Arsenal’s Secret Friendlies Are a Good Thing
On Tuesday, Arsenal played Queens Park Rangers in a behind-closed-doors friendly at London Colney. The match finished 4-3, with the Gunners allegedly going down 1-0 to QPR before scoring three unanswered goals, allowing QPR to equalize, and then adding a winner to seal it. According to Dan Critchlow, Emile Smith-Rowe, Joe Willock, and Mohamed Elneny were among the goalscorers. With Alexandre Lacazette, Willian, Nicolas Pepe, and Mesut Ozil all having returned to training the day before, it is likely they also featured in the friendly. Lacazette’s presence was confirmed by a video Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang posted that day. However, not much else is known about the game, as Arsenal did not stream the match or make highlights available, and reportedly asked QPR to do the same.
Yesterday, Arsenal played another secretive friendly, this time against Aston Villa. This match was played at the Emirates Stadium and resulted in a 3-2 win to the visitors, with Aubameyang scoring both the Gunners’ goals. As with the QPR friendly, the game was not streamed and at the time of writing no highlights or video footage have been made available publicly. However, Arsenal have allowed several in-game photos of players to be accessed by the world at large. Based on these images it appears that Willian, Ozil, Lacazette, Hector Bellerin, Cedric, William Saliba, and even Dani Ceballos all featured as well.
Many Arsenal fans have been frustrated by their club’s commitment to confidentiality regarding these two matches. For instance, Charles Watts of Goal took to Twitter to exclaim his dissatisfaction with how the club has handled last week’s exhibitions, stating, “No idea why a preseason friendly has to be so shrouded in mystery.” Starved for content at the height of transfer season, fans don’t seem for the most part to understand why the club isn’t sharing details about recent preseason matches. Many seem to consider it a mistake for Arsenal to be so reluctant to even acknowledge these friendlies. But the club’s sudden secrecy concerning preseason matches is actually something to be excited about.
One thing that isn’t a secret right now is how financially restricted Arsenal Football Club is. It’s been about a month since the club proposed 55 redundancies and additionally terminated the employment of several scouts, including head of recruitment Francis Cagigao. The club then signed Willian on a free transfer, acquired Gabriel Magalhaes for a fee believed to be only £25 million, and then brought in Dani Ceballos on a second consecutive season-long loan. Additionally, it has been widely reported that Arsenal have looked to offload several players, making Sokratis, Rob Holding, Ainsley Maitland-Niles, Emi Martinez, Lucas Torreira, Bellerin, Elneny, and Lacazette all available to other clubs for the right price. This is because the club has to sell players in order to raise funds that would allow them to sign their two main priorities in this transfer window, Thomas Partey and Houssem Aouar. With Arsenal thus far having found wheeling and dealing in a pandemic-stricken financial landscape rather difficult, the odds of the current squad being what head coach Mikel Arteta has to make do with until at least January are higher than most would care to admit.
In the meantime, Arsenal’s competition for the Champions League places have spent money and strengthened. Chelsea have now signed Hakim Ziyech, Timo Werner, Kai Havertz, and Ben Chilwell for massive fees. Manchester United have secured the services of Donny van de Beek, while still chasing Jadon Sancho and having reportedly been offered the chance to sign Sergio Reguilon. Even Wolves have just signed Fabio Silva for approximately £33 million. While Arsenal’s roster has also improved this summer, they have so far had a much less notable transfer window than other clubs in the top eight.
At a time when Arsenal’s main competitors are splurging on players as casually as one orders a Frappuccino, Mikel Arteta understandably must do whatever he can to give his side a leg up on their opponents. One of the primary ways he can accomplish that is by formulating new strategies and testing them without giving rivals a chance to prepare for whatever new style of play he brings out in the 2020-21 season. This might explain Arsenal’s secret friendlies and the lack of coverage for those matches. With new options available to him from both new signings and players already at the club (note how Mesut Ozil seems to be back in the manager’s good graces), Arteta has likely spent the summer strategizing. The fact that Arsenal are engaging in behind-closed-doors friendlies and asking opponents in those friendlies to keep quiet about the events of those matches suggests that Arteta has been tinkering and does not want others to catch on. If this is indeed the case, the boss could very well have some tricks up his sleeve to make up for the lack of change regarding his team’s personnel.
It’s important here to avoid overstating the efficacy of any gameplan Arteta may have debuted in these friendlies. It is massively improbable that the manager has formulated an unsolvable problem for his opponents. But, assuming these secret friendlies are indeed Arteta’s trial runs for new tactics he has developed, it is clear that he is taking steps to ensure that his new strategy is a surprise for at least the first few teams Arsenal play this season. This would allow Arteta and his players to get by until the end of the transfer window, when Arsenal have hopefully wrapped up deals for Partey, Aouar, or any other players who would drastically improve the squad. Such measures are part and parcel of the ruthlessness Arteta promised when he took over at the club. And as guaranteed, these behind-closed-doors friendlies appear to be one way the club is doing whatever it takes to win. Surely that’s worth foregoing a few afternoons’ worth of tweets and videos.
