Arsenal 3-0 Man City: Community Shield observations
Match report – Player ratings – Arteta reaction – Quotes round-up
Arsenal were deserved winners of the Community Shield yesterday, as goals from Riccardo Calafiori, Kai Havertz and Martin Odegaard gave us a 3-0 win over Man City. Rather than go through the game chronologically, here are some observations/talking points.
I like a fast start
I think it was three seasons ago we developed a very nice habit of scoring early goals. Beyond the obvious that it’s always good to score, scoring early just helps settle you down, and that was certainly the case yesterday. The pass from Myles Lewis-Skelly was superb, and where else do you expect your Italian left-back to be but hanging on the shoulder of a centre-half like a classic number 9. Riccardo Calafiori’s movement and finish were as good as you’d see from any centre-forward, and going 1-0 up after 24 seconds set the tone for what was to come.
Quickly on Myles – whoever is doing the offering needs to stop right away. He’s cemented a place in the Arsenal midfield, and while I think there’s huge competition and the arrival of Bruno Guimaraes may well be an impediment to him starting every week, there’s a lot of football to play this season, and he has to be playing it in red and white. End of story. Capisce?!
Martin Odegaard looks like Martin Odegaard again
For me, it’s never been a question of talent, just an inability to find form and rhythm because of the injuries he’s had to deal with for the last 18 months. I said here I thought the World Cup was useful for the captain, and yesterday was proof of that. He was absolutely outstanding, playing with the kind of swagger and confidence we haven’t seen enough of in recent times.
The goal obviously stands out, the way he put Donnarumma on the floor was reminiscent of Kanu against Deportivo and I literally laughed out loud as he rolled the ball into the net; he was involved in the second goal, playing a great pass to the back post which Christos Tzolis then nodded to Kai Havertz to score; his movement was outstanding, the shimmy which sent Rico Lewis into another dimension in midfield was glorious; the nutmeg on Elliot Anderson showed those quick feet are back; and I thought his defensive work was excellent all day.
I hope this was a taste of things to come from him this season, because if we have this version of Odegaard available throughout, we stand a much better chance of winning things.
The new boys (Tzolis and Guimaraes)
Whether you think the Community Shield is a ‘final’ or not, the fact is the two managers and two sets of players do, and thus we can mark this down as a competitive debut for Tzolis. To finish the game with two assists is a very encouraging way to start, and you can easily see what he’s going to bring to the team. I suspect Mikel Arteta will have been delighted, not just with his attacking contributions, but that his new man made as many tackles (3) as key passes in this game.
There were a couple of moments where I felt he could have taken a shot on himself rather than find the pass, but I’m sure as he settles in and feels a bit more confident about his new surroundings we’ll see that shift slightly.
As for Bruno Guimaraes, you could see the intent in his game, looking to make those forward passes as quickly as possible. His range wasn’t quite there, but more than once the movement of Havertz up front was something he was looking for from deep areas, which is something of an evolution in terms of how we build-up. He only played 45 minutes, and was seen with a worryingly large ice-pack on his thigh after the break, but hopefully that’s just precautionary.
Don’t sleep on David Raya
Understandably, there were other players in the spotlight yesterday, but as poor as City were – and they were – we still needed our goalkeeper to make a couple of very important saves. One from Antoine Semenyo in the second half was absolutely outstanding. I get the focus is elsewhere, and maybe it’s a case that him being that good feels a bit routine, but I still think he deserves a shout this morning. We have the best goalkeeper in the Premier League, and he reminded everyone of that yesterday.
He also appears to have gone full David Seaman with the hair, he just needs the ‘tache now.
No place for some big names
I wasn’t at all surprised there was no place for Gabriel Jesus in the squad, but I was that Gabriel Martinelli didn’t make it at all. Perhaps it was linked to him turning down a move to Galatasaray in quite public fashion, something which reflected poorly on the club’s attempts to move him there, but it does not augur well for him to be left out of the squad entirely. There was no Ethan Nwaneri either, and look, it’s a numbers game, there are only so many players you can have on the bench, but it’s still not great to miss out entirely.
Afterwards, Mikel Arteta said it was a technical decision, and obfuscated a little bit by talking again about how he’d like to have bigger squads to include more players on a match day. We know that’s not going to happen any time soon though, so questions will be asked about their futures.
A question I might ask is that if we have many options for the right hand side, with Noni Madueke starting yesterday, Bukayo Saka coming off the bench in the second half, and Max Dowman not getting on at all, what is the plan for the left in the absence of Martinelli? If Tzolis had to come off yesterday, what would we have done? Eberechi Eze is there, of course, and perhaps that’s who we’ll lean into, but it hasn’t always been something the manager seems keen to do.
Defensive recruitment seems urgent
A quick look at the bench yesterday saw just one defender included, Piero Hincapie. With Jurrien Timber and William Saliba sidelined, it feels quite urgent we make an addition here. Ben White was very good yesterday, but can we please not make the same mistake of over-burdening our right-back until he breaks down with injury again?
Arteta was asked about it yesterday, and said:
We know that there are certain areas that, through injuries, we are weaker and we need to strengthen. We are trying to do that, we’ve been trying to do that for weeks so with the right opportunity and the club is available to do it, we will do it.
The new season kicks off on Friday. Surely we have to do something this week to add the depth we need to the right-hand side of our defence. As I’ve often said in the last few weeks, this arrival is likely to be uninspiring, by virtue of the role we want this particular player to have in the squad, but it doesn’t mean it’s not very, very important.
We look serious
After winning it last season, the question becomes: ‘Can you do it again?’, and I enjoyed the seriousness we showed yesterday. Not just how we played, and how well we won the game, but the way players and the manager spoke afterwards. This is a group that isn’t satisfied by winning it once, they want more, and that’s a very good sign.
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I’m sure there’s more, but we can save some of that for this morning’s Arsecast Extra. We’ve already put out the call for questions on BlueSky @gunnerblog.bsky.social and @arseblog.com, so fire away using 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.
For now, have a good one.
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