As predicted, Arsenal arrived in Naples with a heavily rotated side with 4 changes from the weekends game with Chelsea – Mikel Merino, Viktor Gyokeres, Eberechi Eze and Piero Hincapie all coming into the starting XI.
In a hostile stadium, against a Napoli team with plenty of experience and attacking quality, the changes made little difference. Mikel Arteta’s side were simply better.
The final score was only 1-0, thanks to Martin Ødegaard’s superb strike in the 75th minute, but the scoreboard was doing Napoli a considerable favour. Arsenal had chances to put this game beyond doubt long before the captain finally found the net.
And that is perhaps the most encouraging part of the evening.
This wasn’t Arsenal at full strength desperately hanging on for a famous away victory. This was a rotated Arsenal side controlling a Champions League match in Naples as though it were a routine Saturday afternoon fixture.
There was no great sense of Arsenal needing time to settle. The ball was moved around with the usual patience, Napoli were pushed backwards and the Gunners repeatedly found spaces between and around the home side’s midfield.
The only thing missing was the finish.
Arsenal created enough opportunities to have been comfortably ahead before half-time, with Mikel Merino among those unable to convert. The second half followed much the same pattern: Arsenal continued to dictate, while Napoli struggled to turn possession into anything remotely resembling sustained pressure.
For all the talk beforehand about the difficulty of playing in Naples, Arsenal made the occasion look surprisingly ordinary.
That is not an insult to Napoli. It is a compliment to Arsenal.
Perhaps the biggest takeaway is what the performance says about the squad – Arteta made significant changes, yet the structure remained.
The pressing remained. The control remained. The defensive discipline remained. Most importantly, the expectation that Arsenal would dominate the ball and territory remained. This is what squad development is supposed to look like.
You don’t build a team capable of competing for major honours simply by having eleven excellent players. You build a squad in which the standards don’t collapse when you rotate three, four or five positions.
Against Napoli, Arsenal looked like a team with depth rather than a team forced to compromise because of it. And then there was the captain.
Martin Ødegaard has started this season looking like a man determined to remind everyone exactly how good he is.
He has now scored four goals in five games, and this one was arguably the best of the lot. After Arsenal worked the ball into a dangerous position, Ødegaard found the space outside the box and produced a superb first-time strike that flew away from the goalkeeper and in off the post.
It was the sort of goal that had been threatening to arrive all evening.
The Norwegian was also central to almost everything Arsenal did well, creating six chances and completing five passes that broke Napoli’s defensive line.
There was something particularly pleasing about seeing the captain take responsibility when Arsenal needed someone to turn dominance into a result.
There will be complaints that Arsenal should have scored more. And some have complained that we will not achieve anything this season without a new striker. That is unfair. We heard the same last season and won the league.
The big misses against Napoli were by Bukayo Saka, Merino and Hincapie. Having a better striker on the pitch would not have seen these guys snap up their fairly easy chances. And these fans seem to have a mythical striker who is tall, strong, quick and can score, whilst pressing and being involved in the build up. He does not exist.
There should also be considerable credit for the other side of the equation – Napoli managed just one second-half shot. One.
Arsenal didn’t merely prevent Napoli from scoring. They largely prevented Napoli from playing. And that is the bit that should worry Arsenal’s Champions League opponents.
You can survive a team that creates one or two chances. You can hope they miss them. But when Arsenal can produce 26 shots and around 4.1 expected goals while conceding roughly 0.3 xG, and do so with a significantly altered XI, it starts to look rather more serious.
The scoreline says narrow victory.
The performance says something else entirely.
If there is one criticism, it is obvious.
Arsenal should have killed the game.
There were enough opportunities to turn this into a 2-0 or 3-0 victory, and the longer you leave an opponent alive in a Champions League away game, the more opportunity you give them to produce one moment of nonsense.
Thankfully, Napoli never found it.
And Arsenal’s ability to remain calm despite failing to convert their superiority was itself encouraging.
They didn’t panic.
They didn’t start forcing everything.
They kept playing their football.
Eventually, the goal came.
The Champions League is about surviving difficult nights, but it is also about making difficult nights look less difficult than they actually are.
Arsenal did that in Naples.
The result will go down as three points.
The performance may prove more significant.
If this is what a heavily rotated Arsenal side can produce away from home in Europe, the rest of the squad should be feeling rather confident about their chances of getting plenty of football this season.
And Arsenal’s European rivals should probably be feeling rather less confident.
DJ
She Wore A Yellow Ribbon 