Guillem Balague@GuillemBalague
Now that Arsenal fans are booing their own team and former players are lining up to criticise, let me offer the bigger picture, the one you hear across Europe.
Arsenal are not seen here as a team that has stalled. They are seen as a reference point. As the team many look at when trying to understand where elite football is heading.
The game has shifted, it is no longer enough to dominate the ball or to attack well. The top sides now compete in, and often decide matches through, the four phases that make teams excellent: organised attack, attacking transition, defensive transition and structured defence. At the highest level, those phases matter more than possession percentages or aesthetic debates.
This is where Arsenal stand out.
Under Mikel Arteta, Arsenal control space, time and another very important element, rhythm. They are aggressive without being chaotic, but can create chaos to find gaps, they are compact without being passive. Their pressing is prepared in detail, lose the ball and the reaction is immediate. The opponent is denied oxygen.
Across Europe, this is understood as modern dominance.
The key battleground today is transition. Not what you do with the ball, but what happens the instant you lose it. Defensive rhythm has overtaken offensive rhythm. Space is smaller and time is shorter. The teams that survive are the ones that arrive first, win duels, plus reset order before danger appears.
Arsenal do this as well as anyone.
In Europe, Arsenal are seen as a team that has absorbed Guardiola’s ideas and pushed them forward, they have strengthened them for a football world that now plays faster, presses harder, and it totally punishes hesitation.
At the very moment Arsenal are being questioned at home, they are being analysed as a model.
Progress is often uncomfortable and it rarely moves in straight lines. Arsenal don’t look lost. In my eyes they look early!
