Mikel Arteta spent much of his first match in charge of Arsenal with his hands in his pockets and here his players proved they are unafraid to get theirs dirty as they earned a point.
Before kick-off a throng of photographers enveloped the Arsenal head coach as he, very briefly, took a pew in the dugout but the cameras trained on his every move had a hard job keeping up with him.
Arteta, black jacket soaked through from the rain, was a capsule of nervous energy, skipping along the sidelines in tandem with Bukayo Saka at one point and punching the air as Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang equalised at another.
Arsenal have taken only nine points from their past 11 league matches and won only one of their past 14 in all competitions but Arteta was encouraged by the way his team responded after Dan Gosling opened the scoring, bursting into the box to finish after seizing possession from Saka down the Arsenal left.
This was not the most glamorous performance but the new era is under way. Freddie Ljungberg reverted to taking the warm-up with his assistants, Steve Round and Albert Stuivenberg, as the goalkeeping coach, Iñaki Caña Pavón, formerly of Brentford, tested Bernd Leno before kick-off.
The game took on something of a familiar plot, with the captain Aubameyang again proving the talisman – but Mesut Özil, one of three players brought into the side by Arteta, was also influential. Arsenal never had things their own way, though, and Leno’s net rippled 10 minutes before half-time when Gosling started and finished an incisive move. Arteta spun round, turning to his backroom staff and puffing his cheeks. It was a cheap goal from an Arsenal perspective but one that epitomised how Bournemouth managed to hurt the visitors.
Joshua King went close to doubling Bournemouth’s lead on the verge of half-time. Reiss Nelson squandered the ball on halfway and King raced down the left, riding Sokratis Papastathopoulos’s sliding challenge before bullying Ainsley Maitland-Niles at the byline and squirming to get a shot away. Leno ended up nudging the ball to safety.
Eddie Howe’s side operated with a dynamic three-pronged attack of King, Callum Wilson and Ryan Fraser and it made life uncomfortable for Arsenal, particularly their pair of unorthodox full-backs, Saka and Maitland-Niles. At the other end the young Bournemouth defender Jack Simpson tamed Nelson and, subsequently, the substitute Nicolas Pépé on his first league start of the season.
Bournemouth remain delicately positioned above the relegation zone but there were plenty of positive signs for both managers. “We had a slight readjustment again in our backline today with [club captain] Simon Francis missing out, Jack Simpson playing at left-back,” said Howe. “He has not done that much for us and having done it myself – having played centre-half and full‑back – the energy you expend playing full-back is a lot more.
“But those adjustments considered, I thought the players gave everything to win the match. It was one of those games that ultimately could have gone either way at the end – they had chances, we had chances. But I think we’ll take the point and then try and build on it.”
Arteta asked for commitment and aggression and while swagger was in short supply and a point at Bournemouth was not quite the way he would have wanted to begin, his players dug in. Arsenal’s response to going behind was encouraging, with Aubameyang curling an effort wide of the far post before trying to pick out Özil. But the pair were on a different wavelength.
Bournemouth began to retreat and eventually Arsenal found a way through, with Aubameyang the catalyst. His surging run caused panic in the Bournemouth box and the forward applied the all-important finishing touch to score his 12th league goal of the season after Nelson’s pass deflected into his path. They all count. Arsenal pushed for a winner, with Alexandre Lacazette and Joe Willock going close, but Bournemouth’s bravery deserved a point.
“We didn’t quite know what to expect – we assumed that the philosophy would change and it did,” Howe said. “It was quite visible to see Arsenal playing a slightly different way. The system was different but we couldn’t plan for that. We had no idea really what they were going to do. We had to plan for us and make sure we were better than we were against Burnley and learnt from that experience, and I thought we did. That’s why I’m pleased with my players.”
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