Arsenal Analysed: How we earned late Leicester win

Two late Mikel Merino goals saw us extend our unbeaten run to 15 matches at Leicester City, and keep us within touching distance of leaders Liverpool.

But what factors proved to be the key reasons for us turning one point into three in the final 10 minutes? Adrian Clarke has pored through the footage and stats to reveal more:

Excellence from Ethan

Hitting the woodwork twice with rasping efforts, Ethan Nwaneri was unlucky not to score at the King Power Stadium in a superb man-of-the-match performance. 

Dangerous every time he got the ball, and always willing to run at defenders, the 17-year-old was our go-to player when we were looking to make that all-important breakthrough. Curling a delightful cross onto the head of Merino in the 81st minute, it was no surprise that a moment of pure quality from Nwaneri helped us score that crucial opening goal.

Nwaneri’s stats from this display were off-the-scale impressive. Topping a whole host of matchday rankings, his influence on this three-point haul was huge:

Teammates trust Nwaneri to deliver, and as a consequence, he enjoyed a regular supply line of service. Martin Odegaard (13 passes) and Jurrien Timber (10 passes) found him most, and interestingly many of those balls found him in pockets of space infield from the touchline.

Nwaneri’s natural urge is to drift inside, and that made him difficult for Leicester to mark. His chalkboard from the game indicates how he made this a hybrid right wing/attacking midfielder role of his own:

Myles keeps us level

For all our sustained pressure inside the Foxes half, we needed a tremendous intervention from Myles Lewis-Skelly to prevent us going 1-0 down in the 73rd minute.

Pouncing on a loose pass, Jordan Ayew raced down the left before aiming for Bobby De Cordova-Reid with a low far post centre, with a stream of defenders backpedalling. It would have been an easy tap-in, but our left back got his positioning and decision-making spot on to divert the ball behind for a corner.

Watchful, and calm in the moment that mattered, it was a very important moment. Eight minutes later we opened the scoring.

Makeshift Merino

He has never played as a centre forward before, but two-goal hero Merino proved he can be a wonderful option for Mikel Arteta in that position between now and the end of the season.

His physical stature makes him an ideal player to hold the ball up for supporting runners as he showed in this clip, cushioning a pass for Declan Rice who in turn set up Nwaneri for a breakaway effort that struck the post:

Using a central striker who is stylistically similar to Kai Havertz makes sense, as the German provides a platform that suits Arteta’s preferred style of play. Being able to go direct to a big man up front, also allows us to launch a greater number of sweeping counter-attacks, and we bore witness to that late on in this contest.

Merino is also a player who is known for crashing the box to apply quality finishes, and that trait made the difference in this game. Blessed with a smart footballing brain, Merino’s positioning was key to his success. Here, he stands between the Foxes full-back and central defender, looking to run off the shoulder of the man in front of him:

The ball does not come to him on this occasion, but from the same phase of play, the Spaniard looped his run around the back of the home defence to get into an onside position for the next delivery.

Stationing himself in a nearly identical spot behind the other centre-back, he was primed and ready to get on the end of Nwaneri’s delicious inswinger just seconds later. This intuitive movement suggests Merino fully understands the centre-forward role.

The way our summer signing held his ground at the far post before converting Leandro Trossard’s gorgeous left-footed cross was also a great sign. Mature in his thinking, he stayed in space rather than sprinting into the danger zone too early:

skipper sparkles

Martin Odegaard produced a vibrant display, and his determination not to leave the King Power Stadium with anything other than a victory shone through.

On and off the ball he didn’t stop moving. Covering 11.93km (a match-high by a wide margin) our captain also made a highly impressive 386 intensive runs. In possession he was also the dominant presence, executing more passes than anybody else on the pitch.

We also saw glimpses of creative flair from the Norwegian. He played a gorgeous scoop pass to Trossard that could easily have assisted a goal early in the match, as well as a divine one-touch flick pass into Raheem Sterling’s path early on in the second period.

Late on it was also Odegaard’s balance and awareness that sparked the breakaway second goal too. Holding onto the ball under duress on the edge of his own box, he slipped a genial angled pass between blue shirts that released Riccardo Calafiori for the counter:

Crosses and Counters

A quarter of our Premier League goals this season have been cross-assisted, and we added two more to our total of 13. No other side in the division has scored as many goals from crosses, with only Nottingham Forest (10) and Liverpool (9) finding the back of the net with more headers than us (8).

Trossard once again showed his class with both feet by curling a supremely accurate left-wing ball to the far post for Merino to convert:

That late strike came from a rapid breakaway attack, which is a tactic Arteta would love to use more often in games. As a possession-based side that encounters a lot of low-block-focused opponents this is not easy to manufacture, but there is no question we are among the Premier League’s best exponents of a counter-attack goal.

We convert more than a third of our shots from fast breaks into goals, so we need to try and find ways to carve out more situations of this ilk. From crosses and counters, this side are often lethal.