After the first five minutes last night, seeing that Port Vale had got the ball into our final third a couple of times and an excited Vale Park home set of supporters had ratcheted up the noise a little bit, I wondered whether we’d get a bit of an open cup tie unfold in Stoke. This was a big day for them, a chance to test themselves against one of the country’s top sides and maybe they would ‘have a go’.

Much has been made of Man City’s approach (ironically not enough about the negative side, because that is only reserved for The Arsenal in the media) last weekend, but an interesting press conference with Pep enlightened many to the fact that he didn’t want to play in such a low block, but was instead merely subjected to it by the dominance of Arsenal and the fact they were a goal up and had something to defend. Well last night Port Vale may not have had a goal to hold on to, but they had designs on not opening the floodgates, so what we got was a side who were just content to low block and leave Arsenal with the ball in midfield and at the back. The onus was on us to break them down and we had to find the solutions with the players that were selected on the night.

And I think the general consensus pre game was that it was a good side that went out there. Arteta rang the changes and made nine from the weekend, with the only one that had me personally slightly worried about was the inclusion of Saka at right wing. I was apprehensive mainly because of the fear he might get clobbered and early on in the second half he did go down which had most of our hearts in our mouths. But if you think about the concept of ‘loading’ for players that have come back from injury like Saka has, then it made sense, because just after 60 minutes he was taken off.

So that’s:

  • 45 minutes against Man City
  • 60 minutes against Port Vale
  • 75+ minutes against Newcastle?

When you look at it like that it makes sense and Arteta confirmed he’ll be ready to go against Newcastle so ultimately it was a good call. I have to say I have absolutely no idea why he was booed by them last night. I’ve seen suggestions that it was a reaction to a tackle but he was booed from minute one, so that doesn’t stack up. I also remembered halfway through the first half that Port Vale is in Stoke, so that explains a lot, because the Orcs of that town were clearly force bellowing incoherent noises for large parts of the game and booing is the easiest way to make displeased sounds I guess.

Thankfully they were kept relatively quiet by the fact that their defensive plan was essentially rendered redundant on eight minutes, as Eze opened his scoring after a Marinelli flick towards MLS that was dummied to leave Ebs in a fair bit of space to open his body up and tuck it home from just outside the six yard box. Scoring early is fun. It’s not something we do enough of because teams usually just low block us, so if I was able to give any advice to the Arsenal players pre game, it would be “do more of the early goal stuff please”.

The thing about facing a lower league position when you score early though, is that even though it is one-nil to The Arsenal, these days a team like Port Vale kind of know the jig is up. With the defence we have you aren’t getting many chances, maybe half chances and with all due respect to them given the quality of players they have, i’ll be honest and say I thought the game was pretty much done by then. The rest of the first half played out and let’s be honest here, the most interesting thing about it was the stats they kept showing up to underline the dominance. Sky showed one at one point that said we’d completed 211 passes to Port Vale’s 21. Sofa Score had our first half passes at 425 to 119. But despite all of that dominance on the ball, Stoke…I mean Port Vale…were content to sit in their own third and just keep the score down and be hard to beat, relying on the occasional long throw if they could get it.

By the time the game had ended the score line was respectable, but as a football match this wasn’t really one for the ages, if we’re all honest. Arteta made some subs, Leo got a tidy finish from a central position, Big Vik probably should have been put in from a superb ball from Dowman and Arsenal had complete domination of a Port Vale side who knew they were beaten a solid hour and 20 minutes earlier. The stats underlined this; 81% possession for The Arsenal, 11 shots to Port Vale’s 3, 789 passes to their 183. It was a comfortable evening that had maybe one or two half chances for them.

And yet, there was still an element for me of “hmmm” about the game. On the night we only forced their ‘keeper into two saves. We had two big chances and when you dominate as much as we did, you’d hope to have more than just 11 attempts on goal through the 90+ minutes. Look, I’m not going to think too hard on it; Port Vale sat back and just tried not to be beaten too hard and maybe the Arsenal players were kind of happy to keep the game respectable, not pick up any injuries by just holding on to the ball and getting back on the bus home. But I think the recent games that we’ve had and sometimes our lack of volume chance creation, just has a little niggle in the back of my head that I’m worried about. We play Newcastle at the weekend and I suspect it will be the same again.

Much of it may be down to the hard start we’ve had and perhaps that is impacting the low chance creation, but I can’t help but have this feeling in the background, which I’m hoping we can eradicate with a good performance at the weekend.

Catch you all tomorrow as we prepare for that one.