Odegaard celebrates a goal.
Premier League
They will start the second phase of the competition with a five-point lead over Manchester City and their transformation confirmed
Mikel Arteta’s Arsenal is the leader of the Premier before the obligatory break for the World Cup, after beating Wolverhampton Wanderers 0-2 on Saturday night. The ‘Wolves’ is bottom before Julen Lopetegui takes the reins of the team. The result of the match was not relevant to the position at the top of the English league after Manchester City’s 1-2 loss at home to Brentford.
With five points ahead of City and seven and eight, respectively, over Newcastle United and Totthenham Hotspur, who have played one more game, the gunners sang “we are the first in the league!” at Molineux Stadium. They have the illusion of winning the Premier -which they last won in 2004- with a team that has had an average age of less than 25 years in all the games.
“Being where we are now is phenomenal and we enjoy this moment,” said the San Sebastian coach after the game. “Nobody expected us to be in this position and to have won so many games.” They have won twelve of the fourteen disputed. They dropped points drawing with Southampton and losing to Leeds United, both games at the Emirates.
The only significant trophy won by the club since Arsène Wenger left in 2018 was the 2019-20 FA Cup. It was played in August, and not in May as usual, due to the pandemic. After three years as Pep Guardiola’s assistant, Arteta had taken charge of the squad in November. Only seven of the 28 players on that squad remain on the team.
In the summer of 2019, Edú, a Brazilian midfielder in Wenger’s ‘Invincibles’ and later in Valencia, also arrived at the club. He was the first manager in the club’s history. He would have made the decision to replace Unai Emery (now at Aston Villa) with Arteta. According to the ‘Daily Telegraph’, Edú presented the board with a five-year plan whose fruits would begin to be confirmed in 2023.
Fragility
The reform has not been easy. Arteta had to fire Mehut Ozil and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang to break the spiral of poor results, indiscipline, unhappiness from the stands and a general atmosphere that smelled rotten. After losing the first match of the 2021-22 season, in Brentford, 2-0, commentators and fans criticized Arteta for not being able to repair the team’s endemic problems.
But the season ended with a battle with Antonio Conte’s Chelsea to obtain the fourth place that gives the right to participate in the Champions League. The Arsenal in which the Norwegian Martin Odegaard had already taken root as a forward midfielder fell without resistance at Newcastle’s home in the last game of the season, and was left without the ‘Champions’.
The signing of Gabriel Jesus, a Brazilian international who ran out of options at City after the arrival of Erling Haaland, has given this year more joy and bite to the front. The club has strengthened the midfield and defense. He doesn’t seem to have the mental fragility – and in plays with set pieces or when recovering the ball -, characteristics of the team since Wenger’s last squads.
The top four clubs in the table are the ones that are in form and any one of them looks capable of winning the competition. All the coaches express the need to wait until they see how the internationals return, to understand the conditions for the start of the second part of the Premier League, in which there will be three Gipuzkoan coaches.
