LONDON — It should probably be no surprise that, since the start of his first full season in charge, no team has attempted more pullbacks than Mikel Arteta’s Arsenal. The Spaniard had been pruned off Pep Guardiola’s coaching tree at just the right moment, departing a team that were all about stretching play in behind their opponents, cutting the ball back for an onrushing midfielder to crash home. No one doubts that Manchester City’s head coach was the architect of this seemingly unstoppable approach, but Arteta was widely credited as having a helping hand, particularly in his work with Leroy Sane and Raheem Sterling.
On Thursday night, Arsenal’s ability to get to the byline and fire the ball into dangerous areas was in full effect. Opta logged two such passes, fizzed low balls across the box from Leandro Trossard and Bukayo Saka in the first 20 minutes, but such deliveries can be in the eye of the beholder. Before Saka, Jurrien Timber had snuck to the byline to deliver. Declan Rice’s tempter from the left channel was definitely not a cutback but it asked the same questions of his teammates: who was going to gamble on getting a toe on the ball? Noni Madueke did the same.
What really isn’t a question of categorization is the end outcome of these many balls that flew down Liverpool’s corridor of uncertainty. No shots. That is a waste given that Arsenal were so well set up to exploit overlaps. Their full backs roamed across the field looking for a give-and-go, with Jurrien Timber particularly shrewd in his manipulation of man markers. Cody Gakpo and Alexis Mac Allister found themselves splitting shifts on the Arsenal right back. In response Timber might drag Gakpo into central midfield, creating the wrong sort of defensive overload, one that both manufactured space for Saka to operate in and opened up an angle for him to receive an underlapping pass.
Arsenal were really good at getting to the sorts of prime positions you can see below and quite poor at exploiting them. To hear Arteta explain it, the fault lied with those picking out the pass. “We were much closer to that with the amount of situations and the spaces that we arrived into, normally you have to pick somebody in the box and it’s a goal,” he said.
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“The movement was there, the arrival was there, the players were there,” he added, though he somewhat contradicted himself by continuing, “there are two or three that they come across and we need to occupy a space that we didn’t occupy to score the ball.
“Sometimes the ball didn’t arrive. Normally we’re going to the six yard box almost with the ball at our feet, and normally that’s a goal, you pick somebody and you score a goal, and we didn’t do that, and that’s the thing today, we have to improve.”
Arteta would insist that his team have had games when they have got their passes right around the box, pointing to the 4-1 win over Aston Villa as a moment of particular excellence. “That’s why you win those big matches,” he said, “and today we missed that.”
The curious factor is that it isn’t just on Thursday night that Arsenal have been a little bit off with their cutbacks and low deliveries into the box. It has rather felt like one of the few negative traits that has stuck with this team throughout the season, that they are getting into positions to make these passes even more than last season and doing less with them. Indeed, so far in 2025-26 they have attempted 32 passes that Opta has logged as pullbacks from their 21 games, a rate of over 1.5 per match that is tracking to a level they have only bettered once.
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In 2023-24 they attempted 72 such passes and scored eight goals. Some of that came from xG overperformance but they were certainly getting themselves more good shots than they have in 2025-26. The graph above shows the problem. You will not find a team in the Premier League this season who have been better at making cut back chances for themselves but Arsenal are only a smidge over the middle of the pack in terms of the expected goals value they are creating in this prime attacking real estate.
Some of the explanation for the season as a whole might be what Arteta was referring to last night, players not getting the pass right. One of the reasons why Arsenal were so devastating in these scenarios two years ago was the interplay of Martin Odegaard, Saka and Ben White, the latter establishing himself as one of the game’s outstanding attacking right backs. Arsenal’s No.4 seemed utterly in sync with the rest of the attacking pod on the right flank and could use the threat of Saka coming inside to find even more space towards the byline.
Injuries have hit White hard over the last 18 months, but fortunately for Arsenal his replacement might have been even better. There are few defenders who can lock down a flank like Timber and this season has seen the Dutch international stretch his attacking muscles even more. The positions he took up on Thursday night seemed designed to maximize difficulty for his man markers and his stretching runs in behind were a continual nuisance for Liverpool.
To have been more than that, his delivery needed to be better. For a player who has come so far in so long it seems fair to suggest that passing like the below, a looped cross in the vague direction of Piero Hincapie but not in a position to really threaten anyone, will be ironed out with more reps.
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It is not quite so easy to feel the same about Viktor Gyokeres. The obvious explanation for why Arsenal are trying to be more of a cutback team is probably be that this season they thought they were adding the fox in the box that they had supposedly needed for so long. Why then is their No.14 yet to get a shot from a pullback in a Premier League game?
Squint hard enough and you can make a case for Gyokeres. When Saka went probing around the 20th minute his movement to the back post took Ibrahima Konate out of position, opening up space for others. These are the sorts of things that Arsenal fans are hearing a lot when it comes to Gyokeres. Declan Rice has been pointing out to the strength and industry he has been showing in the build up to goals, which is not untrue. Arteta was keen to talk up the “great positions” his summer signing found against Liverpool.
Maybe there’s a case to be made that in that image above Gyokeres is doing the right thing. His run takes Ibrahima Konate to the back post, where the ball is going. It opens up space that Leandro Trossard and Martin Odegaard should be more aggressive in filling. There’s a question to ask about why Odegaard wasn’t attacking those spaces off pullbacks as he was a few years ago, but right now the focus needs to be on Gyokeres.
It is absolutely valid if part of a striker’s repertoire is to make space for others. Erling Haaland has rightly won praise this season for how he uses his gravitational force to manoeuvre the opposition and create space for his teammates. It’s just that Haaland gets lots of shots and goals. Right now Gyokeres is delivering little of either. Last night was the seventh Premier League game where the Swede failed to take a shot. He has played 19. Since the start of November he has put a shot on target on four occasions in the competition, one a penalty against Everton.
Much of the debate around Gyokeres’ form has been whether Arsenal are playing in a way that suits him. He will never get the transition opportunities that the Portuguese league afforded him and he will rarely if ever find himself in the sort of talent mismatch that his old club Sporting CP have in many weekends. But his teammates have been pushing the pace in their attacks this season, they do look to release him with quick balls into the channel.
Gyokeres is just not getting to them. Go back to that first image. Which of the quartet of Arsenal players look least favorably positioned if the cutback comes to them? Probably the striker, who has not managed to get any meaningful separation from Konate. That was the story of his night. Yes he was dragging a Liverpool center back around the penalty area but to what end result?
It might even be the story of his season. Until that big goal comes maybe the defining moment of his season is him by the power of Grayskull-ing his penalty against Everton, or maybe it’s him berating Bukayo Saka because he didn’t get the ball passed to him against Brighton.
There is no disputing that Gyokeres can use his gravity and running power to good effect even when he doesn’t have the ball. When he does and lays it off nicely, as he did for Rice’s goal against Bournemouth, it makes Arsenal a better attacking team. The simple truth, though, is that you don’t commit $85 million for off-ball running, space creation and less than two and a half shots per 90.
If you’re dialing up your attacks from the byline, perhaps that is because you’re trying to create opportunities to exploit your new striker’s ability to kick the ball very hard and very precisely into the goal. It is hard to see how that is going to happen if he is stuck behind a defender at the far post.
