It is easy to imagine Mikel Arteta nearly tearing his perfectly groomed hair out when he first saw the fixture list for the 2024-25 Premier League season.
The Road Through Hell
If you are Arsenal, you never want to play three of your first five matches away at Aston Villa, Tottenham Hotspurs, and Manchester City. Not when you have aspirations to win the Premier League.
Certainly not when Villa finished 4th last season, under your former manager, and have strengthened well in the transfer window, having done the double over you in the previous campaign. Not when … well, Tottenham. The North London derby is always great spectacle but Arsenal do not want it away, one week before they face Manchester City. Not when City are still managed by Pep Guardiola, have won four successive league titles, boast the likes of Erling Haaland, Kevin De Bruyne, Rodri, and Phil Foden in their ranks, and have just re-signed İlkay Gündoğan.
If you are Arsenal, and Mikel Arteta, even your nightmares are more pleasant than the fixture list you have been asked to navigate.
Sweet, Cold Revenge
However, when you are this Arsenal, managed by Mikel Arteta, and boast the meanest defense in the top flight, you may perhaps occasionally bend the entire football-verse to your will.
Aston Villa were good at home on Saturday. Morgan Rogers was sensational. Ollie Watkins, not at his best, still the threat one expects from him in front of goal. For ten to twelve minutes early in the second half, Villa threatened to run away with it, and leave Arsenal in their wake once more.
It was not to be, though—not on this day.
Arsenal have not been at their fluid, imperial best this season. Not yet, at least. They were comfortable, and not much more, last week against Wolves. Here again, at Villa Park, they lacked some of their form. The rhythm and authority which makes them so compelling and beautiful to watch.
Last week, David Raya pulled off one miraculous save to deny Jørgen Strand Larsen. The equalizer might have completely changed the game. On Saturday, Raya made another one—to keep Ollie Watkins from breaking the deadlock—and it was somehow even better than the one against Wolves.
It did not simply keep Arsenal alive in the game. It helped turned the tide of the match, and gave the Gunners the impetus they needed to score. And win.
Bukayo Saka, on the night he became the third-youngest player to reach 100 Premier League wins, chased the ball to the byline, moments after Gabriel Martinelli had been replaced on the pitch by Leandro Trossard. He cut it back across the penalty box and found, through some deflections, Trossard: the right man, at the right moment, doing exactly what he does best.
1-0 to the Arsenal.
Ten minutes later, Saka and Trossard combined again, for Arsenal’s Starboy to lay an assist on for Thomas Partey. 2-0, and it was game over.
Arsenal and Mikel Arteta had banished their demons of the season past, and walked away from one of the toughest fixtures on their calendar with three points and one potentially vital clean sheet.
Mikel Arteta was understandably delighted when speaking at his post-match press conference:
"Well, very happy, first of all. A really tough place to come, great atmosphere of football. A really good team, really well coached, with great collective organisation and huge individual threat, but we found a way to win, especially because the team, I think, played with a lot of personality and understood the game better and better as the game was going, apart from those 10, 12 minutes in the second half. And when we had to rely on certain individuals, we did, like the situation of David, that is an unbelievable save. And when we made the changes, the impact that they had, it was tremendous for the team. So when a team now starts to be equipped that way, and they start to be able to navigate through different context in a match, then becomes a team that can win in any place, and today we've shown that."Mikel Arteta
So far, so good. One down, two to go. Away games await at Tottenham and Manchester City … but before then Brighton, and the international break.