The four stages of Arsenal's tactical evolution this season (2024)

For Arsenal to challenge Manchester City for the title this season, evolution was necessary. Mikel Arteta’s side blew teams away in the first half of the previous campaign with a fluidity in attack that took them into an unexpected position. But after they faded over the final weeks, their manager knew what they had built would have to not only be maintained, but also developed.

Many aspects of Arsenal’s play had been worked on before they found themselves embroiled in that first title race with City. Arteta’s aim was always to move to a 4-3-3, and he did so during the back-end of the 2021-22 season.

These few months were crucial as Martin Odegaard, Thomas Partey and Granit Xhaka formed a midfield trio. They allowed Arsenal to flourish as they could control a game with “300,000 passes” and routinely find “the free man”to kickstart attacks.

Three accelerators of progress came over the following summer in Gabriel Jesus, Oleksandr Zinchenko and a previously on-loan William Saliba. Jesus added an unpredictability to the forward line which benefited himself and Gabriel Martinelli, while Zinchenko did the same when drifting inside from left-back. He and Ben White, who had moved to right-back from central defence, made Arsenal more vertical, which sped up their play and gave the midfielders and attackers more space to exploit.

But even towards the end of last season, there was a recognition that teams were countering these moves by simply dropping into deep blocks. So, going into 2023-24, Arteta knew tweaks were needed.

Here is how those tweaks looked over the course of this season, which we have split into quarters.

Matches one to nine

Arsenal’s season began before their opening-weekend Premier League victory against Nottingham Forest, of course. They beat Manchester City in the Community Shield a week earlier, in a match where Arteta provided the first glimpse into his new line of thought.

In their meetings with City in 2022-23, Arsenal went toe-to-toe with Pep Guardiola’s treble-bound side. For their first encounter of the new season, summer buy Declan Rice was used as an aggressive No 8 at Wembley. This aided the press and, with fellow newcomer Kai Havertz starting up front, it showed a willingness from Arteta to change.

Arsenal’s new defensive structure was visible from the press box just minutes after kick-off.

For an example of how this looked in practice, here is a passage of play in which Arsenal contain City for almost a minute before forcing them to go long.

The game itself was incredibly tight and competitive in a way previous matches against City were not. Arsenal’s eventual penalty-shootout win helped generate belief, but the performance proved to be a blueprint for how they would set up in bigger matches throughout the season ahead.

This setup was not necessary for every game, which is why Rice (to play as a No 6) and Havertz (a No 8) both moved a position deeper in the first nine Premier League fixtures. Their ability to be used in multiple roles proved beneficial throughout the season, and spoke to Arsenal’s recruitment leaning towards player attributes rather than just positions. Their 1-0 home win against City in October was the next example of this, with Rice starting as a No 8 and Havertz coming off the bench to replace Eddie Nketiah up front and get the assist on Martinelli’s late goal.

With two-thirds of the midfield trio made up of summer arrivals, the dynamic was different. Arsenal’s play through the lines was not as fluid on the left with Havertz, while the right flank was suffering the knock-on effects of selection dilemmas in defence. Gabriel was a substitute for the first three league games of the season amid transfer interest from the Saudi Pro League, meaning Partey shifted to right-back, with White and Saliba as the central pairing.

New combinations being put together so quickly across the pitch did not look natural, but Arsenal still got results.

They won six and drew three of the first nine matches in the league, as well as taking six points from the opening three Champions League group games, where Arteta used minimal rotation.

Matches 10 to 18

Injuries were still prevalent as the season settled down.

Jesus was out again (hamstring), which resulted in Nketiah starting and scoring a hat-trick in a 5-0 win over Sheffield United — a game where Emile Smith Rowe was in the team in place of an injured Odegaard (hip). Due to his versatility, Leandro Trossard was used as a No 8, a left-winger and a centre-forward, with varied success, at points during this period.

Arsenal’s performances improved after Odegaard’s return from injury. His first start after almost a month out was at Brentford but it was at home against Wolverhampton Wanderers a week later when he started to look back to his best. A goal in the ‘O zone’ was followed by delicious passes that should have been put away by Trossard and Nketiah, but the key was he was playing those passes.

Three days later, Odegaard assisted Rice’s stoppage-time winner at Luton Town and he ended the year with impressive individual displays, operating slightly deeper than he was earlier in the season. “We have used Martin to accommodate the needs of the team to make us better against certain behaviours and challenges that the opponents put for us. That’s a big quality of his,” Arteta said in December.

Arsenal won six, lost two and drew one league game from these nine. They also won twice and drew once in the Champions League during this period, finishing top of Group B without conceding a goal at home.

Matches 19 to 27

Games against West Ham United and Fulham represented the worst possible end to 2023 for Arsenal.

Trossard was back in midfield, and ineffective, in a 2-0 defeat at home against West Ham with Havertz suspended. Unsurprisingly, that was the last time he was used as a No 8 all season — and rightly so, considering his contributions in the front line since his signing in January 2023 (18 goals, 12 assists). Jakub Kiwior was similarly ineffective as an inverted left-back in the 2-1 defeat at Fulham three days later, and was replaced by a half-fit Takehiro Tomiyasu at half-time.

Arsenal’s return from their winter break, during which they worked on smaller details, is when their football became interesting.

They came back on January 20 with a 5-0 home win against Crystal Palace, a game that laid the foundations for what would come in the following four months. They scored from two corners, with Rice getting his first set-piece assist for the club. Five of his eight league assists would come from set pieces, and four were during this run of games. Arsenal also went on to equal the Premier League record for goals from corners in a single season (16), with this period being the catalyst. They also matched their best tally for headed goals in a Premier League season with 17.

February arguably brought about Arteta’s most effective tactical switch. Trossard was now being played as a centre-forward, with Havertz joining him from midfield — a dynamic that worked like the two-man strike partnerships of yesteryear. It was first used in the reverse fixture against West Ham: when one went short the other went long, giving defenders problems over who to mark. With Zinchenko out injured, Kiwior was used as a traditional left-back, with White inverting from right-back, meaning Arsenal’s creators not only had multiple passing options but more space to operate in, too.

These tweaks made Arsenal the most fluid they had been all season, and resulted in an attacking explosion.

They became the first side in English league football history to win three successive away games by five or more goals (West Ham, Burnley, Sheffield United). They also scored two or more goals in a record eight consecutive halves of Premier League football between their 3-1 win against Liverpool (matchday 23) and the 6-0 defeat of Sheffield United (matchday 27).

After those back-to-back league losses to end 2023, Arsenal won their next seven top-flight games in this period. They did, however, lose the first leg of their Champions League round-of-16 tie away against Porto.

Matches 28 to 38

Arsenal went on to win their first eight league games of 2024. It was their best start to a calendar year and, naturally, themes overlapped across quarters.

Rice’s emergence as an attacking No 8 gave the team a different dimension. He got two important assists for Trossard in the run-in from open play, and also scored twice himself (against Brentford and Bournemouth).

The 2-1 win over Brentford also featured Havertz continuing as Arteta’s first-choice No 9 — a game in which he scored the winner. The German finished the season with 14 goals (13 of them in the league) and nine of those came in 2024, alongside six of his seven assists. He not only looked more comfortable in the front line, but grew in confidence.

Compared to his early weeks at the club, Havertz was a more imposing figure to opposition players and staff, having no issue shoving either out of his way, and was more assured in all aspects of his play.

Arteta’s decision to start Trossard over Martinelli on the left was equally beneficial, considering his reliability in the final third.

The Arsenal manager was also aided by the returns of Partey — which meant a return to the midfield trio he used in the Community Shield — and Tomiyasu to the starting XI from injury in the final month of the season, as more stability came with them. The presence of the latter at left-back, a tactic employed as early as October 2022 to contain Mohamed Salah, was particularly bittersweet as his performances will always leave the question of what might have been possible if he had been available over the winter.

Arsenal won eight, drew one and lost one of their final 10 Premier League games. They also won one, drew one and lost one in Europe during this stretch as they exited the Champions League to Bayern Munich in the quarter-finals.

Recruitment will have an impact on how much further Arsenal’s improvement goes, but the season finale against Everton on Sunday did prompt some interesting questions for the 2024-25 season.

Jurrien Timber returned from the anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) knee injury he suffered in that opener against Forest at right-back rather than left-back — where he had primarily played in pre-season after signing from Ajax — and looked just as effective, both with and without the ball, in 20 minutes of action. Martinelli also looked promising on the right, taking his man on and getting deliveries into the box, rather than constantly cutting infield like he does when deployed on the left.

There is no question that both Arsenal and Arteta have grown during this season.

Continuing that again next year will be necessary as they look to mount a third straight title challenge.

(Top photo: Marc Atkins/Getty Images)

Art de Roché began covering Arsenal for football.london in 2019 as a trainee club writer. Beforehand, he covered the Under-23s and Women's team on a freelance basis for the Islington Gazette, having gained experience with Sky Sports News and The Independent. Follow Art on Twitter @ArtdeRoche