Arsenal pushed Manchester City all the way for the Premier League title, but in the end they came up just short. But while fans (and even City's players!) have implied it was a bottle job on the part of Mikel Arteta's men, Adam Clery thinks they were actually the division's best team last season. The problem? Making the right tactical decision at just the wrong time.
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00:00 *intro*
00:03 Alright there my pedigree chums, Adam Cleary from 442 here, and after a whole season
00:09 spent with my heart singing its one true song that I thought Arsenal would win the league,
00:15 here it is. This is the "Why Arsenal didn't win the league" video.
00:20 And that's the entire intro.
00:22 *ding*
00:25 Alright, so the very short answer why this team did not win the Premier League is of course,
00:30 Manchester City. Now, whether you regard that answer as being the product of a generational
00:36 coach like Pep Guardiola pulling together an era-defining squad of players and managing
00:41 them near faultlessly, or you regard it as something that's inevitably going to be settled
00:45 in a court of law and several prosecutions, that's down to you, but it doesn't change the answer.
00:51 The thing is, this Arsenal team here actually went undefeated against Manchester City in
00:56 three games this season. Two wins and a draw. In fact, they went undefeated against the
01:02 entire traditional top six this season, so it's not that that Man City side, man for
01:07 man, were better. In fact, if you go back and watch the Arsenal vs Man City games from
01:12 this season and compare them to the Arsenal vs Man City games from last season, you could
01:16 very easily make the argument that this team didn't just improve when compared to City,
01:21 they actually surpassed them. And this isn't really going to be the thrust of the video,
01:24 but I just want to illustrate this point with two very, very, very useful clips, right?
01:29 The previous season, Arsenal simply had no idea how to contain Manchester City. They
01:34 were getting pulled all over the place. They were their playthings. But the way they refined
01:38 the system and the way they added players to the squad, the way they evolved from one
01:42 season to the other meant that all of a sudden they could contain Manchester City. This is
01:47 them keeping them completely penned in just sort of 12 months later. So why then? Why
01:53 wasn't that enough? Why did Man City still finish two points ahead of this squad? Where
01:57 did it somehow fall apart for them? Well, I have been back through the entire season
02:02 and I will tell you right now, the problem was Declan Rice. No, I'm joking. I'm kidding.
02:09 I'm not. I'm not. I'm not. It's not Declan Rice's fault at all. I'm not blaming. I'm
02:13 not blaming him. This isn't one of those channels, is it? Get out of the comments. The problem
02:16 was actually this sort of like sitting number six position that he was in and Arteta sort
02:21 of knew he had to make a change, but he didn't really. I don't know if he didn't trust himself
02:24 or he was a bit hesitant and he was a bit slow in doing it. It all kind of fell apart.
02:29 Look, look, look, I'll explain. So Arsenal in 2024 went on an absolutely unbelievable
02:34 run from the first game of the year right the way through to finish. They dropped four
02:39 points. They had one draw and one defeat and everything else was a win. And the thing is
02:44 people will focus in on that 2-0 loss to Aston Villa as where it got away from them. But
02:49 the fact is you are allowed one draw and one defeat in 18 games and still win the league.
02:55 Like that wouldn't even be league winning form. That would be record breaking league
02:59 winning form. Where the focus really needs to be is in December because after hanging
03:04 on against Wolves and stealing a last minute winner against Luton Town, Arsenal then failed
03:10 to win four of their next five games. The Gaston Villa and Liverpool are good sides
03:15 who were both in great form at the time. So that can happen. But defeats to both Fulham
03:20 and West Ham simply cannot. And if we look at Arsenal's most used 11 in 2024, where
03:26 their form has been more or less untouchable and we compare that to the 11 they used most
03:32 in that December, you can see one key, very important difference. Declan Rice was at the
03:38 time still being used as Arsenal's main pivot player. He was the one receiving the ball
03:43 off the back line. He was the one passing it first into midfield trying to break the
03:47 lines, trying to orchestrate the play and it just didn't work. Like this is the starting
03:53 lineup when they got beat against Gaston Villa. This is the starting lineup when they drew
03:57 with Liverpool. This is the starting lineup when they got beat off West Ham. And this
04:01 is the starting lineup when they got beat off Fulham. For a team that went on to average
04:05 something like nearly three goals a game all season, they only got two in these four games.
04:11 And that just was awful. And we talked about it at the time here on the channel. You could
04:16 see majorly what the problem was. Teams were low blocking Arsenal, denying them the space
04:21 and using Declan Rice in this role. When you need a player to find those passes between
04:26 the lines to split defences, it just wasn't his game. He kept going from side to side.
04:31 He kept going from left to right. He was playing safe passes when they needed, that's the word
04:36 I want, dangerous ones. And you're never going to see a better example of a problem in football
04:40 than this. This is Declan Rice's pass map from one of those games, I forget which. And
04:45 he's just so rarely able to move it forward through dangerous areas, constantly going
04:51 side to side, constantly going to the flanks. There's no incision, there's no cutting edge.
04:56 And I think genuinely when Arteta looks back at this season, something he will majorly
05:00 regret about this period of games is that in all of them, Jorginho sat on the bench
05:06 as an unused substitute. He didn't even get a go. And as absolutely anybody who watched
05:11 Arsenal this season will tell you, when he did finally trust him in this role with Rice
05:15 at the left side of number eight and Havertz up front, Arsenal just looked so much more
05:20 dangerous. Like Porto were able to stonewall them in the first leg, but they went with
05:24 this approach in the second leg and cut clean through them. Now we could break the reasons
05:28 for this down into all manner of statistical minutiae, but if I just show you side by side
05:33 Rice's passing statistics from the Premier League this season and Jorginho's passing
05:37 statistics from the Premier League this season, you'll see they're both excellent passes
05:42 of the ball. There's not much difference there, is there? But for every single one of these
05:45 numbers that accounts for breaking the opposition down, for making the kind of passes they're
05:50 trying to stop you making, Jorginho doesn't just shade Rice, he's way ahead of him.
05:56 And okay, you might be looking at that going, it's not miles better at him. It's only
06:00 like a couple of percentage points here or once or twice more per match there. But like
06:04 when teams are trying to stop you playing through them, that once or twice per match
06:09 could be the once or twice that gets you the goal that wins the game. Like trust me, that
06:13 is huge. But the reason I think Arteta will regret how he handled this run of games so
06:18 much is because this Jorginho thing wasn't some like solution he just stumbled across
06:23 at this part of the season. It wasn't something the three ghosts visited him in a dream at
06:28 Christmas and told him to do. He already knew from the very first game that this is kind
06:33 of how he wanted to play. You go all the way back to the Community Shield, Arsenal's first
06:38 game of the season, the one where we all started to believe they could actually do it. And
06:42 this was the starting 11. Declan Rice was not being used at the number six. He was the
06:47 left sided number eight already. And if I'm remembering this rightly, I do think that
06:51 caught a lot of people off guard. Like I certainly assumed they brought him in to play him here,
06:56 not to play him here. And yet if we look at his heat map from that day, obviously he's
07:00 doing a lot of work in front of the back four. You're playing against Manchester City. You've
07:04 got to have that discipline. But he's also able to get into this half space, into this
07:08 channel to affect the attacking play, to get himself into the box. Now, obviously the injury
07:13 to Thomas Partey forced them to have a rethink here. But what's even crazier about the Jorginho
07:18 situation is his first solution wasn't just to put Rice there. He did give him a run in
07:24 this position in the team early on. Now, early on in the season, you may remember Arsenal
07:29 had Manchester City at home and Chelsea away, which if you want to win the title is a fairly
07:34 decisive set of back to back fixtures. And with Partey injured, Rice did not play here.
07:40 Arteta still wanted him here. And here is the moment that I think ultimately cost Arsenal
07:47 the league, right? Because this system with Jorginho in it worked in both of those games,
07:53 right? But crucially also, no, it didn't. It was the introduction of Kai Havertz in
07:59 both of these matches that first of all, allowed them to get the winning goal against Manchester
08:04 City and then later brought them back from 2-0 against Chelsea. And I think, and admittedly
08:09 I don't know, you'd have to ask Arteta yourself, but I honestly think that in this part of
08:13 the season, something happened in his brain. He saw how important Kai Havertz was going
08:19 to be for the rest of the season and knew he had to find a way to include him in his
08:24 starting XI. But he didn't want to be in Nketiah or Jesus. He didn't want to get rid of the
08:29 centre forward for him. So instead he sacrificed Jorginho. He put Rice in at the number six,
08:35 put Havertz in at the left side at number eight and decided to go with that. And thus,
08:39 if we go back to those four starting XI's where it all went wrong for Arsenal this season,
08:45 you will see in three out of those four, that's exactly what he did. Declan Rice at the number
08:50 six, Kai Havertz at the left side at number eight and a proper centre forward. In fact,
08:56 the only game he didn't play there was the West Ham match when he was suspended. So I
09:00 think we can reasonably assume that it would have been four out of four if he'd been available.
09:04 And after that Fulham defeat, Arsenal were fourth in the table. It looked like it was
09:08 slipping away from them. Arteta went back to the drawing board, assessed that Havertz
09:12 wasn't the problem. He still needed him in the side somewhere, restored Jorginho, pushed
09:17 Rice further forward and allowed him to play up front. And wouldn't you just know it, he
09:22 only went and cracked it from that Fulham game onwards where Arsenal only dropped four
09:27 points across the season. Kai Havertz started all but three of those as the centre forward,
09:34 not the left side at number eight. And also double wouldn't you just know it, one of those
09:38 games he started as the left side at number eight was the defeat to Aston Villa where
09:43 again, Arsenal just did not look right. And honestly, I think that is why Arsenal didn't
09:50 win the league this season. Like clearly Arteta knew the best way to utilise this midfield
09:55 from the very first game of the season. But just that injury to Thomas Partey and knowing,
10:02 knowing he had to get Kai Havertz in there somewhere, but just doing it in the wrong
10:06 way initially. Those are the margins. And it is just margins by the way, like I cannot
10:12 stress enough how 89 points should be enough to win you the Premier League title. I mean
10:18 for f**k sake, it was literally the points total Man City got last season when they won
10:23 the Premier League title. Like here is a graph the Athletic did of all the points tallies
10:28 from all the Premier League winners. This is where Arsenal come on that graph. 89 points
10:34 plus 62 goal difference. Arsenal would have been champions in 16 of the last 28 seasons.
10:41 In fact, if you were to gather all the infinity stones and wish to raise Pep Guardiola from
10:46 time itself, I think there's only like four seasons Arsenal wouldn't have won the league
10:51 with that points total. That's, it's not fair, but that's just what they're up against. And
10:56 while I'm here, can we just talk about the word bottle, please? Like I know I'm not really
11:01 talking to you. I know you're fairly normal and sensible. This is mostly just for lads
11:05 who have like footballers as their Twitter avatar and have never seen a living human
11:10 breast in their entire life. But just this is not what bottling a season looks like.
11:15 Bottling something is when you are in complete control of it and you somehow lose your mind
11:20 and throw it away, right? At the halfway point of the season, despite that bad run of games
11:25 Arsenal had, they were level on points with Manchester City. And then in the second half,
11:30 City just got two more points. And because of the fact that City had to play that weird
11:35 tournament in the middle of the season, they were always games behind Arsenal. So while
11:40 Arsenal did have more points and were top for long stretches, they were never really
11:44 in control of it. The fact is they upped their levels from last season to get nearer to a
11:50 points total that would win it. It's just that Man City, despite weirdly not looking
11:54 anywhere near as good as they did last season, managed to up theirs as well.
11:59 I think, honestly, this was the best side in the Premier League this season. And yeah,
12:05 I know you can just sit there and be like, "Well, if it was the best side, Adam, why
12:08 did another side manage to get more points than they did?" And you're absolutely... I've
12:12 got no comeback for that. You are absolutely correct. You win absolutely nothing for me
12:16 saying, "Oh, I thought they were good though." But I did think they were good though. I thought
12:21 they deserved to win the league. Now, of course, the really big question is, can they regroup?
12:25 Can they go again? Can they up these levels once more or potentially just capitalise on
12:31 Man City's dropping ever so slightly? And we will answer that another day.
12:36 In the meantime, though, if you have enjoyed this video, Arsenal fans, we have done so
12:40 many on you guys this season because you have been by a mile the most tactically interesting
12:44 team in the Premier League. And of course, that will still be the case next season, I
12:47 assume. So please do subscribe to us here on 442 and you won't miss any of those. And
12:52 of course, if you just like reading stuff, because who doesn't?
12:56 Pretend I caught that. This is the latest issue of 442. It is the Euros preview edition.
13:00 And oh yeah, speaking of the Euros, we will be covering the ever-loving snot out of that.
13:05 So another reason to click that lovely button. You can get me on all the socials @adamcleary,
13:09 C-L-E-R-Y. That's there. The 442 socials are in the corner of the video. And look, I would
13:15 just like to know how Arsenal fans feel about all of this because it must be absolutely
13:19 gutting. But days have passed now, many, many days. So you should be feeling more normal.
13:24 So in the comments below, please, we would like to gauge the mood of Arsenal fans. Did
13:27 you deserve to win it? Did you not deserve to win it? Will you win it next year? How
13:30 are you feeling? What needs to change? All thoughts, all feelings, all comments. Absolutely
13:35 welcome. Until next time, I think that's every single thing I've got to hit on my signing
13:39 off the video checklist. And if not, it's too late to go back and check now. So bye.
13:44 Bye. Bye. Sorry, Arsenal fans. Sorry. I thought you'd do it. I did. But it's how it goes.
13:52 Bye.