It was pretty symbolic that on the night Arsenal's title challenge pretty much got blue and bloated (or Liverpool just shot more holes in the already decomposing corpse, depending on your point of view), Liverpool's two No. 8s — Dominik Szoboszlai and Alexis Mac Allister — were scoring the goals to guide them to victory while Martin Ødegaard and Declan Rice were putting up two shots combined. When Arsenal pick through the ashes of their Premier League season, they shouldn't eschew focus on their midfield.
Injuries are no excuse for Arsenal's midfield crisis
While the Gunners certainly have seen their goals and chances dry up since Bukayo Saka went out injured, perhaps no one has suffered more than their captain Ødegaard. He has seen a decline in pretty much every attacking category we have: fewer shots per game, fewer shots on target per game, fewer expected assists per game, fewer key passes per game, fewer progressive passes per game, fewer shot-creating actions per game, fewer touches, fewer tackles. He's just kind of deflated.
The urge is to blame it all on Saka's injury. But it's not like Ødegaard was on fire when Saka was in the lineup: In the 10 league games they have played together so far this season, the Arsenal captain has one goal and no assists. The dip in tackles in the attacking third combined with the only category that Ødegaard has seen an increase in — passes into the final third — suggest that he's playing deeper than he has in previous seasons. Whatever the case may be, Ødegaard just hasn't been the same threat that he has in previous seasons. He hasn't made the same impact on the opponent's goal.
Rice is a different story. His metrics are all just about where they were last year; he's just not getting the luck he did, and it was curious that Arsenal counted on him to do so again. He was never going to see 35 percent of his shots on target go in the net again. Few do: Mo Salah's career average is 37 percent, and Declan Rice is not Mo Salah. Rice's seven goals last season off just three xG was never going to be the norm and was always clearly a spike.
It was the same for his creation, as his teammates bagged eight assists for him off just five expected. Maybe that would be expected if there were multiple gifted finishers in the Arsenal team. But haven't they been wailing all season about their lack of a natural finisher, even when their full compliment of forwards could stand up? Rice has piled up the assists off set-pieces earlier in the season. But that well seems to have dried up on the Gunners. He's not creating much in open play.
Rice was bought from West Ham as an all-action, deep-lying midfielder. He was a defensive shield who could also provide some attacking verve in a team that needed him to do everything. Arsenal cut off the defensive shield part of his game, but is he really the gifted creator at the No. 8 spot that a team that wants to win the Premier League and Champions League every season requires? His prowess at carrying the ball would fit nicely if Ødegaard and whoever is behind them in Arsenal's engine room were providing more creativity through passing and scoring. They're not.
Arsenal supporters can scream about their injuries at forward all they'd like, and they're going to. It's not misplaced: There's a strong argument that Salah staying healthy and Saka missing most of the season is the difference between Liverpool and Arsenal in the table right now. Certainly having the entire first-choice front three and two backups out is a very pinpointed injury crisis. But it would have mattered less if the Gunners were getting more from elsewhere.
Sure, Odegaard and Rice don't have the same players ahead of them making the right runs or opening up spaces or taking more advantage of their service. But Arsenal as a whole have created less this season in Mikel Arteta's unending search for control. They rank behind Brentford in xG for the season, and that was the case before all their forwards had a body part fall off of them. There just hasn't been enough thrust about them.
There's control, and then there's conservatism. Arsenal have dipped too far into the latter, and it's why they're still staring up at someone else in the table.