Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta has shifted from "chaos" to "control" after controversially substituting Martin Odegaard in the 62nd minute of Saturday's 0-0 draw with Everton, according to Gunners expert Charles Watts.
The Norwegian skipper arguably had Arsenal's best chances of the first half against the Toffees, but he failed to lace up his best shooting boots and was also lacking his creative spark, not fashioning a single chance for his teammates.
Nevertheless, Odegaard's withdrawal for Ethan Nwaneri just after the hour mark at the weekend raised eyebrows, even more so when Arteta confirmed after the game that his decision to withdraw the former Real Madrid starlet was tactical, as opposed to Declan Rice asking to come off due to a niggle.
Asked by Sports Mole to explain Odegaard's recent drop-off in form, Watts suggested that the Scandinavian's body "struggling to cope" after returning from injury could be a factor, as well as the fact that his wife gave birth just a couple of weeks ago.
"He's just had a baby that coincides exactly with his drop-off in form so I don't know if he's getting no sleep at home!" Watts said. "I think any new dad will testify to what that first fortnight is like and so a lot of Arsenal fans are pointing to that and thinking that could well be an issue. I think coming back from that injury, you come back and you ride a crest of a wave a little bit when you get back into the team. It lifts everyone and maybe now it's just sort of settling in. His body's struggling a little bit to cope with the demands.
"Maybe he's just having an off period. It's tough to really put your finger on it but he's definitely not been the best. I looked at the Fulham game last week and he took a bit of a kick early on in that game and I wondered if that impacted him for the remainder of the match, but then that form carried on in the Champions League [against Monaco], I don't think he was at his best and he definitely wasn't at his best against Everton.
Should Arteta have withdrawn Merino instead of Odegaard?
"When Odegaard doesn't play well, Arsenal are nowhere near the same sort of team that we've come to expect from him. He's so important to how they work, that partnership with [Bukayo] Saka and how he links everything together. When he's off colour, Arsenal ultimately are not the same side, they're not as threatening, but I still think every single Everton player when the board went up with 35 minutes to go, they saw Martin Odegaard's number on it and saw him trudging off and Ethan Nwaneri coming on, I bet there was a big collective sigh of relief."
Rather than make the like-for-like switch of Odegaard for Nwaneri, Watts would have liked to have seen Arteta sacrifice Mikel Merino in the left eight role, as Everton were evidently playing for a draw and offered "absolutely nothing" going forward.
"I'd have liked to have seen Mikel do something a bit different in that second half," Watts added. "Nwaneri coming on and being given about 35 minutes is great, but I just expected him to come and play alongside Martin Odegaard and have those two dovetailing together behind Kai Havertz with Saka and Martinelli on either side. I didn't think you needed to keep Mikel Merino on in that game given how it was panning out and how Everton were offering absolutely nothing going forward.
"I don't think Arsenal needed to worry too much about conceding in that game, so was it a little bit conservative to do the like for like playmaker for playmaker? Couldn't you put them both on together? That might have unlocked Everton and caused them different problems. I just felt like that was maybe the way to go. To just do that like for like, I don't think it did much. As good as Nwaneri's been this season, he struggled to make any sort of impact - I think he had about 10 touches on the 35 minutes he was on the pitch.
"It just didn't work at all, so I did look at those changes and and think maybe he could have gone a different way Mikel. He clearly tried to win the game with them, but it didn't work and it's easy afterwards to assess it and say it hasn't worked, but maybe that was something he could have done differently."
Pressed on his decision to swap out Odegaard for Nwaneri in his post-match press conference, Arteta issued a rather spiky response, insisting that his substitution would have been hailed as a "great one" had the latter scored the goal that got Arsenal over the line.
Arteta "missed a trick" with Nwaneri-Odegaard change
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Gooners have been crying out for the 17-year-old - who has one goal as a substitute against Nottingham Forest this season - to be given more chances to prove his worth in the Premier League, where he is still pining for his first start.
Nwaneri is seen as a replacement/backup for Odegaard rather than a player who could work in tandem with his captain, but Watts think that Arteta "missed a trick" by not playing them in the same engine room, adding: "He was definitely trying something different. I don't think there was a widespread shock, certainly not in the stadium, but feel like he missed a bit of a trick with it.
"There's definitely been a lot of reflection since - when it doesn't work then all the focus is on it. Mikel said it himself in his press conference, if Ethan comes on and scores a goal then suddenly it's the greatest substitution ever, but obviously it didn't work, and when you make those sort of calls you have to live and die by the results. At the time I liked it, when I looked up and saw Ethan was coming on and getting a proper amount of time, I thought that's good, but did you really need to take off Odegaard?
"Mikel Merino, he's having a slow start to his Arsenal career. He's neat and tidy, but he was playing in that left eight role at the weekend and he never really offered threat of scoring a goal or getting into the box and creating something. He created one opportunity for Odegaard in the first half but it just felt like the way that game was going, you didn't really need to keep him on and have Jorginho behind him, maybe you could be a little bit more attacking, so that's how I felt at the time and nothing I saw in those 35 minutes that followed it convinced me that I was wrong."
With just one goal in their last three Premier League games and none from open play in their last three top-flight matches, Arsenal's recent lack of bite - at least on the domestic scene - has seen Arteta come in for renewed criticism amid the perception that he is turning into a safety-first coach.
After scoring 88 goals in the 2022-23 season and a club-record 91 last term, Arsenal are only on track to find the back of the net 69 times in the current season, averaging 1.8 goals per match with 29 from their 16 outings so far.
"Conservative" Arteta shifts from chaos to control
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Arsenal and Arteta were also lambasted for their backs-against-the-wall approach after going down to 10 men in their 2-2 draw with Manchester City in September, a tactic that very nearly paid dividends before John Stones's injury-time leveller.
Watts feels that the "chaos" of 2022-23 and how Arsenal threw the title away has shifted Arteta's mentality to one of conservative control, adding: "Mikel loves control. That's the big thing with Mikel, and I think that first season when Arsenal challenged for the title - which was so unexpected - that season it was chaos. It was brilliant, it was thrilling, it was unexpected, but it was chaos, and I think the way that season fell apart right at the end has shaped the Mikel Arteta we've seen in the last couple of years.
"He's definitely moved more towards control. Even in the press conference after the draw at the weekend he was talking about how they they gave Everton nothing, defensively it was really excellent. He looks at that and he thinks that's really really positive, whereas some fans think, just go a bit more attacking. Try and be a bit more unpredictable when it comes to your team selections.
"There was a change at the start last season certainly with some of the signings that Arsenal made, they didn't quite work out. Havertz for example, he was brought in and you thought he could play midfield, but you can then play him up front. You can play Rice in the six, you can play him as an eight, you can be a little bit more unpredictable in terms of how you put your team selection out, but you know who's going to play where at the moment.
"Maybe a lot of that's down to injuries and the players that are missing at the back, but there's no doubt that he's a fairly conservative manager, and he wants that control more than anything else. If you have that control, you can win games, you can score goals because you're so dominant. You look at Fulham, you look at Everton, they conceded four shots in those two games so they have been very very dominant in that way, but has that come to a detrimental effect to their attack? You look at the numbers and say it has a little bit."
Arsenal's tally of 29 goals scored in the Premier League is only the fifth-best record after 16 games - behind Chelsea (37), Tottenham Hotspur (36), Brentford (32) and Liverpool (31), but it was only a number of weeks ago that they struck five in the first half at West Ham United and smashed Sporting Lisbon 5-1 in the Champions League.
Watts: 'There are mitigating factors to Everton defeat'
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Those results contributed to Arsenal becoming the first English top-flight team in 87 years to score at least five goals in five different away games in one calendar year, having also run riot at West Ham (again), Burnley and Sheffield United in the early phase of 2024, and they comfortably put three past Monaco in the Champions League last week.
For that reason, Watts is still confident that Arsenal will soon be penetrating defences at will once more, adding: "There was a very similar period last December when Arsenal lost to Fulham, they lost to West Ham, they couldn't score, they weren't really creating any chances. We were having a very similar conversation at that time, and then, bang, it clicked, and they were scoring freely again.
"You've got to remember they scored three really good goals in midweek in the Champions League. I think the Champions League needs to be taken into account; I'm not using it as an excuse, but you look at the results across Europe this this weekend and the teams have been in the Champions League, they've really struggled. Arsenal have had about four games in 10 days, Everton have had none in 10 and have come with a game plan of 'we are drawing this game 0-0'.
"It was so glaringly obvious to see and they did it very very well. I'm not having to go at Everton for that, but there are slight mitigating factors in what happened. I still don't think it's an absolute disaster - it felt like a real body blow because it was another opportunity that they've passed up. They could have clawed back three points on Liverpool because Liverpool didn't play, they didn't take advantage this weekend and you've seen Chelsea march on and move ahead of Arsenal, so that's added to the frustration.
"But they're still there. I don't I don't think they're out of [the title race] yet, but they've absolutely got to find a way to start hurting teams and stretching teams more when they come to the Emirates and they play in the way that Everton do, because they're going to come up against these teams a lot in the second half of the season and they've got to find a way of being able to break them down when they're not on their best of form."
Another Emirates encounter awaits Arsenal on Wednesday evening, when Arteta's side pit their wits against Crystal Palace in the quarter-finals of the EFL Cup, before also travelling to meet the Eagles at Selhurst Park in Saturday's Premier League London derby.
Ben Knapton
