ON THE FACE of it, what Mikel Arteta’s Arsenal have become is the antithesis of the Gunners’ best sides when Arsene Wenger was in charge.

When the Frenchman was manager, the North Londoners were invariably exciting to watch.

It was all about playing football that was attractive. There was plenty of guile provided by players like Denis Bergkamp and Robert Pires.

Their teams often had no shortage of skill and lightning pace in attack — think of footballers such as Thierry Henry, Nicolas Anelka and Marc Overmars.

Players of great technical ability like Emmanuel Petit and Gilberto Silva were prominent, while long balls were only deployed as a last resort.

They also had plenty of steel thanks to the presence of Tony Adams, Martin Keown, Sol Campbell and Patrick Vieira, among others.

Arteta’s side, of course, have talented attacking players too.

But their game is based much more on pragmatism than exhilarating football.

Tonight’s 1-0 win away to Brighton was typical of many of their games this season.

Their opening goal was less through brilliant attack play and more on account of poor goalkeeping by Bart Verbruggen, combined with a slight deflection that helped Bukayo Saka’s strike on its way into the net in the ninth minute.

What followed were sequences of play impossible to imagine under Wenger.

There was no shortage of time-wasting from the visitors — even in the first half — as the home fans routinely sang: “Same old Arsenal, always cheating.”

The Gunners did occasionally threaten on the counter, but allowed Brighton to dominate possession and relied on their impressive defensive set-up to see them over the line.

In that regard, they deserve to be compared with Wenger’s best sides. The likes of Gabriel, William Saliba and Declan Rice have regularly been performing at a high enough level to warrant comparison with Messrs Adams, Keown and Vieira.

But the most obvious parallel between Arteta and Wenger’s best sides is that both thrived due to an innovative approach that caught the rest of the Premier League offguard.

Wenger is often credited with changing English football. The dietary and training methods he introduced were unique and had a genuinely transformative effect, while the continental style of play contrasted with the more direct approach that was commonplace in English football during the 1990s.

It is also telling that the Gunners were the first team to field an entire matchday squad with no Englishman in 2005 — Wenger was quicker than most to embrace the internationalisation of the Premier League.

It is also partly the reason why most of the Frenchman’s greatest successes came in his first decade in charge, with the latter half of his tenure paling in comparison.

Eventually, the rest of English football caught up with Wenger’s revolutionary ideas.

While his style may be different, Arteta is also an innovator and a visionary.

He, too, has transformed Arsenal, and it was evident in his early days when he ruthlessly cast aside talented but ill-disciplined footballers like Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang.

And he has also dramatically changed the way the Emirates outfit play. Having gained a reputation for being flaky and unreliable, a soft touch at the back, from the later stages of the Wenger era on, in the past couple of seasons, they have been consistently the top flight’s most defensively mean team at the back.

At the weekend against Chelsea, two set-piece goals saw them equal a Premier League record.

Arsenal's Bukayo Saka pushes over Brighton and Hove Albion's Joel Veltman during the Premier League match at the American Express Stadium. Alamy Stock Photo Alamy Stock Photo

Per the BBC: “Arsenal’s 16 goals from corners is the joint-most by any side in a single Premier League campaign, alongside Oldham in 1992-93, West Brom in 2016-17, and the Gunners themselves in 2023-24.”

It’s also worth keeping in mind that Oldham, who only avoided relegation on goal difference that season, were playing in a 42-game campaign.

West Brom, meanwhile, were a mid-table side who finished 10th that season with Tony Pulis as their manager.

Yet the recurring theme of this season is how often not just Arsenal, but other elite English teams have been relying on set pieces in a manner that was previously predominantly associated with the weaker, more technically limited Premier League sides.

Arteta, though, has been a trendsetter. Just like Wenger three decades ago, he saw the way the English game was going.

What was especially impressive about the Brighton victory tonight was how regularly the Gunners were able to kill the game and largely alleviate the threat of a late rally from the Seagulls, as they have done so often this season amid difficult away trips.

Arteta also arguably understood the significance of this tactic more promptly than any other manager.

He saw football becoming slower than ever — the switch from three substitutes to five, the introduction of VAR, and the reluctance of officials to add too much stoppage time or harshly punish cynical play are all contributing factors. These changes all reward teams who are solid defensively and unlikely to make individual errors, rather than those who play exciting, attacking, fast football, and so Arteta has prioritised the former approach.

Whether the Spaniard is as successful as his one-time mentor remains to be seen.

Yet following tonight’s drama, it’s starting to feel like Arsenal have one hand on the title as they bid to end a 22-year wait for Premier League glory.