Micah Richards has spoken about Arsenal’s season and reveals, in his opinion, where the Gunners lost the title.
Arsenal were close to winning the Premier League this season and won all their league games in 2024 except two.
That should ideally be enough to secure the league title, but it was not enough to prevent Manchester City from becoming champions again.
One of their crucial losses was against Aston Villa, a match that ultimately proved costly.
Richards believes Mikel Arteta’s selection mistake in that game cost his team the victory.
Speaking on The Rest Is Football podcast, Richards said: ‘I just go back to that Villa game, Arsenal v Villa at home.
‘Arteta chose to go with Havertz in the midfield area instead of the false nine which has worked so well for them. Could’ve went with a Jorginho or Partey.
‘Emery, on the day, tactically got it spot on. So, yeah, disappointed.’
Just Arsenal Opinion
Because we did not win the title, there will be several opinions on how differently we could have done things.
However, we need to focus on developing our team for the next campaign. We are now very close to ending our wait for another title, and we just need to add some new talents to the group that will make us better than we were last term.
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I am not sure you can point to solely the Villa game as responsible, but it certainly played a part when the pressure was on at the ending of the season.
IMHO I thought the selections were daft and unnecessary tinkering that proved costly.
Havertz had been sparkling as striker, why suddenly move him back to midfield where he was average at best, and the team was unbalanced?
Why start Jesus as striker, where time and time again he fails to be a goal threat, and has repeatedly proved himself to be a winger and not a striker?
There is no guarantee we could have won with a different setup, but our chances would have been better with Havertz as striker, Partey in midfield, and Jesus on the bench.
There are some considerations for that game against Aston Villa that are overlooked.
The game was sandwiched between our games against BM. Kiwior had been playing LB more regularly up to that point but did not have a good game in the first leg against Bayern. We were better when Zinchenko came in.
Zinchenko started the game against Aston Villa fairly well and his presence contributed to our control of the play in the first half.
In that first half Havertz’s deep runs from MF created a number of chances which could have altered the course of the game.
GJ evidently did not have a great game. However, with the need to rotate the squad I don’t think it was unreasonable to expect him to give a good account of himself in his preferred position.
The second half was one of the few times that a tactical adjustment caused a major shift in dynamics of a game against Arsenal and for this AV and Emery deserve credit.
For all the harsh criticism it is worth noting that Arsenal still had more shots overall and more shots on target.
He does that for his mentor to keep winning period
We all know that Micah. Nothing new.