Arsenal Don’t Take Risks, and That’s What Makes Them So Strong

Arsenal have been criticised for years for playing too cautiously, but Mikel Arteta has built a team and a system that requires fewer risks and is still devastatingly effective.

For much of the time in which Arsenal have been, shall we say, ‘good’, again, there has been an ongoing and consistent criticism that they’re too cautious.

Some called them “boring” to watch. Others insisted they must “take the handbrake off” in attack if they are to ever realise their potential. Winning games 1-0 and relying on set-pieces wasn’t, some said, a reliable route to the title.

Clearly, this Arsenal side have always been much more than a gritty, nasty side who grind out ugly wins and fall back on set-pieces week on week, even if they occasionally did those things and won in a way that fuelled that perception last season.

And for any criticism of how they played, there is now no arguing with the results. A first title in 22 years was wrapped up in May as Mikel Arteta proved beyond any doubt that his methods were worth buying into. Playing the way they did last season was enough to end their drought.

Now, with a title win under their belts and the fear of “bottling” the league banished forever, there is a swagger, an assuredness about Arsenal’s play.

Following a summer of further strengthening a title-winning squad, Arteta’s side look more convincing than ever. With four wins from four in the league (plus three more in other competitions) and just a single goal conceded, they are top of the table and huge favourites to retain the title, doing so in 57.2% of simulations by the Opta supercomputer at the time of writing.

Free of the shackles of worrying about failure, there is a belief in what they are doing. They know that their way of playing works, and they know they have every reason to stay committed to and believe in it.

And they’re right: Arsenal are top of the Premier League and they haven’t needed to fall back on a single set-piece goal (excluding penalties) this season, even though they have played three tricky opponents. They look an even more complete team than they did last season.

There’s no doubt they have benefitted from squad stability. After such a successful 2025-26, nobody important was angling for a move away, and they’ve managed to fine-tune areas of their squad by adding quality in a few positions.

That continuity has meant the well-oiled Arsenal machine has become yet more effective. With small improvements in personnel to an already functional system, Arsenal are benefitting from the fact that their players already know how to play together. The new signings have found it easy to slot in.

Arsenal just look extremely fluid in attack; everyone knows their jobs and knows where others should – and will – be. And that means they need to take fewer risks to be effective.

Not long ago, critics said their football was too safe, too risk-averse; now, they simply don’t need to take as many risks as others, and it is precisely that which makes them so formidable.

There isn’t anything inherently wrong with individuality, but Arsenal’s system functions so smoothly that they need individual skill less than others. They play a high-percentage game, and that means their players rarely go it alone. Arsenal rank 19th for dribbles attempted in the Premier League this season, with just 43, ahead of only Hull (39), who have had less of the ball (29.3% average possession) than anyone else in the league. Arsenal, meanwhile, have averaged 59.4% possession.

Arsenal are also bottom of the Premier League for dribbles completed (17), and that’s even though they have one of the best wingers in the world in Bukayo Saka. He is clearly told to prioritise keeping the ball over attempting to beat his man. Whether that’s because opponents double up on him or because he is simply instructed not to dribble at his man, the end result is the same: not trying something unnecessarily risky.

Similarly, Arsenal have the highest pass completion rate (including crosses) in the final third of the pitch of all Premier League teams this season, with 81.2% of their passes successfully finding their target. That is at least in part because they have a lot of the ball and they have better players than most other teams, but they drop to fourth when it comes to the best pass completion rates overall, suggesting they are extra careful in the final third.

There are also other metrics that further suggest Arsenal take fewer risks than most. Again, because they are such an effective unit, they just don’t need to.

This is where expected pass completion (xP) is useful. This metric is essentially xG for passes: the probability that a pass will be completed.

So, a prospective pass with an xP value of 0.95 would be expected to find its target 95% of the time. Or, in other words, a pretty sure thing. A 0.05 xP pass would be expected to be successful 5% of the time, and so would be considered much, much more difficult. A team prioritising high xP passes suggests they play it safe.

Across the whole pitch this season, Manchester City, Tottenham and Brighton have chosen the highest xP passes on average this season. Arsenal rank sixth.

But when looking just at the final third of the pitch, Arsenal jump up to third, with only Aston Villa and Tottenham playing more ‘certain’ passes than them. The average xP of Arsenal’s final-third passes (including crosses) is 0.796, only marginally behind both Villa and Spurs.

We can look at this in another way. Only Villa (16.6% of all passes) and Tottenham (16.9%) attempt a lower proportion of ‘hard’ passes in the final third than Arsenal (17.0%), where the xP of a ‘hard’ pass is less than or equal to 0.50 – expected to be completed less than 50% of the time.

But the difference is that both Villa and Spurs have been almost completely inept in attack. Spurs have failed to score a single goal, while Villa has scored just one and that came from a corner. By contrast, Arsenal have scored eight, all in open play.

Villa and Spurs are playing easy passes because they aren’t set up to complete tough ones.

Arsenal, on the other hand, create situations where sure passes are also threatening ones. Here, we can use another ‘expected’ metric to prove as much.

Expected threat (xT) measures the increase in the probability of a team having a shot within the next 10 seconds when the ball is moved from one position on the pitch to another. So, if a pass has an xT value of 0.25, it increases the likelihood of a shot by 25%. The higher the xT, the more it raises the chances of a shot occurring in the next 10 seconds.

Arsenal rank fourth for the average xT of their passes in the final third (0.13), while, for comparison, Tottenham are 12th and Villa are 20th. In other words, while Arsenal’s passes in the final third are safer options than almost every other team, they also increase their chances of a shot at goal more than most.

Arsenal are creating situations where ‘sure’ passes (high xP) are also threatening (high xT). (Spurs and Villa are playing more ‘sure’ passes but they are far, far less threatening.)

And that, simply put, is what makes Arsenal so dangerous. More reliably and more repeateably than any other team, they are finding passes that create better chances to score.

If they can keep on creating situations that make simple passes provide a route to goal, it’s difficult to see how anyone will be able to stop them.

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