After a month of negativity about Arsenal’s toothlessness, Mikel Arteta’s side duly let rip against PSV Eindhoven on Tuesday.
Six scorers, only one of eight shots on target not hitting the net and a hitherto unseen ruthlessness meant it was this Arsenal team – without a striker of course – that became their first to score seven away from home in the Champions League.
With 11 games left to try to put pressure on Liverpool in the Premier League and, perhaps more realistically, to compete for the Champions League, was Tuesday night a one-off or a sign of things to come?
Reasons to feel confident
One huge positive was the “changing of the narrative”, as Jurrien Timber put it pre-match.
Instead of the furore around Arsenal’s failure to put the ball in the net, suddenly they looked like scoring every time they attacked. Complaints about a lack of cutting edge can be sidelined – at least until the next game.
Indeed, in the Champions League, Arsenal have been more clinical this season. While they are averaging more shots and touches in the opposition box in the Premier League, their conversion rate is far higher in Europe.
In fact, three times they have had a shot-conversion rate over 30% – the same amount as they have managed in 27 league games. Always handy to have your best finishing when up against the better teams.
Against PSV, 17-year-old Ethan Nwaneri once again belied his age, having the most shots for Arsenal and the joint-most touches in the box, and became the third-youngest player to score in the knockouts, behind Bojan Krkic of Barcelona and Jude Bellingham when he was at Borussia Dortmund.
He was surpassed by captain Martin Odegaard, whose two non-penalty goals were the same as he had managed in his previous 33 games for Arsenal. Such form from him would do wonders for the Gunners’ hopes of silverware.
Then there are the returning players. The Gunners will hope Gabriel Martinelli and Bukayo Saka are back in time for the quarter-finals against one of the Madrid sides, instantly adding greater firepower and threat.
Reasons to feel uncertain
However, it is not all good news for Arsenal. The shot-conversion rate mentioned earlier was sky high against PSV (47%). Indeed, their expected goals of 1.9 was not actually much bigger than PSV’s 1.4, despite the hefty score disparity.
Of course, putting the ball in the back of the net counts far more than an ethereal data possibility about whether a team ought to have done so – but underlying numbers do still count.
Arsenal’s conversion rate was obviously poor in the previous two league games against West Ham and Nottingham Forest, but it is eight league games since Arsenal could boast an xG over 1.45 – the same length of time they have been without Saka.
They have also been averaging fewer shots in the past eight weeks than previously, albeit the 20 mustered against West Ham ought to have yielded something and they only had 15 against PSV with spectacular results.
What is more, while the identity of Arsenal’s goalscorers in Eindhoven was a real fillip for Arteta, is it realistic to expect converted midfielder Mikel Merino, teenager Nwaneri, Odegaard and full-backs Riccardo Calafiori and Timber to offer sustained threat?
It is a stretch.
Finally, as the pie chart above shows, they have actually had more goals from currently available players than those on the sidelines – but those numbers are seriously massaged by Tuesday’s heavy lifting.
This graph would have looked quite different 24 hours ago.
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