LONDON – The reconstruction of Arsenal is still far from being completed, but the new signings Willian and Gabriel are already looking home. As the opening days went by, this trip to southwest London could not have gone better for Mikel Arteta as Arsenal won 3-0 at Fulham in their first game of the 2020-21 season.
– Report: Fulham 0, Arsenal 3
– Votes: Willian, Gabriel superb for Arsenal
Willian has scored all three of Arsenal’s goals: his trio of assists is already more than Mesut Ozil last season in the Premier League. Firstly, the Brazilian international’s scrambled shot inadvertently scored Alexandre Lacazette for Arsenal’s first goal; his precise cross found Gabriel’s shoulder for Arsenal’s second, and then his delightful cross hit Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, who kept the Fulham defense on his heels before shooting a shot in the far upper corner after having cut inside the wing.
The three goals were perfect representations of Arteta’s style: the first up to grafting and determination, standing precision for the second and third, finding space, pulling the opponents out of position and crowning it all with a wonderful ending.
Willian, who signed a three-year deal after a free transfer from Chelsea, is a tough player to mark. He enjoyed pulling Fulham left-back Joe Bryan and center-back Tim Ream out of position, floating off the right wing and dropping deep when trying to accelerate the pace and quality of the ball at Lacazette or Aubameyang. His set pieces are also deadly: he hit the post with a halftime free-kick on the edge of the Fulham area, while his corners, as Gabriel was delighted to discover, were in cash.
Another new signing, defender Gabriel, had a shaky opening – a first trade with Bernd Leno nearly allowed Aboubakar Kamara to pounce – but he has grown confidently and is undoubtedly a marked improvement in defense. He increased Arsenal’s resilience to any lofted ball, winning his head shots and keeping their baseline high on the pitch. It was a promising performance in his first game since 6 March and it is understandable why so many of the best European clubs wanted the 22-year-old Brazilian; the £ 27 million spent to bring him from Lille seems like money well spent. Arteta wanted to give him more time to adjust, worried about the risk of injury, but he was delighted.
“I knew Willian was going to put on such a performance right away. Gabriel was fantastic. It doesn’t get any better than that,” Arteta said later. “The commitment that the new guys have shown has been fantastic.
“It was really good. Obvious for Willian. He knows the league, the country and he’s very well settled here, so I knew his performance would settle down straight away. For Gabriel, it was a big challenge for him to get in today. He didn’t have to. he hasn’t played football in the last six months and had an exceptional performance. “
And despite all their teamwork on the pitch, Arteta is the beating heart of this Arsenal team. Now promoted to first team manager, it’s fascinating to hear. The absence of crowds – as Fulham could have done with a certain claustrophobia created by supporters here – means you can hear Arteta’s relentless line-up communication. Talk to players through their switching options, effortlessly switching between an abundance of tongues and establishing yourself as a twelfth man. You can hear the players learning, even in the middle of the game.
Ainsley Maitland-Niles, who receives the interest of the wolves, is essential to the Arteta system. Defensively, Arsenal fell on the back five, with Hector Bellerin and Maitland-Niles slipping in, but on offense Bellerin retired to form a back four and Maitland-Niles offered a third pass option to midfield. They are essentially “underlapping” full-backs, and once they develop it to prevent momentum-killing cuts and racing becomes more intuitive, the three Arsenal cross-fighters will have more lashing crosses to enjoy.
There is also more than one bite on Arsenal under Arteta. Dani Ceballos and Eddie Nketiah demonstrated this in their slight scuffle during the warm-up where frustration during a pre-match rondo exploded; quietly, Arteta would have liked it, even though he refused to give his opinion on it after the game.
Although Saturday’s victory was impressive, Arsenal remains a work in progress. Their team is still unbalanced, as Arteta said this week, and while their defense has remained steady against their promoted opponents, they are still inclined to allow crosses into their penalty area from dangerous areas. Fulham had Aleksandar Mitrovic on the bench, but how he would have enjoyed the space and time that Bryan and Denis Odoi enjoyed in the first half, finding the gap between Arsenal’s central three-man defense and the two wings. There are opportunities for more acute opposition and Arteta will have to support this.
With 23 days of transfer window remaining, Arsenal still have room for maneuver. But with a player like Bellerin and his positioning so key to the Arteta system, they need to keep him happy and away from Barcelona or PSG progress. When Arsenal drop to a more conventional 4-3-3, there is room for a more creative midfielder to complement Granit Xhaka and Mohamed Elneny.
“They have to raise their level and their performance will improve,” Arteta said after the match. “This was what I was asking. I’m really happy with the guys, with the way they train, but the selection gets complicated, having 18 players in the squad again makes everything more difficult.”
To their credit, Fulham looked confident in the first half – with none of their new signings selected from the start – but lacked a forward lead. They desperately need a creative presence in role number 10, and while Ivan Cavaleiro fell into this position and did his best to create some chaos, they found space and opportunity but didn’t have the firepower to transforming promising areas into net opportunities.
Like the opening days, this was perfect for Arteta, but he knows how anyone else Arsenal remains unfinished. With the time remaining in the transfer window, there will be more starts, but any movement cannot destabilize this ever-changing understanding of Arteta’s wonderfully effective system, which has proved too good for Fulham.
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