Napoli 0-1 Arsenal: Odegaard impressive and decisive as Gunners win away

Match report – Player ratings – Arteta reaction – Video

Arsenal kicked off their Champions League campaign last night with a 1-0 win away at Napoli, but the scoreline just does not reflect the dominance or the opportunities we had to score more goals.

Mikel Arteta shuffled his pack a bit, bringing in Piero Hincapie, Mikel Merino, Eberechi Eze, and Viktor Gyokeres at the expense of Riccardo Calafiori, Myles Lewis-Skelly, Christos Tzolis and Kai Havertz. I was pleased to see some measure of rotation, as I said in the preview blog we need to use our squad to the fullest, and this was evidence the manager is prepared to do that.

In the opening couple of minutes we saw Napoli press high and I wondered if we might see them apply that all night, but when we simply bypassed that press, they more or less stopped trying that, and the game settled into what was pretty much complete dominance from Arsenal. They sat deep, we tried to break them and down and make chances, and the game flow chart tells a real story [via BBC]:

As the half went on, the quality of our chances increased. From speculative early efforts from Eze, and a Bukayo Saka overhead kick which was set up by a nice outside of the foot pass from Gyokeres, we went on to have clear cut chances which we didn’t take. Saka’s cross to the back post found Eze who nodded it back into the danger zone, and Merino’s header was well saved, albeit straight at the keeper. I think it’s a great chance to score, but perhaps not quiet the sitter some have made out – although perhaps that tells us a bit more about what we expect from the Spaniard in front of goal because of what he’s done in the past.

Ben White had an opportunity from close range which he looked a bit startled by and didn’t really connect with, Eze shot wide of the near post, and when Saka burst through the middle with just the keeper to beat, he couldn’t quite sort his feet out and shinned it wide. That miss was nothing compared to the one just before the break though, clean through after great build-up play and a fine pass from Martin Odegaard, he fired his shot over when he absolutely should have hit the back of the net. For a player of his quality, that was a bad, bad miss.

It was more of the same after the break. Napoli sat deep, Arsenal kept knocking on the door, and should have scored. White’s header across goal found Hincapie just 3 or 4 yards out, and while I know he was under a bit of pressure from a defender, to spoon it over the bar from there was extraordinary really. You could help but wonder if missing those chances would come back to bite us in the arse, as so often happens in football. Arteta made changes, bringing on Tzolis and Bruno Guimaraes for Eze and Merino, and then Kai Havertz and Madueke for Gyokeres and Saka.

With 15 minutes to go, the goal finally arrived, and it was fitting that it came from the captain. He was superb last night, a player who looks full of confidence again, a player who looks like he trusts himself physically again, and we’re seeing the benefits of that on the pitch. As Arsenal tried to pick the Napoli lock once more on the edge of their box, he took a pass from Tzolis, took a touch, then fired home a shot off the inside of the post to make it 1-0, and I don’t think anyone could argue the goal wasn’t deserved, and what a beautiful goal it was too.

We didn’t sit on that though, and in the period between the goal and full-time we had another 5 attempts on goal (making it 26 in total), including another really bad miss. This time it was Madueke, played through one on one by Havertz as we broke upfield, he didn’t really have any conviction in his finish and the keeper who looks like he could play the God of War dude in a live action remake of the video game made the save. Again, we should score that, however I think there’s a lot to be encouraged about in this performance.

I’m firmly of the belief that missing good chances is a problem but that failing to make those chances in the first place is a bigger problem. How many times have we seen Arsenal face a team in a low block and struggle to make clear cut opportunities? Nobody knows how many times because it’s infinity plus one. This was not one of those games. The stats bear it out, 26 shots – the most we’ve ever had an in a Champions League away game, mustering 4.02xG (to Napoli’s 0.2, btw), and I’d be way more concerned if we’d nicked a goal without really turning the screw on them the way we did.

The finishing needs work, no question. It has to be better, but it was a positive performance overall, we used our bench well from the start and in-game (another assist for Tzolis making it 4 in 5 games for the summer signing), and there’s no question we deserved the win. Afterwards, Mikel Arteta said:

I’m very, very happy, the way we attacked the game from the very first minute, the way we competed, the excitement that we had, how we had to attack them, how we had to disorganise them, the purpose, the quality, the amount of chances that we generated. For sure, again, the scoreline has to reflect a very different result. We will get there, because if we are a bit more precise, it will be much bigger, but to do what we’ve done today in this stadium against this opponent is remarkable from the team.

And there was praise for his captain after his goal and performance:

That’s what we need, the players with that mindset to decide the game, and to play with that personality, that an action might not happen, it’s the next one, the next one, and keep insisting, keep taking chances and risks. He’s getting into those positions much more in recent games, and now you feel he has this emotional state that he knows that the ball can go in, and he scored an incredible goal tonight.

That makes it 4 goals in 5 games now, and his performance last night – on top of the one against Chelsea at the weekend – was so impressive. 120 touches (more than anyone else), 6 key passes, 1 winning goal, and when Arsenal need to find a way through a packed defence, having a player like this at our disposal is crucial. We all know we haven’t seen the best of him for a while, something Odegaard himself has spoken about, and he looks like a man determined to remind everyone – particularly those who had chosen to forget – just how good he is.

If there is a small concern for me, it’s that in a game where we were as dominant as this, our centre-forward wasn’t really involved. Gyokeres did set up that Saka chance, and played a pass to Eze which led to a first half shot, but he had just 6 touches in the first half, and only 3 in the second before being replaced by Havertz (who had 13 touches in much less time). I think there’s an argument that he’s not the kind of forward you’d ideally pick in a game against a team that sits deep, so the match that played out last night didn’t suit him, but I still that’s a bit of a problem. We can debate if that’s an issue for him as an individual, or whether as a team we need to do more to provide service, but on a night when you have 26 shots and your striker has none of them, it is an issue for the manager and his coaching staff to consider.

No doubt it’s something they’ll be working on as we prepare for Sunderland on Saturday evening but all in all a winning start away from home in the Champions League is not to be sniffed at. We’ll discuss the game in more length in the Arsecast which will be out for a bit later on, for now though, have a good one.

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