Arsenal legend Thierry Henry came forward to defend Mikel Arteta’s Gunners’ style on Monday Night Football, saying there is nothing more important than ending the club’s 22-year league title drought.
The former club captain, who was the Invincibles’ top scorer when they last won the Premier League trophy in 2003/04, said Arteta was “asked to find a way and he found one”. The Gunners currently sit at the top of the table with a nine point difference, having played more games than second-placed Man City.
Arsenal’s style has been criticized primarily for their reliance on set-pieces, despite spending more than £250m on transfers this season, mainly for attacking personnel. Set pieces have contributed to more than a third of his goals this season.
Henry said: “As an Arsenal fan you don’t have to like them, but you certainly respect them.” “After 22 years, I’m not saying we’re going to win the league, but I’m going to respect whatever they do.
“It doesn’t matter what I like, it doesn’t matter what my mother likes, what my father likes. We asked Mikel Arteta to find a way and he did. It’s very simple. I want to win the league, it’s been 22 years now.”
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“For a very long time Arsenal have been accused of being juveniles, unable to hold a lead and being bullied. Can they pull off an ugly win? That’s exactly what the team is doing and mastering it.”
“Have they lost in the process what they were when Mikel Arteta came in? Sometimes during a game, when you try to do something to evolve from Pep or evolve from the slot, you forget a little bit what you were. Three years ago, people were talking about how good Arsenal were playing, but there were also accusations like the ones I mentioned.
“Now they’re doing it, but people aren’t happy with it.”
Arsenal have played their most solid defense this season than at any time under Arteta, but they have scored at a lower rate than in 2022/23 and 2023/24, when their style of football was more widely admired and they were less reliant on set-piece goals.
Henry questioned whether the Gunners were still too closely linked to the Arsene Wenger era, nearly a decade after his retirement, given that the Gunners won the First Division twice under his predecessor George Graham but were plagued by accusations that their football was boring.
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“What is the Arsenal way? My way? George Graham? What is it? If you think about how ‘1-0 to Arsenal’ came about, it’s closer to Graham than what we were playing, but Arsenal’s play was closer to us and closer to what Arsene was trying to do. But Arsenal won under Graham and Wenger. What’s the problem here?”
Henry pointed to his experience playing against Jose Mourinho’s Chelsea, who were also criticized for their pragmatic style when they beat the Gunners by 12 points to win their first Premier League trophy in 20024-05.
That season, Arsenal scored 15 more goals than the Blues, but conceded more than twice as many as Mourinho’s side, ending Man United and Arsenal’s title monopoly that had lasted until 1996.
“Frank Lampard finished the season as our top scorer with 13 goals,” Henry said. “They were very difficult to beat and were outstanding on the breaks. Everyone praised Mourinho and Chelsea, and rightly so. They found a way to stop this duo.”
“Well done. Well done, whether you like Chelsea or not.”
Cara: Arteta is ‘almost unlike any manager I’ve ever seen’
Jamie Carragher similarly ignored Arsenal’s style and instead impressed Arteta with his flexibility to pivot from emulating former manager Josep Guardiola’s style of play to what he calls a more “Mourinho-esque” approach. He feels it’s a big change in philosophy not seen in previous Premier League title winners.
“Certainly in terms of the Premier League, he’s a very different manager than we’ve ever seen,” he said on Monday Night Football. “What you realize when he comes in in 2019 is that we’re halfway through the season and Arsenal have won the FA Cup, they’ve got a big scalp, they’re not a great team but they’re finishing eighth.
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“A few years later, they finished fifth and I felt like the fans were really rooting for him. I remember the last game of the season. I remember there was a feel-good factor that they were going somewhere.”
“There are those two seconds and I think there is a change. When Arteta first came in, we put him in the box. We said he was coached by Pep Guardiola and would play that football at Arsenal. Any other manager would know who Klopp is from day one. We knew from day one who Pep was.”
“He played great football in the season where he finished fifth and then second, but since last season he has changed from a certain style to almost a Mourinho style. I’ve been calling Arsenal and Arteta that for the last few years, but not as a criticism.
“Mourinho and Guardiola are two of the most successful managers of the last 20 years. They work in different ways, but the interesting thing about Arteta is that he started with one and changed to the other. You don’t normally see that.
“In the first season, they finished second, went to Man City and got beat up, costing us the league. Since then, all their signings have been about physicality, which wasn’t the case when he first came to the club. It’s about power and strength.”
