By Tony Attwood
Arsenal, as you may know, are undefeated in the last dozen games. Ten have been victories, and two were draws.
In their last dozen games, Manchester United have lost three (to Everton, Brighton and Villa) and drawn five, leaving them with four victories. That doesn’t prove that ManU won’t beat Arsenal on Sunday, but it suggests that Arsenal are quite strong favourites. In the last half dozen games, Manchester United have scored eight goals, Arsenal have scored 13 – and that run of six includes a couple of goalless draws.
Of course, the media is getting quite excited about Arsenal actually having two goal scorers available in Gabriel Jesus and Kai Havertz, but seem unsure about Viktor Gyökeres and the fun he has drawing opposition players towards him, thus leaving space for others to move forward. They really don’t get the team game idea.
But then the media have a problem: most of these journalists don’t know how to write about team tactics in a way that they think their audience can appreciate, so they tend to keep it all very simple. Whereas in fact, football isn’t a simple game – and hasn’t been since the brown ball days.
The point is that Mikel Arteta has been buying players not primarily because they can be a left back or an outside right, but rather because they can work within the team he has been so patiently building over the past five years.
Of course, we did have people writing to Untold telling us that Arteta should be sacked after three second-place finishes because he didn’t have a winning mentality – but that is exactly what he has got. The ability to see how victories can be constructed against different opponents, thus ditching the old notion of the preferred first XI, and picking teams specifically on the basis of who Arsenal are playing against.
In essence, Arsenal can put out a forward line that has the opposition defence playing one way, and then with the change of just one, or maybe even two, forwards, the whole game can turn upside down, leaving the opposition defenders unsure where they are going and who they are marking.
Besides, Manchester United are not that good away from home – they have just three wins – but they can eke out draws.
However, against that thought comes the fact that their away goal difference is 22 worse than Arsenal’s at home and their away points total is under half that of Arsenal.
| Team | P | W | D | L | F | A | GD | Pts | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Arsenal home | 11 | 9 | 2 | 0 | 26 | 5 | 21 | 29 |
| 9 | Manchester United away | 11 | 3 | 5 | 3 | 18 | 19 | -1 | 14 |
But when we have a look at the ManU away matches, there is only one defeat, which suggests they are starting to get the hang of this “life outside of Manchester” stuff. On n the other hand, one of their victories was against Wolverhampton and the other was against Crystal Palace. ManU have, however, been quite good of lat,e scraping draws with moderate teams – such as Tottenham, Leeds and Burnley.
However, we must remember that historically, Manchester United are one of those few teams that have beaten Arsenal more than we have beaten them. 102 wins to ManU and 91 to Arsenal. So, not a huge difference, but it will take a few more years to catch up.
But there is another thought to be had. In the last 15 league matches between the two clubs (which takes us from 5 December 2018 to today), Manchester United have beaten Arsenal just twice – and I am including both home and away games. Four games have been drawn, and nine have been Arsenal victories. So advantage Arsenal in recent games.
We might also care to note that those two ManU victories were back in 2021 and 2022. The last even league games between the two (home and away) have resulted in six Arsenal wins. The other was a 1-1 draw at very old Trafford.
| Date | Game | Res | Score |
| 10 Mar 2019 | Arsenal v Manchester United | W | 2-0 |
| 01 Jan 2020 | Arsenal v Manchester United | W | 2-0 |
| 30 Jan 2021 | Arsenal v Manchester United | D | 0-0 |
| 23 Apr 2022 | Arsenal v Manchester United | W | 3-1 |
| 22 Jan 2023 | Arsenal v Manchester United | W | 3-2 |
| 03 Sep 2023 | Arsenal v Manchester United | W | 3-1 |
| 04 Dec 2024 | Arsenal v Manchester United | W | 2-0 |
The last time Man United beat Arsenal on Arsenal’s own ground in the league was way back in 2017. Since then, no, they haven’t managed it at all.
And so if we take that factor and add in the fact that the United players have no idea if they are facing Jesus, Havertz, Gyökeres or any combination of those three, of one or more of them coming on as a substitute, and they will be having a rather difficult job of working out who is doing what. And we haven’t even mentioned Saka and Martinelli. who have been known to score the odd goal.
Arsenal are, of course, the second top scoring team in the league at the moment behind £Manchester£ and 16 of the League teams have let in at least twice as many goals as Arsenal. Here’s the home and away comparison
| Team | P | W | D | L | F | A | GD | Pts | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Arsenal home | 11 | 9 | 2 | 0 | 26 | 5 | 21 | 29 |
| 9 | Manchester United away | 11 | 3 | 5 | 3 | 18 | 19 | -1 | 14 |
More than double the number of points between the two when looked at that way!
