More hated than Monday mornings: is this team ruining football right now? | OneFootball

Fabian Hürzeler was barely able to contain himself. After Brighton & Hove Albion’s 0-1 defeat to Arsenal about a week and a half ago, the German coaching talent took aim at both the Gunners and their coach Mikel Arteta.

“Only one team tried to play football,” complained the former FC St. Pauli coach. He added: “I’m proud of how we did it. I love the way we played.”

His frustration was mainly sparked by the extensive time-wasting of the North Londoners. “That’s not football,” Hürzeler ranted, following up with a rhetorical question: “Have you ever seen a goalkeeper go down three times in a Premier League match?” For him, it’s clear: “I never want to be a coach who tries to win in that way.”

The accusations are not entirely unfounded. Data provider ‘Opta’ determined that Arsenal delayed the match in Brighton 59 times for an average of 31.4 seconds each. In total, almost half an hour of net playing time was lost.

To be fair, it must be admitted that other teams in England operate in similar or even higher ranges. Where Arsenal really stands out (negatively) is in time-wasting before corner kicks. On average, the Gunners take 44.5 seconds there. That’s a league-high!

“Haramball” and “Football Terrorism”

Hürzeler is by no means alone in his criticism. On social media, a whole army of Arsenal critics has now gathered. Terms like “Haramball” or “football terrorism” are commonplace. Arteta is even often ironically compared to Osama bin Laden.

Well-known experts also regularly join in. Ex-Manchester United star Paul Scholes has already warned that Arsenal could become “the most boring champions in history.” TV pundit Chris Sutton went a step further, calling them potentially “the ugliest.”

The criticism is by no means limited to time-wasting. Rather, it’s about the fundamental way Arsenal is trying to win the English championship again after 22 years.

Arsenal and the Power of Set Pieces

The core of the system is quickly explained: defensive stability and maximum efficiency from set pieces. Across all competitions, the Gunners have already scored 22 goals from corners.

These situations have been meticulously rehearsed under set-piece guru Nicolas Jover. In almost every corner, several Arsenal players position themselves in the six-yard box and harass the goalkeeper, who in recent months has been reduced to little more than a sitting duck.

The tactic has long since set a trend. Even in the Bundesliga, teams like Borussia Dortmund are copying the principle.

And the numbers show just how much Arsenal benefits from it. 24 of their 59 league goals have come from set pieces, that’s around 41 percent. From open play, however, the Londoners offer significantly less spectacle. In terms of open-play expected goals (expected goals without set pieces), Arsenal only ranks fifth, well behind teams like Chelsea or Manchester City.

The Gunners regularly struggle, especially against deep-lying opponents. Even in the narrow 2-1 win over third-division side Mansfield Town in the FA Cup, this was evident.

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The Defense Holds!

What Arsenal does perfectly, however, is defend. With only 22 goals conceded, the Londoners have the best defense in the league. Even in the Champions League, they have conceded just five goals in nine matches.

This mix of stability, set pieces, and a solid—if by no means outstanding—style of play is enough to compete on four fronts. Arsenal leads the Premier League ahead of Manchester City, finished first in their Champions League group, and is still active in both English cup competitions.

And even though the season is far from over, you simply cannot deny this team its success.

An Arsenal Problem – or a Football Problem?

It is therefore anything but a coincidence that the football philosophy of the 13-time champions is being widely imitated—not just this season. The focus on set pieces, taken to the extreme by Arsenal, has now become standard across the entire country.

Almost every team has its own set-piece coach; last summer, Brentford even promoted theirs to head coach. With resounding success: under Keith Andrews, the Bees are in an outstanding seventh place in the table.

If you want to argue that this philosophy and its associated development are destroying football, it’s hard to pin the blame solely on Arsenal.

The Gunners are at most the perfect and currently most successful embodiment of a mindset that many—especially English—fans strongly dislike. Quite a few observers consider the Premier League product to be as unattractive as it’s been in ages.

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“Suffocating Hate Football” in England

The numbers back this up. This season, 28 percent of all goals are scored from set pieces. Goals from open play are rarer than they have been in six years. At the same time, there are fewer shots, fewer passing combinations, more long throw-ins, and significantly more stoppages.

That’s why prominent voices are sounding the alarm. Liverpool manager Arne Slot recently said: “I no longer enjoy watching the Premier League.”

Former Bayern star Mathys Tel, now at Tottenham Hotspur, also finds the league “boring” at the moment. The British newspaper ‘The Guardian’ recently spoke of “suffocating hate football.”

But in the end, football remains a game in which it’s not the most beautiful who wins, but the cleverest. All Arsenal fans will quite rightly not care in the slightest if “destroying football” was necessary for their first championship since 2004.

This article was translated into English by Artificial Intelligence. You can read the original version in 🇩🇪 here.

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