Since Mikel Arteta took over the reins at Arsenal they have only scored eleven goals in nine games- that they have only conceded eight in the same period shows that Arteta has made the Gunners a more solid unit. He has done so, not in the way that the Premier League’s ‘ferryman’ managers like Tony Pulis and Sam Allardyce have done, by sticking ten large slabs of meat behind the ball and building a human Maginot Line on the edge of the penalty area. Arsenal haven’t become ‘defensive’ under Arteta, it’s just that they are structured more coherently than they were under Unai Emery. Emery’s latter games in charge took on the appearance of basketball games. Shots would rain down...
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