For much of this season, it has been easy to dismiss the vitriol sent in Arsenal’s decision as what it often is performative nonsense on the internet. Mikel Arteta’s league leaders get hate online because most everything gets hate online. It’s the internet’s default reaction. For instance, there’s this football writer who works for a U.S. site but is based out in London, and I swear half his posts must be snarking on about how awful Oasis and their meat and potatoes, leaden-footed, dodgy photocopies of Beatles songs are. What a nerd. Where does he get off?
Wednesday night, though, felt rather different. There is no great animus between Brighton supporters and the team from north London. They don’t particularly like the way Leandro Trossard maneuvered himself to the Emirates Stadium, and they’ve taken understandable glee in spoiling a few title charges in recent years, but that didn’t seem to explain the vituperative energy of the Amex Stadium. Spurred on by Fabian Hurzeler’s withering assessment of the Premier League leaders, Brighton fans howled at every free kick that went Arsenal’s way and roared their disapproval when restarts were delayed.
It was several levels up from the “second again, ole, ole” chant that has followed Arsenal around for months now, but it was of a piece with that more mirthful warning. The rest of the Premier League really don’t want to see Arsenal sat at the top of the tree come May 25. Arsene Wenger’s Invincibles have become Mikel Arteta’s Intolerables.
For Arsenal’s direct rivals, it is easy to see why a Manchester City triumph is more appealing. When Pep Guardiola wins trophies, every club that is not owned by a nation state has a ready made explanation for why it was them, not us. That there are over 115 charges hanging over City, all denied by the club, makes it even easier to rationalize why your team can’t win the league. If Arsenal do, there’s nothing about what they’ve done that is particularly beyond the realms for the rest of the so-called Big Six. When Arteta was appointed, the Gunners ranked below all the other five in terms of revenue and were desperate to trim back their wage bill, not add to it.
With glory in their sights, Arsenal have spent heavily, but in net terms Manchester United and Chelsea have put more into their squad for less returns. Whatever might be thought of their football, more on which later, Arteta, Edu and their employers delivered a blueprint in how to revive a sleeping giant.
Arteta feels the love
That that goes largely unremarked doesn’t seem to bother Arteta, who was in a mischievous mood Wednesday night when Hurzeler’s post-match diatribe was put to him. Asked if he felt any sense of external anger towards his team, he said, “I think they love our players, and every time they talk about our players, I think they’re the most loved ones in the country.” The 43-year-old is not always the easiest Premier League manager to get a read on, but more than six years since our first press conference together, I’m not sure he was being entirely serious. Just a guess. I think it was that little grin and shrug at the end that did it.
Arsenal aren’t in a popularity contest and if the prize at the end of this season is a Premier League title, then the ends justify the means. At the outset, it is worth stating that those means include more goals per game than any team in the division other than Manchester City, about as many penalty box touches as their title rivals and Liverpool, the second most goals from open play and an awful lot of one-goal margin finales to delight neutrals and terrify their supporters.
When this team plays in Europe, they are the great entertainers with nearly three goals a game. Arteta would love if Premier League games were as open as Champions League ones, as much as he “would like to play with three extra players in my own half to get some beautiful football against the free man, but that’s not the reality of football.” Arsenal didn’t forge this new tactical meta of man-to-man defending. Two years ago, they were not that dissimilar to Pep Guardiola’s idealized version of City, just with the defensive dial turned up a smidge.
