Mikel Arteta and Nuno Espirito Santo will renew acquaintances again this weekend when West Ham United host Arsenal at the London Stadium.
If recent Premier League meetings between the two sides are anything to go by, well, let’s just say this is a fixture with a history of intriguing scorelines.
West Ham United have beaten the Gunners twice away from home since 2023. Konstantinos Mavropanos bulleted in a header at the Emirates to knock their title ambitions off course in 2023/24, before Jarrod Bowen all-but handed the league to Liverpool 15 months ago.
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On the other hand, Arsenal’s last two visits to the London Stadium have seen them rack up a staggering 11 goals. Home advantage, when the Hammers face the Gunners, often counts for very little.
In contrast, the last meeting between the two London rivals was far more, well, to the script. Arsenal beat West Ham in a thoroughly professional 2-0 Emirates victory back in October.
Arsenal beat West Ham United pretty comfortably last time
The Hammers sat deep and looked to hit their hosts on the break that day. A strategy which made sense on paper, but which never got going on grass. West Ham failed to record a shot on target and mustered just 29 per cent of the possession.
Yet, Arsenal still had to wait until nearly half-time to make their dominance count. Declan Rice fired past Alphonse Areola on 38 minutes, belatedly opening the scoring against his old club. Bukayo Saka sealed the win via a contentious penalty given against El Hadji Malick Diouf.
Speaking after a match in which Arsenal were made to dig deep and prove that patience really is a virtue, Arteta laid his tactical blueprints down onto the table and started explaining. The key to breaking down West Ham’s massed ranks, he said, was all about off-the-ball movement, full-backs creating overloads, and midfielders picking up possession and playing passes between the lines.
The Hammers can learn a lot from their Emirates defeat
Rather than focus on the individual brilliance of Saka and Rice, Arteta instead highlighted the roles played by roving left-back Riccardo Calafiori and deep-lying playmaker Martin Zubimendi that day.
“I think [Calafiori’s] dynamism and the spaces and the situations that he can create are very difficult to control, especially against a team that is very well-organised,” Arteta said, the Italian popping up on the left, through the centre, and even on the right during a genuine ‘every blade of grass’ performance.
“You have to disrupt their organisation in order to create chances, and I think we’ve done that really well.”
When Martin Odegaard was forced off half an hour in, Arteta chose Zubimendi over the more attack-minded Ethan Nwaneri. The reason, he said, was because Zubimendi could get on the ball deep and pick out runners drifting in behind West Ham’s low block; a tactic seen in his sublime through ball for Rice’s opener.
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“The way [West Ham] were matching our midfield, the spaces that we could create with Zubi [were] better. They didn’t have any intention to play or combine in the first phase, so that was creating a lot of direct play, second balls, and we wanted to make sure that we could control that to dominate the game in the areas that we wanted.
“That’s the reason why [Zubimendi came on].”
The trick to getting a result this weekend, then, may be stopping Arsenal at source. Position, say, Taty Castellanos or Mateus Fernandes on Zubimendi and stop him playing. What’s more, do not let the unpredictable movement of those full-backs pull you out of position.
Easier said than done, though, of course.
Arteta is on record as being a big fan of the West Ham boss. He labelled Nuno an ‘unbelievable’ coach during his Nottingham Forest days. Nuno would also mastermind two victories over Arsenal while at Wolves.
But with that October victory making it four wins and a draw in their last four meetings, it appears that Arteta has discovered the antidote to Nuno’s trademark pragmatism. Though Sunday’s encounter in East London offers the man in the home dugout the chance to prove he still has something a little extra up the sleeve.
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