Gabriel proves he is world’s best scoring defender as Arsenal star delivers again in 5-2 win at West Ham

LONDON — This time, Michail Antonio is not letting go. It’s Arsenal’s third corner of the match and the West Ham No. 9 has already discovered more than enough about what happens if he cannot keep Gabriel Magalhaes in his vicinity. Antonio gets his arms around his opponent’s trunk, taking hold of man rather than shirt. Declan Rice fires towards the near post. Gabriel isn’t getting anywhere near there.

It’s probably not a foul even if it is a fair way from your standard jockeying for position. Antonio might be dicing with danger but the damage to the cause could be all the greater if he lets Gabriel go away. When you’re matching up against the most effective deadball weapon in the sport, gambling on what the officials might think of your grappling seems a shrewd approach. Anything to stop the best-scoring big man not named Joel Embiid.

By the time Gabriel departed this contest at the interval, he had had a sizeable role in two of Arsenal’s five, not once but twice swinging an utterly ludicrous affair in the direction of the visitors. So dangerous is the Brazilian when Bukayo Saka and Rice stand over a deadball that his 10th-minute opener seemed utterly predictable from the moment he, the last man to join the deadball arsenal, trotted into position.

It was a rather different spot than usual. In recent weeks, Gabriel has planted himself front and center of the deadball efforts, hovering at the penalty spot and demanding one or two defenders come to him. Across from him, a great mass of shirts intent on dragging the other team into the vortex, freeing a line for big Gabi. This time, Gabriel placed himself in the oversized scrum half role, hovering on the peripheries of the maul.

If one might mix sporting metaphors, what appeared to be a scrum instead took on another form. Riccardo Calafiori, Kai Havertz, perhaps even Leandro Trossard and William Saliba, were all setting picks for Gabriel to curl his run around. Antonio couldn’t get through the tumult and none of the black shirts were letting their West Ham men abandon their assignments. From the back post to the front, the best goalscoring center back of the last five years had an unobstructed path to goal. Everyone knew what was coming next. Gabriel’s belief in his scoring prowess has proven to be infective.

“He has a real belief,” said Mikel Arteta. “The more it happens the more you believe it. You can tell straight away from the body language of the player, how they communicate, that something is coming.”

So Gabriel delivered what was his 17th goal from a set piece since he arrived in the Premier League a tempestuous youngster in the summer of 2020. His first appearance rather set the tone — rising high, heading down — but no one could have expected such a remorseless accrual of deadball goals since. A centerback who has never had a shot of a free kick has scored 17 Premier League goals, three more than anyone else has accrued from non-penalty set pieces 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 matches his return of seven set-piece goals across Europe’s big five leagues. These are numbers of yore, Steve Bruceian. Ronald Koeman-esque. Quite the helpful addition for a team that, unlike their title rivals, likes to spread the scoring far and wide.

Gabriel might have had another before the break. Hitting Antonio with the hesitation, he burst away, springing high enough that his head rose higher than the arm of Lukasz Fabianski, who could only graze Gabriel with his left fist. Arsenal’s second penalty was the outcome, Bukayo Saka adding to Martin Odegaard’s earlier on as Arsenal quelled the nerves that might have been building when Aaron Wan-Bissaka and Emerson struck two remarkable goals in as many minutes.

Who knows if more might have come in the second half? The injury that had forced him off in Tuesday’s win at Sporting meant 45 minutes was all Gabriel could offer. “He did great to be a part of that,” said Arteta. “With that result and the state he is feeling, we decided to take him off.”

Gabriel is only honing his craft. The shots he gets from set pieces are of a remarkably high quality. Consider that heading the football tends to have a quite significantly negative impact on the xG value of a shot. The average xG of a shot in Europe’s top five leagues is around 0.1 to 0.11. A Gabriel header since the start of last season is worth 0.16. These are seriously good openings that his movement and Arsenal’s blocking are creating.

There is a meticulousness to the forging of Gabriel’s opportunities. Before Saka’s delivery went in his center back was across to tell him where it was supposed to go — this being Saka he hit it on a dime. Calafiori and Havertz were instructed on their blocking. As to what William Saliba was told, I can only speculate. Maybe something along the lines of, “I got this chief.” At the final whistle, a warm handshake with set piece Nicolas Jover, who might want to keep an eye over his shoulder. Gabriel is going to do him out of a job with all this on-field micromanagement.

The end result of this all feels a little like when Steph Curry comes off two pindown screens. Just with a higher probability of a goal. Because if you haven’t gotten to Gabriel before the ball has gone into the box, you’re already too late.