would be to focus on the second half of individual matches. Soccer lines should continue to favour Arsenal in most of their upcoming matches, but they’ll need to pick up the pace after halftime.
There are a lot of metrics compiled that support the notion that Arsenal just doesn’t have the same level of intensity and effectiveness after the 45th minute. Of course, not all matches are created equal, and there are different circumstances that dictate how a squad approaches the game. If a team has to chase the game in order to tie or take the lead, rather than sit back and protect an advantage—this could lead to discrepancies in statistics.
It hasn’t come back to burn Arsenal yet, but they’ll need a little bit more of a boost late in games. Perhaps that comes in the form of more astutely selected substitutions made by Arteta, or a renewed commitment to finishing the game as strong as they started it. We’ll see how this unfolds against West Ham and Brighton when the season resumes.
Reviving A Patchwork Attack
While Arsenal has been the class of the league to date, their success has not always come easily. A 22-goal differential is impressive on paper, but their several games have been tight affairs, with the exception of their blowout win over Nottingham Forest. Arsenal is not exactly putting teams away emphatically, which has given them less margin for error.
It’s possible that they may very well continue to fare admirably in tight contests, and come out on top of tilts that go right down to the wire. Ideally though, it would be nice to have games that are decided much earlier. The fact of the matter is, Arsenal’s offensive attack has not been that intimidating.
The club does not have any player ranked in the top 10 in individual goal scoring, which means that each approach at the goal is a team effort. The team may comb through its options through the transfer market to see if they can catch lightning in a bottle with a player who puts shots in the back of the net.
If the team can even slightly increase their offensive proficiency, they’ll be a major threat to come away with the Premier League title.
Riding Ramsdale
As any fan of the sport and club can reasonably deduce, Arsenal’s defensive play must be top notch in order to continue pressing on with victories without a potent offense. That’s a reasonable conclusion to come to, and one of the players who deserves a lot of credit for that sturdiness is goalkeeper Aaron Ramsdale.
The 24 year-old has had a phenomenal campaign thus far. While he has not yet unseated Jordan Pickford as the choice in net for the national team, Ramsdale was selected to the English squad for the 2022 World Cup. In club play, Ramsdale has posted the most-clean sheets so far this season along with Newcastle stopper Nick Pope.
His aggregate save statistics are not as high as some other players who have faced more shots, but Ramsdale has done very well to keep opponents off the board when attempts do come his way. He will need to remain close to perfect in the second half of the season if Arsenal is to continue on their winning pace.
It will be interesting to see how Ramsdale comes out of the World Cup break. He doesn’t figure to see much action during the games, which can go one of two ways.
One perspective is that his lack of involvement can be viewed as a well-deserved rest, one that will help him return to Arsenal fresh and ready to finish strong. The other side of it is possible concern, centered around a lack of repetitions and the notion of not having played in a real game in some time.
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