Arsenal has won back-to-back games against Norwich City and Burnley, but they have been in unspectacular fashion.
Both games have been 1-0 wins for Mikel Arteta’s side. They have secured three points each for the Gunners, but considering the talent in the squad, they should have been won by bigger scorelines.
However, the most important thing is that they have won matches and have also kept clean sheets after conceding nine goals from their opening three league matches and scoring none.
The Daily Mail reckons that Arteta is taking the club back to when George Graham was their manager and they played boring football just to get the right results.
They claim that the Spanish manager is now focused on making his team deliver points to the fans regardless of how good or bad the performance is.
They write: “Mikel Arteta wants Arsenal fans to feel pride in their team, so it looks like the Spaniard is taking Gunners supporters back to a separate era in their team.
“The Gunners are in a similar position to when George Graham took over in north London back in 1986 – in decline and slowly moving away from England’s biggest sides.
“Graham’s Gunners then became famed for masterminding simple and uneventful 1-0 victories, which resulted headlines like ‘Boring, Boring Arsenal’. Arteta’s Arsenal is now heading in that direction.
“The north Londoners now have back-to-back slender wins over Norwich and Burnley – both victories unspectacular yet vital to boosting confidence after a dismal start to the Gunners’ Premier League campaign.
“Graham worked with the likes of Lee Dixon, Tony Adams, Steve Bould and Nigel Winterburn to boost his backline. Arteta is producing similar results with first-choice back four Takehiro Tomiyasu, Ben White, Gabriel and Kieran Tierney.
“Having White and Gabriel back fit is a major plus point for Arteta, whose defence looks much more sturdy with those two at the heart of their backline.
“Keeping them fit will be crucial to Arsenal’s form this season. As for the ‘1-0 to the Arsenal’, Arteta and his fans will definitely take that on Sunday’s north London derby. ”
Last season Arsenal had the second best defense in the league.
Our real problem was failure to score enough goals. Five more goals in a 38 match season would have secured 5th place. Football has nothing to do with team selection formation or tactics. Even with a 150m investment in the summer our 200m strike force has contributed just one goal in 5 games
btw FF, 1+1 doesn’t equal 3…try just for once to make some nuanced inferences instead of always resorting to the most obvious of assertions
Arsenal scored 100 goals in a title winning season under Graham. It was only boring because we suffocated teams
It’s the points that first separate the teams before any other thing,if it was passes,them pep’s teams wouldn’t be challenged by the likes of liverpool
The boys can bore me to a state resembling rigor mortis on Sunday.
Just reel in the 3 points, and send that mob packing back up the Seven Sisters road !!!!
Absolutely nothing concrete or factual in the article written by a Daily Mail hack, just his meanderings on the weekends games. Don’t believe everything you read in the press, in fact question everything!
The problem is, it isnt just about boring football, that is only one aspect. Its the way the team are set up to play and the tactics that are causing the headaches. Norwich and Burnley are not the test for our defending or attacking, they dont possess the quality of the bigger teams. We are firing blanks because the football is not good enough or clever enough to get regular results. GG had a far better style and purpose than the fayre we are playing at the moment. You could see the way we played and the control that we had in games, not at this present in time. We are haphazard and slow, which creates bad moments and blunt attacks. This period should never be compared with GG, EVER.
classic case of revisionist history, as no one looking for 1-0 results would have ever of chosen our recruitment model…just absolute nonsense