Morning all. Arsenal will have a training session at London Colney today before heading to Germany later for our game against Bayern Munich tomorrow. I’m going to strongly wager that tomorrow’s opposition don’t set up the same way Nottingham Forest did on Sunday, and perhaps that will make for a more interesting game. When you look at some of our results in Europe against ‘big’ teams, it probably does tell you that, while we can all harbour some concerns about our attacking play and/or attacking talent, the issue isn’t just down to that. In the last two seasons alone, we’ve seen: Arsenal 4-0 Atletico Madrid Inter 1-3 Arsenal Arsenal 3-1 Bayern Munich Arsenal 2-0 PSG Arsenal 3-0 Real Madrid The win against Atletico came without Martin Odegaard or Kai Havertz, both of whom were injured at the time, but against a team who many view as one of the most obstinate and defensively well organised in Europe under Diego Simeone, we took them to the cleaners. Partly because they didn’t actually play defensively (they probably should have), but also in part because we made the breakthrough in the 57th minute with a set-piece goal from Gabriel. What Arsenal would have given for one of those corners at the City Ground to produce something on Sunday. Here was a stat on Match of the Day on Sunday: no team across Europe has won more games by a single goal margin than Arsenal since the start of last season, 18 – the next best is, quite amusingly, an Italian team (Inter Milan with 16): No team has more single goal margin wins than Arsenal in the last 12 months Lewis has some good stuff on this in his latest newsletter, which I think provides some good context for our struggles (if you want to call them that), in comparison to a team like Brighton who have gone goal crazy this season. I’ve seen people say ‘If they can do it with the players they have, why can’t we?’. There’s context, which Lewis lays out, but also the fact is teams don’t set up against Brighton in the same way they do against us. Seeing how they’re performing this season so far, that might actually change as managers and analysts recognise the threat they pose, but so far that’s not something they’ve had to contend with. Essentially, this is a literal consequence of us being good, really good. If we were crap, as we have been, we would not have to face this kind of approach over and over again. Teams would feel more emboldened to attack, because they don’t fear us. As it is, manager after manager looks at this Arsenal team and decides the best way to get something from the game is to make life specifically difficult for us – as Oliver Glasner outlined on Sunday. As I said in yesterday’s blog, I think two things can be true. We can be better, we need to be better, but dismissing or downplaying the opposition as a factor isn’t reasonable, in my view. Then there’s a wider question of whether this is what Mikel Arteta wants. Is this his preferred style and way of winning games? Even if I can see his strengths are probably more defensive than attacking (if we put it in those simplistic terms), my strong opinion on this is that it is not, and I know some will disagree. He is, however, the arch-pragmatist, and he recognises his job to is produce results with what he’s got. Think back to when he first took over. He spoke specifically about wanting to play a 4-3-3 but with the players he had he used a back three until such time as he recruited better players for the requisite positions. Obviously he has a big influence on recruitment, and over the years I think how we’ve added to the forward line has been considerably less effective than the way we’ve built our defence and midfield, but it’s also reasonable to suggest that the pool of attacking elite talent is smaller than in other positions. If you look back at this summer, a manager who wanted to bring in Vinicius Jr (for all his troubles so far this season at Real Madrid), and Julian Alvarez isn’t one who is 100% happy with the options he has. He will absolutely back those players publicly, because anything else would be stupid in the extreme, but you don’t pursue that talent level for no reason. You do it because you know you need to be better, you know there’s room for improvement, and because ultimately you’re not completely happy with what you have. In the absence of that though, what you have is what has to get you results, and this manager has demonstrated an ability to do that time and time and time again without ever blaming what he doesn’t have. So, I don’t think this is necessarily what he wants. I think he’d be far happier if we scored more goals, if games were less intense, if the nerves weren’t as shredded as we head towards injury time knowing one moment from the opposition could cost us valuable points. For now though, his job is to find a way to do that with this squad and against opposition who week after week try and implement a blueprint that negates us as an attacking force. And it’s worth pointing out that whatever concerns we all have, more often than not the opposition don’t succeed. Arsenal do. Right, I’ll leave it there for this morning. We’ll have a Bayern Munich preview podcast for you a bit later this afternoon over on Patreon. For now, have a good one. The post Is it who we are, or who we have to be? appeared first on Arseblog ... an Arsenal blog.