The 5-0 FA Cup victory over Southampton may not have been Arsenal’s biggest of the season – that came against a rank Ludogorets who crumbled 6-0 in the Champions League – but it was still entirely comprehensive.
Whereas other Premier League sides rotated and failed to perform (and, in the cases of Watford, Liverpool and the aforementioned Saints, abjectly slumped out of the competition), Arsenal thrived. Their double-barrelled midfield trio Jeff Reine-Adelaide, Ainsley Maitland-Niles and Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain had an average age of 20. Of the back five, only Héctor Bellerín and Shkodran Mustafi had made more than 10 starts in all competitions this season.
Perhaps most notable of all though, and especially given the scoreline, was the performance of Arsenal’s front three. Lucas Pérez, Danny Welbeck and Theo Walcott had never started a match together before. They aren’t Arsenal’s first-choice forward line. You could argue that they’re not even second choice. But in the quality of their movement and their finishing it was difficult to tell.
A brace for the returning Welbeck, both expert finishes, and a hat-trick for Walcott, including an instinctive poacher’s goal, caught the eye of the bystander. Arsène Wenger, however, was keen to talk up the performance of Pérez, the Spaniard who has impressed since his £17m arrival from Deportivo La Coruña, despite having only limited playing time.
“For me, Lucas is a very good player,” the manager said. “He did very well on Saturday to create chances. At the start of the season I bought him because Welbeck was out and I didn’t know how long it would take. Offensively, we have many players who can produce and score. Numbers-wise and quality-wise it’s the best we have had at my time at the club. We never had so many players who could perform and score goals. Certainly never.”
For all those who can remember the Gunners’ glory days under Wenger this might be a surprising statement. How about the Double-winning 1998 side of Dennis Bergkamp, Ian Wright, Marc Overmars and Nicolas Anelka? Never mind the Invincibles squad of 2003-04 who still boasted Bergkamp but had added Thierry Henry, Nwankwo Kanu and Sylvain Wiltord to the mix (it was such a strong lineup, Francis Jeffers couldn’t get a game).
Wenger’s assessment is helped by the fact that positions have become less fixed. Whereas the Arsenal of 1998 and 2004 largely went with two up front – Bergkamp and Wright, Bergkamp and Henry – this season Wenger routinely plays a lone striker. In fact, depending on how false you believe Alexis Sánchez’s No9 to be, you might even argue they play with none.
Instead Arsenal can play with a trio, or even a quartet of forward players who interact and exchange positions. Sánchez came to Arsenal as a wide man (though Wenger said he always had plans to move the Chilean more centrally). Pérez scored his goals for Deportivo as a central striker but has largely played wide since coming to Arsenal. Walcott, who has returned to the wing after a foray through the middle, is on course for his best goalscoring season at Arsenal and his goals per game ratio of 0.66 is nearly a third better than his previous best (14 goals in 21 games this season compared with 21 in 43 in 2012-13).
Walcott is not alone in delivering personal best feats this season. Olivier Giroud is averaging a goal every 83.7 minutes. Sánchez’s 125 minutes per goal for his 15 so far compares favourably with top-scoring Bergkamp in ’98 (16, one every 153 minutes) and even holds up against Henry in 2004 (30, one every 111 minutes).
When you look at the team in aggregate, Wenger’s opinion seems substantiated. Yes, there are 16 league games to go, but Arsenal’s current goals-per-game ratio leaves every other season under Wenger eating its dust. The Gunners have scored 2.45 goals per league match this season. The average of the preceding 20 campaigns under Wenger is 1.84. Of those seasons only four have averaged more than two goals per game. Interestingly, none of these includes any of Wenger’s three title-winning seasons, with Arsenal’s highest average of 2.11 coming in 2010-11, the season of Robin van Persie, Andrey Arshavin, Nicklas Bendtner and Marouane Chamakh.
Goals do not correlate precisely with league points, of course, and Wenger might well have preferred a 1-0 set-piece victory over the haruhelter-skelter m-scarum 3-3 draw clawed out at Bournemouth this month. Furthermore, for all that the goals have been spread across the team, there is a sense that Arsenal are just as reliant on Sánchez as they once were on Henry. But as Arsenal’s shadow strike force proved on Saturday, the Gunners have lots of options as they go into one of the defining weeks of their season.
“I’m pleased with their individual performances,” Wenger said of Saturday’s trio. “We have scored many goals since the start of the season and Danny was not there. To add him to the squad as well gives us huge offensive potential. Now I have to use the strikers well, in the right moment and without destroying the balance of the team.”
Arsenal head to Stamford Bridge on Saturday in the hope of stalling the league leaders Chelsea. Before that they host a struggling Watford side on Tuesday night. Three points is a must, but if Wenger has a selection dilemma, he’s right to say it’s one he hasn’t had before.
