Seven points is a healthy advantage with more than half the season elapsed, yet Mikel Arteta knows all too well how slim any lead can turn out to be in reality. Arsenal led the Premier League for 248 days in the 2022–23 campaign and still conspired to finish second. That year, they could lay claim to an eight-point lead over Manchester City as late as April Fool’s Day.

The joke could be at their expense once again if this troubling set-piece issue is not addressed.

Arsenal’s Set-Piece Reliance and Game State

Arsenal have won just two Premier League games without scoring from a set piece this season: a pair of home London derbies against Tottenham Hotspur and Brentford. Far more often than not, these victories have not only involved a dead-ball scenario, but been directly conditioned by them.

In 11 of Arsenal’s 15 top-flight wins this term, the first goal has come from a set piece. It cannot be overplayed how differently Arteta’s side perform depending on the scoreline.

With the advantage of a 1–0 lead, the Gunners have been practically imperious, amassing 46 points from a possible 48 after pulling ahead. This prolific front-running tendency is played out in the underlying numbers as well; Arteta’s side are far more threatening when faced with an opponent chasing the game and prove to be more defensively sound with a lead of their own to sit upon.

This reality is even more pronounced when looking exclusively at away matches. A failure to take the lead and dampen the hostile atmosphere on their travels has prompted a raft of dissatisfying results on the road. In fact, Arsenal have fallen behind in six of their 11 away matches, dropping points in five of those outings.

Arsenal Are Strong Frontrunners

Stats via Macro Football.

What’s Going Wrong for Arsenal in Open Play?

Arsenal have two of the most potent creative forces in the Premier League from open play. Only Manchester City’s Jérémy Doku averages more chances created than Gunners skipper Martin Ødegaard while Bukayo Saka ranks fourth across the division for expected assists per 90. Unfortunately, Arteta hasn’t always been able to call upon his star creators.

Saka had to start on the bench against Forest this week after being called into action for Wednesday’s trip to Chelsea in the Carabao Cup semi-final first leg. Ødegaard was in the lineup for both fixtures but is yet to crack 1,000 Premier League minutes this season after spending the first few months of the campaign riddled with various ailments. Twelve Arsenal players have been given more opportunities than the club captain, including the underwhelming Eberechi Eze.

While Saka and Ødegaard are among the division’s top creators, no one in Arsenal’s squad can come close to their output. Eze, signed ostensibly as the ingenious locksmith to pick apart the stubborn rearguards which Arsenal so often come up against, has seemed to have lost his keys.

Bukayo Saka, Martin Ødegaard… and Everyone Else

Stats via Opta.

During his minutes on the pitch, the former Crystal Palace maestro in transition has been stifled so far, averaging just 0.12 expected assists from open play per 90. For comparison, Saka (0.26) and Ødegaard (0.23) are almost twice as productive.

Carving teams apart in open play is no easy feat for a side which is forever faced with massed ranks of unadventurous backlines. “It’s not going to be as fluent, it’s not going to be as hectic, because there’s no space to run,” Arteta once moaned on this topic.

“When you’re sitting in traffic, I want to go 100 miles an hour but I have three buses and 55 taxis and motorbikes around me, so it’s tricky.”

Set pieces have offered Arsenal a shortcut around the gridlock, but when that avenue is closed, they need to find another route to goal.

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