FA Premier League
ARSENAL 0
BURNLEY 0

BURNLEY are perhaps the poorest team Arsenal have hosted in the league this season: they are good at some rough stuff and heading balls away from their box, but the lowly position they occupy in the table is not a grand injustice.

The fact then that they could with relative ease repel Arsenal this afternoon, then, was another worrying sign of the club’s progress – or lack of it – under manager Mikel Arteta. Once again, the manager sent them his players out with lofty aspirations of total football, playing the ball out of defence and hogging possession.

But the visitors were more than happy to watch the Arsenal defenders exchange passes and take an age to reach the halfway line.  There was a complacency about Arsenal, a sort of assumption that the goal, and the win, would come sooner or later, so there was no need to rush. Compare that to the rapid intensity of the clubs chasing the major honours.

The tepid nature of any advance meant that by the time the Gunners reached the edge of the box, Burnley had organised a bus of defenders and midfielders to block any cross or shot. Fairly simple stuff.

You’d think Arsenal might have been working on a scenario that the bottom club would come to the Emirates Stadium with the idea of chiselling out point. Remember Norwich and Watford both had a go here at that this season and Arteta’s Arsenal could only squeeze out 1-0 wins against teams others have thrashed. If there were plans hatched in training, it was hard to spot them.

Put simply, Arsenal did not seem to have a clue about how to unlock the puzzle and the old phrase ‘they could’ve played all night’ sprang to mind.

On countless occasions, Gabriel Martinelli was found in space on the wing but got held up on the edge of the box and was soon pushing passes back to the centre circle for Gabriel, the centre back, to start the forward play again.

Bukayo Saka was perhaps the only one who realised that some pace and dribble was needed to pull Burnley out of their bolted formation. His shooting was a wayward as his colleagues whenever he had earned himself some space, however.

The best chance to end this miserable stalemate came when Emile Smith Rowe outran the visitors’ backline and set up Alexandre Lacazette, only to see the French striker steer the ball wide.

Before time, there were some thrashes at goal and a few blocked shot but Nick Pope hardly found himself needing to stretch. Lacazette gestured at a generally noisy crowd that he want to hear more encouragement; but it was the supporters who deserved the more energetic response.

Arsenal did not have the cleverness to cut through, meaning Martin Odegaard’s looping free-kick, which landed on the roof of the goal came to be one of the closer efforts. It was missing from the moment it left his foot.

Afterwards, Arteta seemed surprised that Arsenal had not blasted out of the blocks, as if the overly cautious approach hasn’t been a feature of the season and how his team often start; see also. the FA Cup defeat at Nottingham Forest.

Fatigue was blamed, and the efforts invested in midweek when the Gunners lost here to Liverpool in the Carabou Cup semi-final.

“It was slow and we didn’t play forward enough and didn’t have enough urgency. Probably because of Thursday, it could be one of the reason,” he said.

“Afterwards we picked the game up and started to get better, and certainly the second half was completely different. We were much more dynamic, we had more penetration, we played forward and we had better positions  in behind and the width.

“We created a number of situations, shots, crosses, but to win this match you need to have a different level of quality, and we lacked that today. With the amount of situations we generated, you need a spark, and someone has to win you the game.”

ARSENAL: Ramsdale, White, Holding, Gabriel, Tierney, Lokonga, Odegaard, Smith Rowe (Nketiah 77), Saka, Martinelli
SUBS NOT USED: Alebiosu, Bierith, Chambers, Giraud-Hutchinso, Leno, M’Hand, Patino, Tavares

BURNLEY: Pope, Pieters, Roberts, Tarkowski, Mee, Brownhill, Westwood, Lennon, McNeill, Vydra, Rodriguez (Gudmundsson 83)
SUBS NOT USED: Bardsley, Collins, Cork, Hennessey, Long, Lowton, Stephens, Thomas