A good Sunday leaves Arsenal in good shape

Morning.

Well, that turned out to be a very good weekend for Arsenal, all in all. Although Man City won on Saturday, there was a lot of focus on Sunday’s games. Earlier in the afternoon, Aston Villa came from a goal down to beat Sp*rs 2-1, and they may have scored the goal of the season (thus far) in the process.

Emi Buendia’s winner was quite something – the pass from Matty Cash, the touch from Lucas Digne, and then the finish with the goalkeeper hilariously rooted to the spot. Quality, you have to say. And it meant that lot lost, so it gets some bonus points for that.

Then, at Anfield, Man Utd won 2-1, making it four defeats in a row for Liverpool. Trailing to an early goal they equalised late on, but Harry Maguire loafed an even later one home with his gigantic Easter Island head to win it for Ruben Amorim’s side. It’s been quite the blip for Liverpool – just a few weeks ago they could have conceivably opened up an 8 point gap on Arsenal, and now they lie 4 points behind us.

A demonstration of how quickly things can change in football – which is also a reminder that while it’s obviously nice for us that they’ve lost, there’s still too much of the season to go to get carried away. As for United, it’s the first time they’ve won back to back league games under Ruben Amorim, which is remarkable given he’s in the job a year or so at this point. That lad who pledged not to cut his hair until they won five games in a row might just start to get a bit excited this morning.

So, it leaves us in a nice position at the top of the table as our focus turns towards Europe, and one of our most difficult Champions League fixtures of the group stage. Is it even called the group stage anymore? I just checked, it’s not. The UEFA website lists these games as the ‘league stage’. Anyway, the point is we’re hosting Atletico Madrid tomorrow night, and that’s going to be a hell of a challenge.

They currently sit fourth in La Liga, 8 points behind leaders Real Madrid after 9 games, but we all know what Diego Simeone’s teams are about, and how they’re likely to play. Typically they are defensively very strong, and this season’s Arsenal are breaking records in that department. Here’s a graphic from Match of the Day on Saturday night:

This is our best defensive start to a season in all competitions in the club’s entire history, which is quite something. There’s more to come in goalscoring terms, I hope, but as Leandro Trossard said after the game on Saturday, keeping clean sheets means you can win games with a single goal. I don’t think that’s 100% sustainable if you want to win the title, but I also believe that just churning out wins in the early part of the season is a crucial part of being there or thereabouts come May.

Teams tend to find title winning rhythm and form in the second half of the campaign, so even if we might have some concerns about scoring enough goals, while we’re winning it’s not as big a deal as it might otherwise be. And I also think it’s a narrative that doesn’t necessarily stand up to complete scrutiny. We lie only 2 goals behind Man City who are the leading scorers so far, and they have one of the best strikers in the world scoring at a ridiculous rate for them, so I think you do need to apply that context when having this discussion. Anyway, suffice to say I’m pretty happy with how things have gone so far, solid foundations, good building blocks, and let’s push on week by week.

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One thing I didn’t really get to touch on in yesterday’s blog was how good Bukayo Saka was against Fulham. I don’t need to go into detail, but this felt like quiet, almost understated brilliance from him. Although he didn’t get a goal or an assist, he was consistently our most dangerous player, always looking to make something happen, and after the two injuries this season and last, he looked back to something close to his absolute best.

Hopefully a sign of good things to come.

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Right, I’ll leave it there this morning. We’ll have an Arsecast Extra for you later on, we’re recording around 10.30. We’ve already put out the call for questions on BlueSky @gunnerblog.bsky.social and @arseblog.com with the hashtag #arsecastextra – or if you’re an Arseblog Member on Patreon, leave your question in the #arsecast-extra-questions channel on our Discord server. Pod should be out around lunchtime.

And, later on again, we’ll have an episode of The 30 over on Patreon, recapping all the weekend’s Premier League action – some fun ones to get into!

For now, have a good one.