Last week Arsene Wenger celebrated becoming the longest serving manager in Arsenal’s history. Of all the successes that the Frenchman has had at the club, one of the most enjoyable for both Arsenal fans and football fans in general, has been the implementation of a fluid, attacking style of play.

This season, he may have lost one of his most coveted strikers, Emmanuel Adebayor, but he has responded not by reigning in the attack, to focus on a more cautious approach but by playing an exciting new 4-3-3 formation that has so far reaped an incredible 24 goals in just 7 Premier League games.

Of course Arsenal were never defensive under Wenger before, but this year they have stepped it up another notch and the departure of a player that was very much a target man, appears to have released the tactical shackles that were holding back other players. As a result, the goals are now being shared around more evenly, with almost everybody getting in on the act; Nicklas Bendtner’s late strike against Blackburn made him the thirteenth different Arsenal player to score a league goal this campaign.

Theo Walcott also scored his first of the season on Sunday and he believes that the new formation will give him more goalscoring opportunities.

“I haven’t [set a target] really but I would be happy with 10 goals or more,” said Walcott after the match.

“I think this formation gives you more license to go forward so I should be among the goals a bit more this year.

“There is a lot of interchanging throughout the positions, which gives defenders problems because they come across a different player. It’s a good formation.”

While goals may be no guarantee of silverware, they certainly help and if Arsenal can keep up this sort of attacking form over the coming months, there is every chance that they will improve their odds of winning the premier League and the recent trophy drought can be brought to a shuddering halt.

If Wenger manages to achieve as much, then the longest serving Arsenal manager of all time may just become the greatest Arsenal manager of all time.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 6th, 2009 at 7:49 PM and is filed under Arsenal, Arsène Wenger. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.