Mikel Arteta has established his Untouchables. No matter how fatigued, no matter the state of the game, the Arsenal manager has found the main men he entrusts to take care of business. Arsenal have had a punishing schedule in April, but rest and rotation are kept to a minimum. There appears to be no substitute for his headliners.
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Fatigue played a part in Arsenal allowing Tottenham to claw back at a 3-0 goal lead, creating such a nervous finale that Arteta, watching from the touchline, resorted to prayer. David Raya’s decision-making slipped in a way it hasn’t for months to wrap up a gift for Tottenham. Declan Rice’s late hack to concede a penalty was the definition of a tired tackle — not something that has featured in most of his driven performances this season.
By the end, Rice looked like he had cartoon weights on his feet. Kai Havertz had been ill but continued to plough through. Takehiro Tomiyasu, trying to recover full fitness, was stretched. Thomas Partey, injured for most of the season, completed his first full game since August. There have been plenty of times recently when Bukayo Saka has been running on fumes. Would Arteta change them? Not a chance.
Provided none of them do an impression of Monty Python’s Black Knight, who insisted on competing regardless of the number of limbs sliced clean off, can you imagine Arteta not picking the following in the games that remain: Raya, Ben White, William Saliba, Gabriel, Saka, Rice, Martin Odegaard, Havertz?
They all started (and mostly finished) every match in a run of three victories that demonstrated the strides Arsenal have made compared to last season. It is a week that has amplified how much better equipped they are to challenge, responding to disappointments to beat Wolves, Chelsea and Tottenham. Their capacity to keep pushing, sometimes through barriers of pain and exhaustion, and the way they clambered back up when their season was on the ropes as they lost to Aston Villa and Bayern Munich has won Arteta’s faith. He trusts this group of players implicitly.
“I do,” Arteta confirmed, “but in the last few minutes I was doubting them, to be fair!” Victory affords jokes. It also allows a degree of forgiveness for mistakes, but there was an undertone that he was not keen on the missteps that allowed what had been a comfortable scoreline to become an uncomfortable ending. It feels like a bit of a contradiction. On the one hand, you mustn’t make errors, but on the other, you have to play all the time and not show fatigue. Ultimately, that is a sign of the standards that Arteta aspires to.
This perfectionist streak in him perhaps explains why he has become so attached to his crop of key performers. He believes the best players have to want to be ready to drive, foot to the floor, every three days. It’s a challenge he laid some years ago to a young Saka, using Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo as the ultimate example, the best who set the highest bars for consistent performance.
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Saka was very sharp and illuminated the game with the kind of goal that felt inevitable from the moment he started sprinting into the open space Tottenham had vacated. It was an expertly constructed transition goal. Rice looked up and started the move, Havertz took a moment to size up the state of play before assisting with a gorgeous invitation of a pass. Saka ran towards goal knowing in his mind that he would jink inside and steer in confidently yards before he delivered.
It was the high point in a first half that Arsenal approached with conviction. Two set-piece goals helped. Pierre-Emile Hojbjerg’s finish was arguably more impressive than Havertz’s, but both were greeted joyously by Arsenal’s players. Even though Tottenham had some chances, Arsenal seemed somehow calm about it, as if they felt a sense of inner assurance they would be OK.
It was Jose Mourinho who came up with the Untouchables image to represent those players whose repeated excellence demanded they be on the team sheet whenever possible.
Partey just might have also put himself in with Arteta’s favourites after two important performances, but his overall unreliability in terms of availability leads to a bigger-picture question mark there.
Arteta was impressed at how much work his players put in to prepare for the north London derby at the end of a sequence of eight games in 26 days through April. “They have had a lot of minutes and games and emotionally it’s been very demanding, but yesterday I had to stop them in training because they wanted more.”
Arsenal’s response to the sobering few days when they lost in the Premier League and Champions League has been born out of willpower. When Arteta looks into his players’ eyes, he can see that they are ready to fight until the end. “One hundred per cent,” he said. “They have given me reason to believe that every single day. They have the motivation, so I am expecting that they will have a real go.”
Even though Arsenal do need a slip from Manchester City to get closer to the Premier League trophy they crave, that sentiment is not about to stop.
(Top photo: Zac Goodwin/PA Images via Getty Images)