LISBON, Portugal — This is what it looks like when the fine margins go in your favor. Whatever the critics say, Arsenal have long-since decided that pragmatism is the best path to glory this season and manager Mikel Arteta now has fresh evidence to remind his players it can be successful.
“The demands from August are win and win and win and win,” he explained. “And if you don’t win, ‘it’s a disaster’ and ‘it’s not enough,’ and if you don’t win four trophies, ‘what are we doing?'”
“So that’s fine, but they need some perspective, especially from my side, a big reminder of what we are as a team and the things that have brought us where we are. Take it, live the present, do your best and let’s see what happens.”
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Kai Havertz‘s stoppage-time winner gave the Gunners a 1-0 win at Sporting CP and firm control of their UEFA Champions League quarterfinal tie. The match-winning moment turned a passive night into a hugely promising one. For long periods, Arsenal were unable to create anything of note aside from their usual set piece threat.
It was an underwhelming, disjointed attacking display masquerading as a measured European performance.
David Raya was their best player; his best save was his first: a fingertip touch to divert Maximiliano Araújo‘s sixth-minute effort onto the crossbar. He made five saves in all, including three in the minutes before Havertz’s goal.
Afterward, Havertz described Raya as “for me, the last two seasons, the best keeper in the world.” He can’t get in the Spain team ahead of Unai Simón these days, but there is no doubt he is of pivotal importance to Arsenal.
“He’s extraordinary, magnificent, incredible,” Arteta said. “I don’t know the adjective, the right one. And with that, it’s enough. We are so happy to have him.”
The decision to play Kepa Arrizabalaga — badly at fault in the Carabao Cup final — for Arsenal’s past two defeats against Manchester City and Southampton seems even more questionable after this.
Raya laid the platform for the smash-and-grab, allowing the “finishers” to finish. Arteta renamed the role of his impact substitutes some time ago and they did the job to perfection here: Gabriel Martinelli played a defense-splitting pass through for Havertz, who controlled the ball and finished expertly.
The Gunners have had 38 goal involvements by substitutes this season, more than any team across Europe’s top five leagues. And Martinelli combined with Havertz to produce the fourth Champions League goal scored and assisted by a substitute, the most by any side in the competition.
“The story of the season: The finishers come in when the most important part of the game is about to happen and they made the difference for us to win it,” Arteta said.
“I think that’s a reflection of the chemistry that’s there in the team. And respecting your role within the day and my decision, it’s not easy a lot of times to leave certain players on the bench to start with.
“That’s organic, it’s natural,” he said. “They love each other so much that they do it for the team. And when you play with that attitude and that desire, these things can happen.”
And with that, suddenly the mood is transformed. A team whose mentality and stamina have been doubted as the prospect of four trophies halved to two with defeats in England’s domestic cup competitions can point to a tangible answer.
Everything at Arsenal is now geared to winning silverware in these final few weeks, and so in that context, only their readiness for a first Champions League triumph will appear in time. Sporting have won 17 consecutive home matches and are a team sufficiently talented to think they have a chance of overturning a one-goal deficit in London next week.
But they are also sixth in the Portuguese Primeira Liga right now and in their first quarterfinal since 1983, when the Champions League was known as the European Cup.
This was a broadly similar — albeit better — display to the away left in the previous round, when Havertz again struck late on, then to earn a 1-1 draw at Bayer Leverkusen, presently the sixth-best team in Germany’s Bundesliga.
The prospect of a semifinal tie against Barcelona or Atlético Madrid — or, for that matter, a final against defending champions Paris Saint-Germain and, perhaps Bayern Munich — will test Arsenal’s fine-margin style of play to the limit. But when Arsenal are the best version of themselves, they are exceptional. And this appears to have been the message internally in recent days after those back-to-back defeats.
“Yesterday I talked about identity and the things that I wanted to see on that pitch. It certainly happened — there was a shift there,” Arteta said.
“Especially the things that depend on us, and it’s nothing to do with quality or execution. Those are the things that have brought us here. The rest, we have it; there will be moments where it’s better or not that efficient, but those ones, if we maintain them, we have a great chance.”