I have to be honest, if you said “do you know who Gabriel Magalhães is?” I wouldn’t have had a clue. Actually, I watch a lot of football but the french Ligue Un isn’t something I focus on, so when Magalhães was being touted to join Arsenal, I wasn’t sure of what his strengths or weaknesses were. And even if you did watch Ligue Un, you would have only watched him for a season and a half.
Even with around eight centre-backs in their squad, Arsenal ended the season with their lowest league position since 1995 and a plethora of problems remaining to be fixed. The standout issue at the top of the list is the amount of goals conceded by set pieces; 21 out of the 48 conceded were in this way, the highest ratio in the league (46%).
The need for improvement and resources has never been greater. Enter Gabriel. The six foot three defender has hardly put a foot wrong since being a regular for Lille.
At 22, he already has Champions League experience and has learned alongside José Fonte, a central defender who knows the Premier League better than most. This all makes for a good foundation to be built on, especially given Arsenal’s dire need of rehabilitation when dealing with set pieces. Magalhães won 70% of his aerial duels in his most recent campaign with Lille and has been lauded by his manager, Christophe Galtieron, for his ability to stay focused. The numbers speak for themselves; no errors leading up to shots by the opponents, and only four bookings in 38 games across his last two seasons with Les Dogues. That may seem like a small sample size, but for context Sokratis has been booked twice more in the 19 games he featured in last year.
Arsenal’s defence also lacks a dominant leader when they defend with a back four. We’ve not seen enough of new, permanent signing Pablo Mari to make a judgement, William Saliba is still just 19 years of age, and we’ve probably seen enough of Luiz and Shkodran Mustafi. The majority of Magalhaes’ appearances have been in a back four where he has blossomed a solid centre-back partnership with senior teammate Fonte. The pair were strongly at the forefront as Lille produced the fifth best xGA (expected goals allowed) record in the shortened Ligue 1 season (30.17) and conceded the third least amount of goals (27). Not far off Paris Saint-Germain’s 24.
But this isn’t the only reason Arteta has found the 22-year-old Brazilian to be a new asset in the Arsenal he is building.
We’ve seen countless times that no matter the quality of the footballer on the pitch, the current philosophy at the Emirates is to play out from the back. Unfortunately, as the Arsenal boss has tried to balance the defence and attack, the creativity has lacked, registering poor shots on target and xG across the board.
Dig deeper into the team’s Passes Per Opponents Defensive Action (PPODA), a metric which measures how many offensive actions you have until the opponent gets one successful defensive action, and you’ll see Arsenal falls far behind both the elite and those on the fringe of the Champions League qualification. This is a good measurement of what exactly a team is doing for build-up play.
A decent top-six team should average around 17-19 opposition PPODA, e.g. Chelsea’s 19/20 registered 16.98. The Gunners’ averaged 14.58 while playing with a back-three, but that decreased to 13.67 when playing with a four. Gabriel’s build-up play and confidence in making medium-long passes, with an 92% and 72% success rate respectively, could be the key that both Arsenal’s defence and build-up play has been missing as of late.
