LONDON -- It has taken 21 games to get there but the Premier League clubs seem to have found at least the outline of a blueprint for stopping Arsenal. For the first time this season the leaders have gone two league matches without a win, they might count themselves fortunate to have even got a point from their 1-1 draw with a robust, well-drilled Brentford side.
Arsenal's great strength this season has been their predictability. There is no great drama to the minutes leading up to team news an hour before kickoff, if all Mikel Arteta's players are fit you can rattle off the XI without any great consideration. The same players that lost at Everton last Saturday were trusted to make amends seven days later. They have earned that right.
Equally, there were no surprises waiting for Thomas Frank in the hours before kick off. He could have spent the week drilling his side in the knowledge not just of how Arsenal would play but who would be playing for them. "Does the predictability make it easier? In a way yes," the Brentford head coach acknowledged. "They are very good at what they are doing. It's about eliminating their threat.
"Clearly [Gabriel] Martinelli and [Bukayo] Saka, we're very aware of doubling up on them. One moment where we didn't have everything bang on, that was the moment where they scored [through Saka]... They're the two most in-form wingers in the Premier League right now.
"Besides [the goal] we defended very well against Arsenal. I don't think they had any big chances. Yes they had some dangerous moments but we were very pleased."
Frank revealed after the game that he had not watched Everton's 1-0 win against Arsenal in the Gunners' previous match but his Brentford side played like they had got the message from Sean Dyche and Newcastle boss Eddie Howe, who earned a 0-0 draw here last month. Both had quelled much of Arsenal's momentum by ensuring that their full backs always had a helping hand against Saka and Martinelli.
As was the case today, Arsenal spent most of the match crashing into the brick wall that their opponents built in the final third. Largely unable to get around the back they found little joy playing through the center, where Martin Odegaard had Matthias Jensen for a shadow. Teams have resolved not to let the club captain, Saka or Martinelli beat them. So far Eddie Nketiah, Oleksandr Zinchenko and Granit Xhaka have not proven capable of winning these matches instead.
Instead they rather spurned their teams most promising positions. Zinchenko's decision-making was, for once, woeful. He registered three of the 10 shots from outside the box Arsenal took, the most they have taken this season. Few of them were prime scoring opportunities, more the response of a team who have run out of ideas.
As Frank noted, Arsenal's one prime chance came not from them finding another way around Brentford but from Plan A paying off after over an hour of waiting. Odegaard managed to evade Brentford's attention for what seemed to be the first time in the game, slipping an overlapping Saka down the right channel. Showing the strength to bully Jensen and the precision to deliver the perfect cross quickly enough that Brentford couldn't scramble back, he fired low to the back post. Trossard was on hand to deliver, breaking the tension that had engulfed the Emirates for an hour.
It was the sort of goal that comes about when you dominate territory as Arsenal did, but for so much of this game it was apparent that they had no answer to Brentford's attacking weapons. In defense of Gabriel and William Saliba, there are few if any center backs who could have got the better of Ivan Toney in the mood he found himself in. With Bryan Mbeumo scampering beyond him, the visitors were a continual nuisance on the counter.
Their greatest threat, though, would come from dead balls. Whether it is an Achilles heel of Arsenal's is open to debate, their last three goals have been conceded from set pieces and since the turn of the year they have conceded the fourth most expected goals from set plays. Equally they have played teams such as Newcastle, Everton Brentford who have the inherent advantage of being a collection of very tall footballers. Does a slightly fluky header by Lisandro Martinez off an Aaron Ramsdale spill mean that set piece coach Nicolas Jover has some explaining to do? Those four goals are the entirety of set piece goals Arsenal have conceded in the Premier League this season.
"You want to improve in every area," said Arteta. "We are the third best team in terms of defensive set pieces. We want to be the best." It was not immediately apparent what metrics he was using in this assessment, but judging simply be goals conceded from non-penalty dead-ball situations only West Ham have conceded fewer than Arsenal's four.
"We discussed that today about giving nothing because from the start of play to set pieces this is their biggest strength. I thought we controlled them quite well. I think in that situation we had controlled them, but we hadn't because they were offside and it's always unfortunate when that happens because it costs you points so set pieces are huge in this league that's for sure."
The goal that did come from a set piece was not without contention. Jensen's free kick from the left was hooked back in by Toney, who had space as Ethan Pinnock battled with Gabriel. It would ultimately come to Christian Norgaard across the other side of goal, where he flicked the ball for Toney to deliver the killer blow. VAR offered no reprieve when it examined whether Pinnock had been in an offside position whilst jostling with the Arsenal defender, it did not appear to assess whether Norgaard had also been beyond the Arsenal backline.
"I just looked back and it is offside," insisted Arteta, who will be awaiting an explanation from refereeing body PGMOL. "They will probably give an explanation later in the week. Today we haven't got one.
"You have to apply certain principles in defending and you do that by sticking to the rules, suddenly you change the rules and then you have to change your principles. So tell us before so then you don't hide the line that high, because you're always going to have an advantage if you get blocked."
Frank acknowledged that Pinnock had been offside. "The next question is did he influence that we could cross the ball," he added. "They decided it was not enough. I agree."
With the Emirates Stadium's bubble burst, Arsenal never looked like they could muster up a second. It did not help that the depth that January was supposed to give them does not really exist whilst Gabriel Jesus, Emile Smith Rowe and Reiss Nelson are not available to contribute. Arteta hurled Fabio Vieira into the contest late on but it was soon easy to see why he had stuck with Xhaka for so long even as the Swiss midfielder largely struggled to exploit the space that Brentford afforded him.
Vieira had shone when stepping up for Odegaard in the reverse fixture. Since then he has struggled to adapt to the pace and physicality of the Premier League; his only memorable contribution today was punting a free kick into David Raya's arms with the final kick of the game.
It may ultimately be that Arsenal do not have to change all that much. Certainly it is hard to imagine that Pep Guardiola is going to instruct Jack Grealish and Riyad Mahrez to make a back six when Manchester City arrive at the Emirates on Wednesday night. Most teams will not defend as well as Brentford did today, not just in protecting their flanks but in the sort of last man tackles with which Pinnock denied Nketiah a close range tap in.
Bring back Gabriel Jesus, so at ease roaming from his centre forward berth, and it will not be so easy for teams to outnumber Arsenal in wide areas. A few more players of Trossard's quality coming off the bench will ask that little bit more of opposition defenders.
But the visitors' purposeful point today offers further proof that the blueprint drawn up by Dyche, Howe and now Frank can be effective. For so long this season it did not look like Arsenal could be stopped by anyone but themselves. Brentford should have disabused the rest of league of that particular notion.
