Arsenal’s unbeaten league championship run last season came via a run of breathtaking football and explosive offense. The Gunners scored 73 goals, 30 of them coming from Thierry Henry, to become the Premiership’s highest scoring team for the second year in succession. Surprisingly, not a single one of those goals came from a substitute.
The Arsenal bench fired blanks in the Champions League and Carling Cup as well. Only in the FA Cup did the replacements manage to find the net. Robért Píres and Kolo Touré both scored at Leeds, and young David Bentley’s memorable goal from outside the area capped the rout of Middlesbrough at Highbury.
Fortunately, this season, the Gunners seem out to prove that starting a game on the bench does not reduce one’s appetite for goals. The new season has seen Arsenal substitutes score in each of the team’s five league games thus far, with Píres scoring against Everton and Middlesbrough, José Antonio Reyes against Blackburn and Fulham, and Dennis Bergkamp against Norwich.
From some perspectives, last season’s lack of bench scoring isn’t shocking. For the most part, Arsenal’s substitutions were sent on to the pitch to protect a lead. However, Arsenal trailed in nine Premiership games last season, and came back to win six of them. The team’s ability to come back from a deficit without the impact of a player coming off the bench, at least not on the scoresheet, is amazing.
This season, the substitutes seem much more interested in helping the team claw back from adversity. Although three of the five goals scored by substitutes have been mainly cosmetic, putting the finishing touch on a result that wasn’t in doubt, two of them have been key plays in the game.
When Píres scored to tie the game against Middlesbrough at 3-3, it turned the game on its head. Just seconds later, Reyes had fired Arsenal in front. Píres himself added an assist when Thierry Henry made it 5-3 in the dying moments, and Arsenal had clutched victory from the jaws of defeat … Arsenal stayed top of the league, above Chelsea on goal difference.
From a historical perspective, it was a defining moment. The goal allowed Arsenal to remain undefeated for a 42nd consecutive league fixture, tying Nottingham Forest’s record. Arsenal were less than 30 minutes away from an embarrassing defeat, filled with defensive lapses and goalkeeping errors, that would have made them the butt of many jokes, the team that had come so close to history before failing at the final hurdle. Just as they had done against Leicester City in May, when they were one game away from going the entire season unbeaten, the Gunners fought back and won.
And then there was the performance of Reyes last Saturday at Craven Cottage. Chelsea had dropped points at Villa Park and the Gunners had the chance to put two points between them and the Blues, but it wasn’t going well. Drawing 0-0 and with the home side very much in the ascendancy, Arsène Wenger sent the 21-year-old onto the pitch. Minutes later, it was 3-0 to the champions. Reyes was involved in the buildup for the first goal, and scored the third with a clinical finish after breaking the offside trap. It was a substitution that changed the game.
Reyes himself is very much the reason for Arsenal’s newly found explosive bench. A player who once seemed unwilling to score (an own goal in the Carling Cup excluded) against any team not owned by a Russian tycoon, the Spaniard has begun to play to, and even above, expectations. Since last May, Portsmouth, Fulham (twice), Everton, Middlesbrough, Blackburn, and Norwich have been victims of his new policy of equal opportunity pain infliction. It took him more than three months to grab his first league goal, but now, after five games, he sits alone atop the Premiership scoring chart.
The Gypsy King’s adjustment to the Premiership has given Wenger many more options. In the past, the likes of Kanu, Sylvain Wiltord, and Francis Jeffers were the attacking options on the bench. All of these players had their moments. Kanu was good for wasting time with his tricks, and once famously stunned Stamford Bridge with a hat trick. Wiltord scored some big goals, particularly in the FA Cup and on one May evening in the northwest, and even Jeffers scored a few vital goals. But none of these three could be regularly depended on in the past couple seasons.
Now, the maturation of Reyes, along with Jermaine Pennant and Robin van Persie looking to get chances on the wings this season, means that the likes of Píres, Bergkamp, and Freddie Ljungberg can all expect to start some games on the bench, ready to come on and make an impact in the second half. And there may come a point when Wenger sees fit to drop Henry to the bench in order to protect him from fatigue as the Gunners chase success domestically and in Europe. Wenger can now make the move, knowing that he has plenty of options capable of standing in for Henry. And if needed, Henry can be sent on to face tired defenders.
The increase in offensive firepower off the bench will hopefully help Arsenal in Europe. With seven players allowed on the bench, Wenger can fit even more of his attacking options into the squad. And the likes of Reyes will particularly help in European away games when Bergkamp is unable to travel.
Vital squad contributions are nothing new for Arsenal. In 2002, the Gunners set a record for most players with the minimum ten league appearances to qualify for a winner’s medal. Defensive squad players like Gilles Grimandi, Matthew Upson, Oleg Luzhny, Richard Wright, and Stuart Taylor all played their part in Arsenal winning the Double. Now, the squad seems to be getting stronger in the attacking positions.
It’s probably too much to ask of the bench to score in all 38 Premiership games this season, just as it’s probably too much to ask of Reyes for him to find the net in every league fixture. But if Arsenal keep scoring goals at the rate they are, a good percentage of them will come from substitutes. And however many it is, it’s already an improvement on the output of 2003-04.