Arsenal have been labelled the “worst team in the league” for their play style by Jamie O’Hara who pointed towards the lack of open play goals from Mikel Arteta’s team.

The north London club may top the Premier League table but have faced criticism of the way they have gone about it having scored just five goals from open play.

Instead, Arsenal’s primary method of scoring goals has been set pieces with the Gunners having scored nine times from free kicks or corners already this season.

As such, talkSPORT pundit O’Hara pointed toward them being “worst team in the league for percentage of goals from open play.”

“You are winning, and fair play to you, you’re winning. But you are boring to watch,” he told an Arsenal fan who called into his show.

“And that’s fine. I wouldn’t care if Tottenham were top of the league, I wouldn’t care.

“Here’s a stat for you, and you can take this how you want, but this is fact, right.

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“Arsenal are the worst team in the league for percentage of goals from open play, you are 20th in the table.

“You’re the worst team in the league for goals from open play, so if you take your set pieces away, which you’re first in, you’re the worst team in the league for scoring goals in open play.”

While plenty on the outside have been critical, Arsenal fans and their manager will have little reason to care as long as they continue to win games.

Asked about his approach recently, Arteta said he had this idea 10 years ago.

“Ten years ago. I wasn’t here but 10 years ago, I said ‘it is a massive thing to do that’ and I started to have a vision, try to implement a method and try to be surrounded by the best people to deliver that.

“I went to City with the best manager in the world and I could see where we could have improvements and it was clear because at some point I was doing that and I wasn’t the best person in the world to do that,” he said.

“So if I am not the best person in the world to do that and the best method to do it, there are ways to improve it. And you could see that straight afterwards what started to happen.

“But [I am] not only obsessive about that, I am the same in the defensive part, in transition, I want to be the best when it comes to chaos, I want to be the best when it comes to positional attacks, the best when it comes to low blocks.

“That’s the eagerness to constantly find ways to develop your team and give your players to be more unpredictable and especially more efficient.”

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