I watched every goal Arsenal have conceded to find the problem - and discovered two glaring issues

It’s fair to say that Arsenal’s season isn’t quite going to plan. Having narrowly missed out on their first Premier League title in 20 years last season, it was widely expected that the Gunners would be hot on Manchester City’s heels again – but a three-match winless run in the league which included defeats to Bournemouth and Newcastle United has rather derailed their campaign.

That means that Mikel Arteta and his team are already seven points down on early league leaders Liverpool and even out of the top four. All of which begs the question – what exactly is going wrong? And what does Arteta need to change in order to get things back on track?

In order to try and get an insight into Arsenal’s issues, I went back through the footage to watch all 11 goals that they have conceded in the Premier League this season, looking for common themes and concerns – and found two areas in which the Gunners will have to improve if they want to mount a serious title challenge once more.

The first and more evident problem is with their ability to defend set pieces. Last year, Arsenal shipped just seven set piece goals across the whole Premier League campaign, including penalties – this time around, with a quarter of the season in the books, they have already conceded four. Only Wolverhampton Wanderers and Southampton, both relegation candidates as it stands, have allowed more.

When combined with a few other goals – John Stones’ equaliser in the 2-2 draw against Manchester City in a packed goalmouth, for instance, and the penalty they conceded against Inter Milan in the Champions League which came from a handball at another set piece situation – and there is serious cause for concern over Arsenal’s inability to control a crowded and chaotic penalty box, or to handle high crosses.

The other worry, however, can be picked up on by watching the first two goals that Arsenal let in this season, against Brighton & Hove Albion and Manchester City respectively. Against Brighton, Arsenal’s defence was undone by a long-range through ball, played directly between Gabriel Magalhães and William Saliba, which allowed João Pedro to break the lines and score. Then, against City, the same thing – another through ball, from less far out this time, right between Gabriel and Saliba and into the path of the onrushing Erling Haaland.

Since then, Arsenal have twice more conceded as a result of direct passes which cut the defence out – once when a lofted through ball to Cameron Archer gave him space to control and score for Southampton, and again when Liverpool equalised thanks to a long pass down the channel by Trent Alexander-Arnold to Darwin Núñez, who then squared to Mohamed Salah to pick up a potentially crucial point at the Emirates.

There have been other occasions when Arsenal have found themselves in hot water thanks to either long passes down the channels or quick through balls between defenders. In the 2-0 defeat to Bournemouth, Saliba was sent off after being caught the wrong side of Evanilson from a through ball right down the middle, with a large gap between the centre-halves. Later in the same game, a long ball down the left flank which should have been dealt with resulted in a penalty after Ben White made a meal of the situation.

That, in effect, is five of 11 goals and a straight red card coming about as a result of failures to defend direct passes – and given the current tactical climate in the Premier League, that could prove to be a very significant deficiency.

Up and down the league, teams are increasingly looking for quick balls forward and for counter-attacks, with direct passing of every kind very much in vogue as managers look to take advantage of a trend towards high lines. Right across the league, even traditionally possession-first teams are seeing less of the ball and making more aggressive moves with it.

Arteta himself is certainly across that trend. Arsenal’s 50.1% possession so far is a huge 8.1% down on last season, and as a team they have taken a massive 130 touches less per game thus far. That’s an especially large change compared to other teams which is probably exacerbated by the amount of time the Gunners have spent with ten men on the field – discipline is certainly another concern – but still evidence that Arteta is looking to make the same adaptations as most other managers in the top flight.

But Arteta’s awareness of the shifts in tactical focus in the league doesn’t mean that he has adapted to them correctly, and direct passing has been a recurring problem for the defence. There are tweaks that can be made, of course – a deeper defensive line would make the team less vulnerable to balls over the top, and a narrow back line would leave less room for through balls in between the centre-halves – but there are trade-offs.

It may also be that Arsenal aren’t especially well-equipped to take advantage of opposing high lines themselves. They lack a ‘true’ number nine who can play off the shoulder of the last man and latch onto those same direct passes. In other words, there’s an argument that the Premier League’s strategic wind is blowing in a direction that the current Arsenal squad is not all that well equipped to handle.

These are, at least, eminently fixable issues, and Arteta has shown on several occasions in the past that he isn’t afraid to rip up a style and set-up that isn’t getting results and come back with something new. Last season, after the damaging defeats to Fulham and West Ham United over the Christmas period, Arteta switched away from a narrow system which pulled the left-back into midfield and widened and re-balanced the field, with improved results immediately following. A similar change of vision may be required this year.

The bad news is that a great deal of damage has already been done, and Arsenal have very little room to stumble for the rest of the season – and are already reliant on mistakes by Liverpool and Manchester City going forward. As long as the defence remains vulnerable to through balls and long passes, they will continue to concede more goals than they want, and results will suffer accordingly. Arteta needs to find a way to ameliorate their weakness if he wants to finally bring the Premier League title to North London.