Arsenal just showed that duels win football games

Football, for all of its team tactics and strategy, is often a game of 1v1 duels

Arsenal scored a 96th minute winner against Newcastle to win 2-1 courtesy of Gabriel’s leap to nod in Martin Odegaard’s corner. And the nature of the goal was very fitting of the game. A congested penalty area dominated by the height and strength of Arsenal’s imposing squad clearing the way for Gabriel to rise above the rest and head the ball into an essentially empty net. Arsenal have now scored 36 goals from corners in the Premier League since the beginning of the 23/24 season which is 15 more than anyone else in that time (both Chelsea and Tottenham have scored 21).

But the entire game was full of these kinds of physical duels. Newcastle boast a physically imposing squad with players like Dan Burn, Sven Botman, and Malick Thiaw in their defense along with maybe the most physical midfield three in the Premier League of Joelinton, Tonali, and Bruno Guimaraes. The addition of Nick Woltemade makes them even more physically impressive and I touched on that in my article: Nick Woltemade could take Newcastle to new heights.

As for Arsenal, they have been gradually building a squad of physical monsters over the last few years. Gabriel, Saliba, Calafiori, Rice, Gyokeres, Merino, White, and Kai Havertz (as well as some others) are all over 6ft tall and their physicality is a big part of what makes them effective players. And they play into this very well.

They will often, to the despair of those on social media and some fans, play games with 4 conventional centre-backs in their backline (an idea Arteta likely took from Pep Guardiola who did the same at Manchester City). Today, the 4 were Jurrien Timber, Gabriel, Cristhian Mosquera (who was replaced by William Saliba at half-time), and Riccardo Calafiori. This use of centre-backs allows for Arsenal to assert dominance in many of their games because they have bigger bodies and defensive minds defending for them even in wide areas where many teams will have smaller, more offensively inclined wingbacks. They may sacrifice something going forward, but Arteta doesn’t seem to mind that trade-off. For him, he would rather have Calafiori win the majority of his duels and offer less going forward than a traditional left-back, like former Gunner Oleksandr Zinchenko, who may lose the majority of his duels but create 1-2 extra chance(s). Some say that Arteta is very negative for this, which may be true, but he seems to value duel-winning before all else and it looks like it has paid off when you consider the success Arsenal have had over the last couple of years.

So, even before the first ball was kicked, we knew that this game was likely going to be physical and it definitely lived up to those expectations. It was absolutely littered with important duels and physical play. This was not the kind of game won by intricate play or swift passing patterns; this game was won by brute force. All three goal were headers; and all three goals came shortly after set pieces with the players stacked in the box. In this game, the most influential moments were duels that were won.

Woltemade winning his aerial duel with Gabriel for his goal, Merino winning his aerial duel against Botman for his goal, as well as Gabriel and Arsenal winning their collective duels for the winner too. And on that final goal, the importance of the entire team is what made the goal possible. Saliba successfully blocking Pope from claiming the cross was integral, and all of the commotion in the six yard box meant that no Newcastle players were even able to jump to attempt to win the duel.

Throughout the game, the quality of defending was impeccable. Gabriel won 11/15 duels, Botman won 6/9 and Thiaw won 6/8. This meant that Gyokeres won a measly 3/14 duels and Woltemade won none of his 9 duels (although I would argue that his goal was a successful duel win against Gabriel). 

But beneath the duel stats, those two forwards held their own in the first half as they were able to maintain possession well for their teams with impressive physical hold-up play and short passing. Gyokeres was particularly impressive in the first half as he was the key to linking many of Arsenal’s counters with important touches and passes. He struggled more in the second half as Botman and Thiaw became literal brick walls and he finished the game with only 62% of his passes completed. He did create two chances though (T-2nd on his team) implying that he was still influential in Arsenal’s attacks despite the low pass completion percentage.

Woltemade was also impressive as he reinforced the arguments I made in that aforementioned article with swift first-touch passing and layoffs. He ended the game with an 82% pass accuracy, but the lack of chances created (0) and passes into the final third (1) indicate that he was unable to truly impose himself in the progression of attacks.

But ultimately, Woltemade scored Newcastle’s only goal; and that is a testament to the idea that winning duels are maybe the important aspect of winning football. He might not have been involved in sweeping passages of play or part of cute and incisive moves, but he won a duel that led to him scoring his team’s only goal. If he had lost that duel, Newcastle likely go home without scoring because their interplay was largely unimpressive. And for Arsenal, without Merino and Gabriel winning their headers for their goals, they may have lost this game as they too didn’t create many clear-cut opportunities to score from intricate play.

So, for all the joys of fancy footwork and cute passing, Arsenal’s win over Newcastle reinforces a very important idea: football is fundamentally a game of duels and the team that wins its duels, is better placed to win football matches.

(all duel, chance creation, and passing stats can be found on fotmob.com here)