Nottingham Forest 0-0 Arsenal: Calafiori comes closest as Gunners draw another blank

Match report – Player ratings – Arteta reaction – Video

In most contexts, a draw away from home against the team in third when you’re in second isn’t a bad result. In our current context, with our forward line decimated, our form in something of a dip, and goals harder to find than the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, it really isn’t a bad point against a team like Nottingham Forest.

But within that context is our own sense of culpability for making goals that hard to come by, and a diminished enthusiasm for the season as a whole as Liverpool run away with the title. If we’re gonna do context, we have to take all of it into account, and last night – like Leicester and West Ham – felt like another game we endured rather than enjoyed.

To be honest, I think we played better against Forest than we did against either of those two. It wasn’t a million miles better, but we were improved. There seemed to be a bit more energy, a desire to put things right after what happened on Saturday, but the big issue remained: a lack of goal threat, or firepower, whatever you want to call it.

When Mikel Arteta took Riccardo Calafiori off at half-time, I understood it because he’d been on a yellow since the second minute, and he couldn’t run the risk of playing another game down to 10 men for any period. Forest’s route-1 approach was something we dealt with very well for most of this game, but one ball over the top that creates a difficult moment and you could pay the price. So I got why he feared a second yellow for the Italian, who had a couple of difficult moments against Callum Hudson-Odoi, and brought Kieran Tierney on at the break.

However, in doing so we lost something from our attack. Look at the respective heatmaps:

When we had possession in the first half, Calafiori pushed on into the inside-left position, and got into the box frequently. A game like last night’s was one which, if it had been decided by just one moment of individual quality, would have surprised nobody. The Italian almost provided it in the first half with a great turn in the box, and a curling – dare I say Pires-esque – shot which cannoned back off the post with the keeper beaten.

We missed that in the second half, which is no slight on Tierney by the way, and you can ask a bigger question about where we are right now that changing our left-back has an impact on our attack. The answer might be that we are shorn of forward options, and part of Arteta’s solution was to get Calafiori forward, into positions where Forest wouldn’t have expected him to be. It was going ok in that sense, then we had to think again.

We had some corners in the second half, Mikel Merino rose highest at the back post but the keeper made a decent save, and with bodies everywhere, I don’t think the Spaniard could have done much more with his header. Tierney headed one wide, Merino had another header which hit Wood’s hand and went wide, but you can’t give penalties for that.

At the other end Raya made a decent save from the New Zealander before William Saliba produced an outstanding tackle to make up for a difficult clearance which landed at the feet of the Forest striker in our box. All in all though, the home side didn’t really threaten, they lumped it forward at every opportunity but as I’ve said, I think we dealt with most of it really well from a defensive point of view.

Then it was just about whether or not we could make a breakthrough, and there just wasn’t anything on the bench to help us do that. Oleksandr Zinchenko came on at left 8 but made little impact beyond one run which saw him feed Odegaard but he was offside. I was actually glad when the flag went up after the captain had two efforts well blocked, because right now the sight of the ball actually hitting the back of the net and then being disallowed would have been too painful!

Raheem Sterling came on and put in a 15 minutes so bereft of anything it made it abundantly clear why, even in this current forward crisis, the manager is choosing not to use him from the start. There were two young players on the bench, I honestly don’t think either of them could have been worse, but Arteta sees them every day in training and has been willing to use Ethan Nwaneri and Myles Lewis-Skelly with real frequency this season, so maybe that tells us something.

I watched the manager’s post-game interview on TNT Sports, and he seemed a bit tetchy when questioned about why we’re not scoring goals. The answer is pretty obvious, we’re without four forwards, we’re playing a central midfielder as a striker because one of the senior forwards we have is so poor as to be basically unusable, and we have a 17 year old on one wing who – according to Arteta – was suffering from cramp after 45 minutes because the physical load is too heavy for him at this fledgling point in his career.

In his press conference, he was a little more open, saying:

We tried and adapting the quality that we have, how we can help the team to create different things, to have threats from different qualities, probably they are not about arriving in the box and creating some magic moments, they are other kind of players. Try to adapt to that and do the best that we can. I know that what’s lacking is that piece up there and I just said, there’s a lot to play for and we need to find the solution to unlock it.

With some time to think between now and our trip to PSV on Tuesday, he’s going to have to dream up something else, because you can be sure they will have looked at our attacking toils in the last three games and will plan accordingly. In Europe in particular, clean sheets are good currency in knock-out rounds, so this is not a tie we can take for granted in any way. What he does, who he uses, how he does it, I don’t know at this point, but it’s job to find that solution. I really hope he does.

For more on last night and our situation in general, we’ll have an Arsecast for you in a little while, so stand by for that. We’ll also round-up the week’s Premier League action in The 30 over on Patreon, so if you’re not already a member, why not give it a go? For just $6 per month, you get instant access to that and all the exclusive content we have over there.

For now though, have a good one.

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