Beginning a season with consecutive defeats is never a good thing. Being six points behind fellow top four favorites right off the bat immediately puts unwanted pressure on a club. This is especially the case when a new manager is at the helm. All of these things apply to Arsenal at the moment. Despite these early concerns, context does, however, need to be included when discussing the north London club’s weak start to the current campaign.

Unai Emery’s Arsenal failed to record a single point against Manchester City and away to Chelsea. City, the reigning Premier League champions, are widely regarded as one of the best English teams over the last few decades and are favored to collect another league title at the end of the season. Chelsea, on the other hand, are a very tough team to play at Stamford Bridge. The Blues have only lost six of their last 40 home matches during league play.

These first two opening matches would be difficult for any club in the league, and these difficulties were compounded by the fact that the Gunners are implementing a new system under Emery. The two losses did, however, not come down to significant miscues by the new manager. While City were just the better team on the day, the Chelsea match was a little different.

Arsenal squandered four huge goalscoring opportunities in front of Chelsea’s goal on the day, three of which were practically sitters. Striker Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang was uncharacteristically at fault for two of these chances, while Henrikh Mkhitaryan and Alex Iwobi also failed to put the ball in the back of the net in advanced positions as well (though the latter two players both ended up scoring on the day). The Gunners regularly found themselves in glorious spaces on the pitch, but failed to fire on all cylinders. During a match when they could have fairly easily scored at least five goals, Arsenal had to settle for just the two.

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After falling behind 2-0 against Chelsea, the Gunners did fight back to even the match before halftime. The second goal was particularly interesting. Eventually scored by the aforementioned Iwobi, the build up to the goal began all the way back with goalkeeper Petr Cech. Playing out of the back, a new tactic for the club administered by Emery, Cech began a series of 18 consecutive passes before Iwobi crashed the back of the net to level the match. The impressive goal brought a small glimpse of what the Spanish manager will bring to this team going forward.

Looking ahead, Arsenal will now most likely be favored in all of their next eight league matches. All of these games will be played against teams outside of the ‘big six’ Premier League teams and two of the four road matches are against newly promoted sides. On top of the more reasonable fixture list coming up, the Gunners will only have two league matches outside of London over the next three months. The combination of these two factors could possibly mean a point surge could come at a much needed time for the club.

With obviously plenty of time left in the season, Arsenal fans need to be patient with this new regime. There were positives to take away from their last match against Chelsea. Tactics and strategies are beginning to become more clear, and fans will start to really see what this team is all about after these next eight matches. If the Gunners can go on a bit of a run over the next month or two, they will be right back in the hunt for a top four place in the table.