Arsenal 3-0 Nottingham Forest: Mikel Arteta selection gamble paid off in “best performance of the season”

Arsenal expert Charles Watts labels the Gunners’ 3-0 success over Nottingham Forest their “best performance” of the season and hails Mikel Arteta’s unexpected changes.

Arsenal’s 3-0 Premier League victory over Nottingham Forest was their best performance of the season so far, and Mikel Arteta should continue tinkering with his starting XI as he did at the weekend to keep opponents guessing.
That is the view of Gunners expert Charles Watts, who spoke exclusively to Sports Mole after Arteta’s men comfortably ended their four-game winless run in the top flight at the Emirates Stadium.

Bukayo Saka, Thomas Partey and Ethan Nwaneri were responsible for the goals in North London, as Arsenal made extremely light work of a Forest side who were only behind them on goal difference in the Premier League table at the start of the gameweek.

Watts had previously labelled the visit of Nuno Espirito Santo’s side Arsenal’s “biggest game of the season”, and he admitted that he was surprised at how straightforward the Gunners made it look.

“It was the best performance of the season, I think, certainly the first 45 minutes,” Watts said. “Strangely, they only scored one goal in that first half and they scored two in the second, but I thought the first half was the better of the two. They played really, really well. There was a balance to the team that we just haven’t seen for a long, long time, really, and it was a really comfortable win in what looked like could be a tricky game against a decent Forest side, but Forest just never really got a sniff. I think Arsenal were just on it from the start, came out of real intensity, big players played well.

“The balance in the team that’s been missing was there. The right-hand side was strong, the left-hand side was strong. Martin Odegaard was sensational, Saka was great, and it all just manifested into a fantastic team performance. As I said last week, this is a huge run of games for Arsenal now and they needed to get up and running. I actually wasn’t expecting a very good performance. I thought because of the run they’d been on, they just needed to find a way to win and I would have taken a 1-0 just to get them up and running and find a little bit of momentum.

“I was pleasantly surprised at how well they played and how good they looked. They’ve got to back it up now, but you could see how happy Arteta was after the game as well in the press conference, you’d think that would give them a real shot in the arm going forward now. It was a really strong performance.”

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Arsenal’s domination of Forest came in spite of Arteta springing a few selection shocks, leaving Partey, Kai Havertz, Gabriel Martinelli and Declan Rice – who was managing a knock – out of the first XI while offering rare starts to Jorginho and Gabriel Jesus.

Jorginho’s first-half display was lauded before he was taken off at half time for goalscorer Partey, whose fellow substitutes Raheem Sterling and Nwaneri then combined for Arsenal’s third and final goal in the capital.

Asked if Arsenal fans should be excited by the displays of Arteta’s fringe players, Watts added: I think they should be excited. It was a really surprising start at 11. I was not expecting that. I walked into the press room before the game, just as the team was being announced, and I was talking to some of the other Arsenal reporters in the press room, and none of us were expecting that. We were trying to work out exactly what the reasoning was.

“Was it that Martinelli, for example, had the long trip back from Brazil? Why was Jesus in over Havertz? It certainly caught us all by surprise. But the fact that they turned in a performance like that with some of those players, I think, will be really big for Arsenal. Jesus, I thought, played well. He didn’t get his goal, which is a shame, but I thought he played well. He linked up well, especially in the first half.

“The fact that some of those players who came in performed the way they did and helped produce a performance that Arsenal did should be really beneficial in the long run, because if they do come out the side now, at least they feel part of it. Even Sterling coming on and getting an assist late on, I think that was really crucial. Nwaneri coming on, scoring, that’s big for him. Even Jakub Kiwior coming on and getting some minutes, Trossard had his best game in a long time on the left-hand side. I was surprised he started over Martinelli.

“Marry that all up together, and I think that’s going to be really strong for Arsenal, because those players now will just have a little bit more confidence than they previously did, because they had been struggling. I think they’ll take an awful lot from it.”

Saka’s stunning opening strike came after the Englishman linked up with captain Odegaard, who now has assists in back-to-back Premier League games since coming back from an ankle injury, and Watts believes that his importance to Arsenal is on par with how fundamental Ballon d’Or winner Rodri is to Man City.

“Having Odegaard back, it’s just so, so important to Arsenal,” Watts added. “You really realise, and we’re seeing it with Man City now and Rodri, we all know Rodri’s an unbelievable footballer, the best, in my view, in his position in the world, deserving winner at the Ballon d’Or, but it’s really not until he’s actually not in the side that you actually realise just how good he is. And it’s the same with Martin Odegaard.

Which Arsenal star has Arteta “underused” this season?
© Imago

“The best players, you actually notice how amazing they are when they’re not there, because of the difference of the team that you’re watching when they’re trying to get through without him. You put Odegaard in that side, the relationship with Saka, you look at the first goal, the understanding is just so, so strong there. And I thought [Jurrien] Timber did really well on the right-hand side, coming in for Ben White, and [Riccardo] Calafiori back on the left-hand side, so he had the natural left footer over there and that allowed Timber to go back to his right.

“It all just worked, and it all just looked really balanced. And it’s the first time we’ve been able to say that for a long time when it comes to Arsenal. Credit to them, credit to Arteta for the bold team selection. He got it right, his substitutions were right, and it was just a very good day.”

Experienced midfielder Jorginho – the oldest outfield player in Arsenal’s ranks at 32 – benefitted from Rice’s recent concern to start in the engine room and was particularly influential in the first half, creating one chance and completing 88% of his passes before his half-time withdrawal after picking up a yellow card.

Watts believes that Arteta has “underused” the former Chelsea man in the current campaign, but he does not anticipate the same starting XI from the win over Forest being the Gunners’ go-to lineup in the future.

“Jorginho is great, by the way, and again, his performance made me… I’ve always thought that Arteta has underused him this season,” Watts added. “I’ve been really surprised at the lack of minutes and when you see him play the way he did in that first 45 minutes before he got replaced, it just made it even stranger, really, that we haven’t seen him utilised more because he’s such a good player.

“In Odegaard’s absence, he’s one of the few players that I think could have helped provide a little bit more creativity, even if it’s from a deeper position. No, when I look at that team, I don’t expect that to be the team going forward.

“I would say that Havertz certainly comes back into the side. I was really surprised at that. I was happy with the performance that Jesus put in, but I was very surprised that Havertz didn’t play and I expect him to come back. I think he’ll play at the weekend at West Ham. I’d be very surprised if we see Jesus there.

“I know Declan Rice wasn’t deemed fit enough to start that game, so although he was on the bench, I think Arsenal were very happy that he didn’t have to come on in that second half and they could give him a little bit of rest. I was recording something after the game in the press box, actually, and Rice came out and was doing a fitness check with one of the fitness coaches. The rest of the substitutes were having their warm-down match that they always do on the pitch after the game, but Rice was on his own with the fitness coach doing sprints up and down.

“So you can see they’re just being very, very careful with Declan. They want to get him back fit and be really strong before he comes back. I think we’ll see some of the big hitters come back, but like I said, I think what they did when they did come on, those players, I think will be really beneficial for Arsenal and the squad.”

Even though Watts expects Arsenal’s team from their win over Forest to be a “one-off”, the Gunners expert has implored Arteta to make a few more changes here and there, as their surprise picks may have contributed to the Tricky Trees’ below-par display.

Asked why Arteta went with the lineup he did, Watts said: “I think it was the fact that he had been working with a lot of those guys back at Colney for the previous two weeks during the international break, and he’d obviously been very impressed by what they’d done during that, because a lot of the internationals like Havertz, like Martinelli, they were left out.

“I think he was obviously been pretty impressed by how Jesus had been playing. He’d been working with Jorginho a lot, maybe looked at him and thought, ‘yeah, you know what, I need to give him a chance.’ Maybe the run they’d been on before the international break, he looked at it and thought we need to just try and shake things up a little bit to get ourselves out of it.

“But I don’t think it’s going to be a long term. I cannot imagine we’re going to see Declan Rice sit warm in the bench for too long and certainly not Kai Havertz as well. I think it was a kind of a mixture of things, I do still look at it more as a more as a one off, but I would like to see him do that more in the future, because I bet that surprised Nuno.

“It’s very easy to predict Arsenal starting 11 a lot of the times when everyone’s fit. And so Arteta, it can really help him, I think, if he does mix it up a little bit more and just catches people by surprise a little bit more going forward. Because, Forest wouldn’t have prepared for that side. And that maybe contributed to Forest just looking a little bit off it on the day.”

Arsenal remain nine points adrift of runaway leaders Liverpool in spite of Saturday’s success, but their deficit to ailing champions Manchester City has been cut down to just the one point thanks to Tottenham Hotspur’s 4-0 obliteration of the holders.

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