LONDON — This time, Michail Antonio doesn’t get carried away. It’s Arsenal’s third corner of the game and West Ham’s number 9 has already found out more than enough about what happens if he can’t keep Gabriel Magalhaes around. Antonio wraps his arms around his opponent’s trunk, grabbing the man instead of his shirt. Declan Rice shoots towards the near post. Gabriel doesn’t go near there.
It’s probably not a foul, even if it’s a far cry from his usual jockeying for position. Antonio may be in danger, but the damage to the cause could be even greater if he lets Gabriel go. When you’re facing the sport’s most effective dead-ball weapon, betting on what the referees might think of your fight seems like a shrewd strategy. Anything to stop the highest scoring big man not named Joel Embiid.
By the time Gabriel left this contest at half-time, he had played a major role in two of Arsenal’s five, not once but twice launching an absolutely ridiculous affair in the visitors’ direction. So dangerous is the Brazilian when Bukayo Saka and Rice stand in front of a dead ball that his first goal in the 10th minute seemed completely predictable from the moment he, the last man to join the arsenal of dead balls, trotted to his feet. position.
It was quite a different place than usual. In recent weeks, Gabriel has placed himself front and center in dead-ball efforts, hovering around the penalty spot and demanding that one or two defenders come to him. In front of him, a large mass of jerseys were trying to drag the other team into the vortex, freeing up a line for the big Gabi. This time, Gabriel was placed in the role of oversized scrum-half, floating on the peripheries of the maul.
If you mix sports metaphors, what seemed to be a scrum took another form. Riccardo Calafiori, Kai Havertz, perhaps even Leandro Trossard and William Saliba, were preparing picks for Gabriel to enhance his career. Antonio could not overcome the tumult and none of the black shirts would let their West Ham men abandon their assignments. From the far post to the front, the highest scoring center back of the last five years had a free path to the goal. Everyone knew what would come next. Gabriel’s confidence in his scoring ability has proven to be contagious.
“He has real faith,” Mikel Arteta said. “The more it happens, the more you believe it. You can immediately tell by the player’s body language, how he communicates, that something is coming.”
So Gabriel scored what was his 17th goal from a set piece since arriving in the Premier League as a tempestuous youngster in the summer of 2020. His first appearance set the tone (rising high, heading low), but no one could have expected. Since then, there has been such a ruthless accumulation of goals from set pieces. A centre-back who has never taken a free kick has scored 17 goals in the Premier League, three more than anyone else from set pieces without a penalty since the start of the 2020-21 season. Free kick wizard James Ward-Prowse, the only man whose right foot can be compared to a wand? Fourteen. The great poacher Mohamed Salah? Twelve. Big Virg, Big Dunky, Big Stonesy? Ten.
Since the start of last season, only Robert Lewandowski has equaled his return of seven goals from set pieces in Europe’s top five leagues. These are old numbers, Steve Bruceian. Ronald Koeman style. A very useful addition for a team that, unlike its title rivals, likes to spread the score everywhere.
Gabriel could have had another one before the break. Hitting Antonio with hesitation, he walked away, jumping high enough for his head to rise higher than the arm of Lukasz Fabianski, who could only graze Gabriel with his left fist. Arsenal’s second penalty was the result, Bukayo Saka adding to Martin Odegaard’s earlier penalty as Arsenal quelled any nerves that may have been building when Aaron Wan-Bissaka and Emerson scored two remarkable goals in as many minutes.
Who knows if more could have come in the second half? The injury that forced him to sit out Tuesday’s victory against Sporting meant that Gabriel could only offer 45 minutes. “He did very well to be part of that,” Arteta said. “With that result and the state it is in, we decided to remove it.”
Gabriel is just honing his craft. The shots he takes on set pieces are of surprising quality. Note that heading the ball tends to have a fairly significant negative impact on the xG value of a shot. The average xG of a shot across the top five European leagues ranges between 0.1 and 0.11. A header from Gabriel since the start of last season is worth 0.16. These are really good opportunities that his movement and Arsenal’s blocking are creating.
There is a meticulousness to the forging of Gabriel’s opportunities. Before Saka’s shot went in, his centre-back came over to tell him where he was supposed to go; being Saka, he got it right on a dime. Calafiori and Havertz were given instructions on how to block. As for what they told William Saliba, I can only speculate. Maybe something like “I have this boss.” After the final whistle, a warm handshake from a set piece, Nicolás Jover, who perhaps wanted to keep an eye over his shoulder. Gabriel is going to put him out of a job with all this micromanagement in the field.
The end result of all this looks a little like Steph Curry coming off two precise screens. Only with a greater probability of scoring. Because if you haven’t reached Gabriel before the ball has entered the area, it’s already too late.
