Premier League 2018/19: Arsenal vs Wolves: Are Arsenal losing momentum?

This post originally featured on our comprehensive Arsenal analysis sister site, wearethearsenal.com.

A third consecutive draw for the Arsenal found the fans wondering is it just tiredness or the Londoners are getting back to their old habits around Christmas? This time, Wolverhampton Wanderers managed to stumble Unai Emery’s side and the worrying thing is that the team lacked energy and enthusiasm.

The Wolves manager Nuno Espirito Santos seemed like he had a perfect vision of how he could get the three points out of this game and his players were doing good, but their plans were ruined in the 86th minute.

Bernd Leno was undoubtedly the best player for the Gunners and with a lot of support from Lucas Torreira and a late equalizer by Mkhitaryan, the team managed to keep the result 1:1 and keep their unbeaten run in 16 games.

But was it all a matter of tiredness or did Nuno manage to outplay Emery, tactically?

Let’s take a moment and give Nuno credit

As you may know, Wolves’ manager Nuno has deservedly been named Manager of the Month for September (with Unai Emery being nominated too). His team just got promoted to the Premier League but are already comfortably sitting in the middle of the table. Wolves started the season pretty solid and had three wins and one draw in the month of September but then it slowly started to fall apart. The team had been defeated in three consecutive games and seemed to have some struggles in the final third and couldn’t take advantage of the opportunities they created.

As it happened (in my opinion) against Tottenham, this weekend, Wolverhampton were the better team – tactically and performance-wise. The Arsenal formation wasn’t of surprise (4-2-3-1) and I bet that this is what Nuno was waiting for. His team had mastered the counter-attacks and that is pretty much what defines their performance. And Unai Emery’s preferred scheme did them a favour when it comes to spaces and opportunities to do that. The created spaces formed by Lucas Torreira and Granit Xhaka supporting the full-backs making runs on the flanks were immediately used by the Wanderers and they managed to create some chances.

The Wolves ended up with only 29% possession of the ball, but that is actually what the team is good at  wait for their opponents to leave a gap and make a quick turnover. Their 3-4-3 switching to 5-4-1 usually works out perfectly against teams with a highly positioned defensive line where they use these spaces to quickly send them out wide.

They managed to form seven counter-attacks against Arsenal and four of them ended with shots. That is what is called “waiting for the right moment. The total shots they produced was 13 as five of them were on target and two were blocked. That is why you never have to believe to the stats when it comes to possession. Nuno Espirito Santos is a master of the compact play. And I am actually surprised that Emery “the video king” wasn’t prepared for that. Both full-backs didn’t manage to keep an eye on their defensive responsibilities while going forward, especially Kolasinac and then the centre-backs weren’t able to cover them up.

Emery