It feels a bit early in the campaign for a revenge mission but Arsenal will certainly head to Villa Park with fire in their bellies after twice being frustrated by Unai Emery’s side last season.
The Gunners lost five Premier League matches in 2023-24 and two of those were inflicted by Aston Villa, who won 1-0 at home in December and 2-0 at the Emirates in April. Unsurprisingly, they were the only club to do the double over Arsenal and the only team to not concede a goal against them either. Arsenal’s bogey team is clothed in claret and blue.
Considering Arsenal finished just two points behind Manchester City at the top of the table, those twin losses against the Villans were costly. The second was especially significant given the timing of it; Arsenal bounced back to win their final six fixtures but the damage had been done with City capitalising on that slip-up to pip their rivals to the title.
Mikel Arteta will have been stung by being tactically outmanoeuvred by his Spanish compatriot and Arsenal predecessor.
In the first meeting, Villa were content to let Arsenal have a 62 per cent share of the ball, sitting back and waiting for their opportunity to pounce. An early goal from John McGinn came from a swift break with Leon Bailey scampering down the right wing before pulling it back for the Scot to score.
In north London, Villa were in a low block to begin with, partly by design and partly to withstand incessant Arsenal pressure. The home side had 14 shots on Emi Martinez’s goal in the first-half alone.
However, they were noticeably more aggressive after the restart which caught Arsenal off guard. They controlled the second half, eventually scoring their goals in the 84th and 87th minutes: Bailey tapped into an empty net at the back post from a cross into the box, before Ollie Watkins dinked a shot over David Raya after breaking the offside trap.
Arteta and his players will have learnt plenty from those defeats. Villa were more ruthless than Arsenal in both games. Martin Odegaard missed two big chances in the first game, and Leandro Trossard squandered the clearest one in the second. At Villa Park, Arsenal failed to overcome a deficit; at the Emirates, they failed to make a dominant first-half display count.
Defensively, they found it difficult to cope with the speed of Villa’s transitions. With Watkins, Bailey and Morgan Rogers springing forward, Villa carry a huge threat when there’s space to sprint into. They scored 15 goals fewer than Arsenal throughout 2023-24 but matched them for counter-attacking goals with seven; only three other clubs in the division bettered that tally.
Arsenal haven’t put a foot wrong since being stunned by Villa a few months ago. A comfortable 2-0 win over Wolverhampton Wandererss last weekend in their opening game of this season extended their winning run in the Premier League to seven matches. In that time, Arsenal have scored 18 goals, kept five clean sheets and been in a losing position for only three minutes.
Still, this is an early acid test of their title credentials. Personnel-wise, little has changed. Riccardo Calafiori remains Arsenal’s only recruit of this summer transfer window and is still getting up to speed, while Jurrien Timber hasn’t yet forced his way into the starting XI after battling back from an ACL injury.
But one change Arteta will almost certainly make from Arsenal’s previous rendezvous with Villa will be to play Kai Havertz up front.
His surprising decision to drop Havertz back into midfield after the German had registered four goals and four assists in his previous four games as a centre-forward backfired with Gabriel Jesus unable to replicate his physicality and goal threat.
Havertz swiftly returned to his No 9 role and continued to be an influential presence in the final third. From being a much-maligned character for long stretches of his career in England, Havertz has undeniably emerged as one of the Premier League’s form forwards in 2024.
A statistic doing the rounds this week highlights Havertz’s growing importance to Arsenal as the focal point of their frontline. He has started as a striker in 14 Premier League matches for the club and provided 17 direct goal involvements (nine goals, eight assists) in those appearances.
Havertz’s lethal form has reduced the clamour from supporters for a new statement striker and speculation linking the club with established forwards has dried up. Nobody in the red half of north London seems particularly bothered about Ivan Toney’s potential move to the Middle East.
His twin contribution as a goal scorer and a goal provider has become more apparent as he has evolved into his role. Since 1 January, Havertz has both scored and assisted in five separate league games (including last weekend against Wolves), which is more than any other player in Europe’s “Big Five” leagues.
The 25-year-old is integral to Arsenal’s play, providing a bustling, muscular presence in the opposition’s half. His power in the air was evident against Wolves when he rose to thunder home a header at the near post, Alan Shearer style. That threat could come in handy against a Villa backline that is surprisingly susceptible to crosses; they conceded 16 set-piece goals last term.
Beating Villa on their own patch would be a major statement of intent from Arsenal given their recent history, regardless of how early into this season it is. If they are to end their Villa hoodoo on Saturday, Havertz will have a big role to play.
