Two wins from two in the Champions League this season, a perfect defensive record in Europe, and a trip to Bavaria on Wednesday night that will tell us plenty about where this Arsenal side really stands. By most measures, this is a team playing itself into form at exactly the right moment of the season. Paul Merson, for one, is not convinced.
Writing in his column for Sky Sports on Monday, the former Arsenal midfielder turned pundit delivered one of the more pointed assessments of Mikel Arteta’s side so far this season, built around Sunday’s laboured 1-0 win away at Nottingham Forest. Noni Madueke’s 80th minute strike was enough to move Arsenal up to second in the Premier League, three points behind leaders Manchester City, but Merson’s reading of the performance itself was considerably less flattering than the result.
“I have never seen a team have so much of the ball and look so unlikely to score. It was as bad as it gets,” he wrote, comparing the current side unfavourably with Arsene Wenger’s great teams of years gone by, who he reckons would have managed something in the region of 30 shots from that much possession. His argument runs that opposing managers have worked out there is little cost in sitting in against Arsenal: the wingers do not beat their man often enough, nobody breaks beyond the ball, and the side has drifted from the free flowing football of last season’s title win into something closer to a results machine that wins by the odd goal and shuts up shop.
A Narrow Win That Raised More Questions Than It Answered
It is worth saying plainly that Arsenal did what they needed to do at the City Ground. They won, kept a clean sheet, and moved back above both Brighton and Chelsea in the table. Under Arteta, grinding out results when the performance is not quite there has become something close to a trademark, and it is hard to argue with a team that has lost only once in the league all season. Merson’s point is not really about the outcome. It is about whether a side with this much talent in the final third should be finding these games quite so hard.
His solution is simple: play Bruno Guimaraes in every match. The Brazilian has become Arsenal’s main source of creative passing since his move from Newcastle, and Merson believes the team is at its most dangerous when he is picking locks from midfield rather than relying on individual moments out wide. It is a fair observation, even if it understates how much the side have had to adapt, with Declan Rice, Martin Odegaard and Bukayo Saka all finding new shapes around a midfield that looks rather different to the one that won the title last May.
The counter argument is the one Arteta would surely make himself. Arsenal have conceded fewer goals than anyone else in the division this season, and a club that went five months without losing a league game is not exactly in crisis because one win came by a single goal. Grinding out a result away at a well organised Forest side sitting deep for long periods is not evidence of decline. It may simply be what winning on the road against a well drilled defence looks like in October.
A Shrinking Role in a Crowded Attack
The player Merson spent most time discussing, though, was not Guimaraes but Eberechi Eze, substituted at half time against Forest after struggling to influence a game many expected him to shape. Eze arrived at the Emirates this summer having built his reputation at Crystal Palace, where by Merson’s estimate he would see the ball something like 100 times a game as the focal point of everything Palace tried to do going forward. In Arsenal’s front line alongside Saka, Odegaard, Guimaraes and Rice, that number drops to somewhere nearer 25 or 30 touches, and Merson’s worry is that a player built to dictate games from the centre of the pitch will simply not get enough of the ball to show what he can do.
It is a concern with some history behind it. Merson also recalled a spell Eze had at Aston Villa last year, when a similar pattern played out: hooked at half time after a goal conceded, then restricted to a single league start over the following two months. Whether that repeats at a club with Arsenal’s attacking depth, where there is always another option warming up, is a genuine question. It is also, worth noting, exactly the kind of problem a squad spends money trying to create. Arteta did not sign several attacking players this summer by accident, and a degree of rotation ahead of a trip to Germany only three days later is not automatically a sign of anyone being frozen out.
Munich Awaits, With Form on Arsenal’s Side Even If Confidence Isn’t
None of this changes what happens on Wednesday, when Arsenal travel to the Allianz Arena for a matchday three fixture that will say plenty about their credentials in the competition that got away from them last season. Arteta’s side have won both Champions League games so far without conceding, a record only a handful of clubs in Europe can match, while Bayern have won one and drawn one, scoring eight and conceding three in their own opening fixtures. On paper, two in form sides meeting at a stadium where visiting teams rarely leave with anything.
Merson is in no doubt about the outcome. He does not believe Arsenal have the game breaking quality to win the Champions League this season, suggesting that if he were in the Bayern dugout he would simply open the match up and back his own side in an end to end contest. He is not convinced either Kai Havertz or Viktor Gyokeres offers the explosive, match deciding moment the biggest European nights sometimes demand, even while praising Havertz as a thoroughly good footballer in his own right.
It is a view Arsenal get the chance to argue with directly. This is a club that reached its first Champions League final in two decades last season, beating Atletico Madrid along the way before losing on penalties to Paris Saint-Germain, and Arteta has since been backed with a new contract running to 2030 on the strength of that progress. Whether this version of the side can go one better than last May may depend less on league results against teams parking the bus, and more on nights precisely like the one coming up in Bavaria. Two from two says they are building something real in Europe. One well known voice from the punditry benches says do not believe it until they do it against a side that will not simply sit back and let them pass it around. Wednesday should start to settle the argument either way.
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