#45 - Unsung heroes shine in Spurs win

Martinelli, Partey and Timber, amongst others, had some eye-catching statistics in Arsenal's huge win over Tottenham on Sunday

Well, last week’s newsletter aged well!

After Odegaard’s injury, I looked at how Arsenal could line up to defeat Spurs. Arteta went with exactly that approach and it paid off.

I took a closer look at the stats from the game to highlight that some unsung heroes shined in a game where Arsenal were missing crucial men.

Martinelli electric but lacking end product

Martinelli dovetailed with Jurrien Timber very well in the build up, and the Brazilian had Pedro Porro on toast. He completed a huge 6 take ons (8 attempted). Nobody else managed more than 2 on the pitch.

He also notched up the most ball recoveries on the pitch (6) and was very important with his energy and defensive positioning to help keep Spurs shut out.

But his end product continues to be concerning. Particularly the moment where he broke free of the backline and failed to produce either a convincing finish or square ball to Bukayo Saka.

Jurrien Timber

This was a fantastic introduction to the North London Derby for Timber. He showed fantastic fight and discipline, winning 3/4 tackles (most for Arsenal) and 5 ball recoveries (only Martinelli more), despite picking up an early yellow card.

Kai Havertz

Kai was majestic. His ability off the ball is so so good and you can see why elite managers like Arteta and Germany’s Nagelsmann are such big fans.

He’s probably now entering the stage where he’s not so much of an unsung hero, but it goes without saying that he is one of Arsenal’s very best and most important players now. His ability to play a number of roles gives Arteta such flexibility to tackle situations like he faced last weekend.

Kai was involved in a massive 21 duels, often acting as the outball for Arsenal to get around the Spurs press, he managed to win 12 of those, despite often being massively outnumbered.

Playing in a bit of a 4-4-2 block, Kai showed his defensive qualities too with a huge 5 clearances and 2 tackles, as well as getting 2 headed shots on target at the other end.

David Raya

A note on Raya. The calmness this man brings to our backline is huge. There’s so much he does that doesn’t show up in the data but that clearly helps Arsenal perform better.

Since Raya has been fully established as our #1, he’s been near faultless and deserves enormous credit for what he is doing to add both quality and calmness to a backline that in the past had been erratic and crumbled in intimidating atmospheres.

Jorginho and Partey

There was understandable concern when these lined up together at the heart of Arsenal’s midfield, especially against a Tottenham side that thrives in transition.

Jorginho, yet to play a minute this season, and Partey, littered with injury issues and bypassed too easily at times.

Whilst they were far from perfect, the duo both put in 90 minutes of incredible hard work to get Arsenal over the line in this game.

Jorginho deserves credit just for managing to get through the 90 minutes, and Arteta needs to try and keep him involved so that if situations like this arise again, he’s a bit sharper.

Partey on the other hand is now regularly seeing 90 minutes. It’s almost as if Arteta is testing the Ghanaian’s hamstrings in the final year of his contract. So far, they are holding up nicely.

He looks in the best physical shape of his career, and won 7/7 duels against Spurs (5 ground duels, 2 aerial duels).

What did you think of the Arsenal players performances against Tottenham? You can rate them yourselves, see the fans averages and my ratings, over on the website.