Just a few weeks back third place was in our grasp. All that Arsenal had to do was maintain results with Tottenham and we would finish the League in third. And what did we do? Bottled it.
At the time, I was worried about the away form and an away fixtures list that went straight through several mid-table teams. Games which have traditionally been close for Arsenal (except Everton). But looking at the home games, they seemed like they should be easy points. The only problem is that this time it wasn’t just away form. It was a home bottle job.
This season tastes reminiscent of 2015/16. That was the season that the traditional top 6 imploded and the Premier League race came down to three teams, Leicester, Arsenal, and Tottenham. Leicester took the title from us because we just couldn’t get over the injuries and find our finishing boots. And in the end Arsenal were so utterly broken that we finished 2nd only because Tottenham found a way to bottle the race even more than we did.
The difference between 2018/19 and 2015/16 is that in 2015/16 the underlying stats had two teams as the top teams to win the League, Arsenal and Spurs and by my metric Arsenal were far and away the best team in the League. We haven’t seen an Arsenal side play defense as well as that side nor put up as much offense as that team since.
The reason that this Arsenal side struggle is simply because the margins between our defensive strength and offensive output are too small. Think about it this way: in 2015/16 we generated 97 big chances and conceded just 35. This season (so far) Arsenal have generated 75 big chances and allowed 66. Obviously that’s just one measure but it’s a big one and what I consider a leading indicator of the health of your football club on the pitch.
But “how many big chances allowed” is kind of abstract in the sense that it’s just a number removed from the context of the season at Arsenal. The context is that this team are both mentally weak and lack any kind of clear game plan for how they want to play.
We often talk about how a team lacks the mentality to overcome adversity and that can be one way of winning. But more often what you see with great sports teams is that they have a system that they can fall back on to reorganize, to gather themselves. I don’t see that at Arsenal. We don’t have either the leaders to drag us through hell and back, nor the system that we can fall back on and trust.
The former you can get through the transfer market – buying billy big balls attacker and his cousin apex predator center back (or maybe just buying some players who can dribble at defenders, like Iwobi but with a little more guile). The latter is the job of the coach. Emery as much as admitted that this is his fault when he took the blame for Mustafi’s defending. He said that it’s the job of the system to protect players weaknesses and he’s absolutely correct. It’s a team game and Arsenal don’t have endless buckets of money to just spend on swapping in parts until we find some that work together. Instead the manager needs to put in place a system that protects player’s faults and highlights their strengths. You wouldn’t put Torreira as a center back against Troy Deeney.
I feel like Emery’s “chop-slap” lineups, constant half-time subs, and in game tactical changes are not helping. It’s one thing to want old man Wenger to change things once in a while and it’s quite another to change the way that we play 96 times a season.
Emery really needs to find a clear identity for this team. This summer we were promised a pressing team, instead we are a depressing team. Why did he abandon the press? It seems to me that the only way you can have a team that attacks as much as Arsenal want to do is to press when we lose the ball. In the absence of that press, Arsenal end up doing weird stuff like switching from a back four to a back three; a two man midfield, to a three man midfield; overlapping fullbacks to no fullbacks.
Arsenal are going to have a summer clear out, that much is true. They are losing a lot of players on free transfers and retirement, which looks like it’s going to free up a bunch of “salary cap” space for fresh, young players to come in. Meanwhile, fans are screaming out for leaders and we are losing one of the most inspirational players in the squad to Juventus.
But for me an equally important change is that we need to start to see something happening with “the process”. How do we want to play football? What is the team’s identity? So far, the only identity I see is that we are bottlers.
I’m a Spurs supporter, and so naturally biased, but why the hell have Arsenal let Ramsey go – when he’s been their best player for at least five years? It makes no sense to me at all, It would serve them right if they qualify for the CL and find themselves in a group with Juventus.
As a Spurs supporter, I was naturally amused by your lament, but I think you are being a bit harsh in assessing your team as bottlers. Your manager had just been in place for a year and couldn’t start from scratch. No question IMO that he will do a great job for Arsenal and field a stronger team next season.
“This season tastes reminiscent of 2015/16. That was the season that the traditional top 6 imploded and the Premier League race came down to three teams, Leicester, Arsenal, and Tottenham”
Ha, so deluded, you were never in it.
I agree with Frank. Once we’d drawn 2-2 in the battle of the Bridge, that was it for Spurs, as Leicester (who’d taken easy points off top teams, eg Chelsea and others that always scrapped hard against US) won the damn title. For the remaining 3 games or so, Spurs were so distraught with that lost opportunity, that they didn’t care whether they finished with the consolation of 2nd, or not. And THAT is the only reason why Arsenal nipped in to finish 2nd ahead of us. Arsenal hadn’t actually been in the title race for months!
My recollection is that Arsenal were top until christmas
Does the word Bottlers show up in the Spurs feed? Why are all three comments from them? Weird..
Completely agree about seeing progress with the process. It’s certainly not what we were told it would be, but that was under Gazidis. You’ve said it before and I agree, the plan is to be cutbacks FC. I’m not sure I like it, or even if it’ll work. But next season Emery will have the sort of players he wants and a full pre season to drill them. Then we’ll see.
PS. If we don’t make the CL through either route, this season will have to count as a massive failure. Transition or no transition, we have the players for it and we’ve been lucky enough to have the opportunity.
Shard, they saw “ bottlers” and figured it was their area of expertise so why not leave a comment.
LOL
Hahahaha, yes.
I’m trying to maintain some semblance of calm after this loss. There’s a lot of knee jerk doom and gloom out there. But in the last 2 games it feels like we have morphed back into last year’s team, which seemed to suffer from wave after wave of opponents dribbling straight at our back line. Jota was unstoppable. We were getting overrun in midfield and they were free to terrorize our backpedaling defense. I drew 2 conclusions:
1 It’s no coincidence our downturn in form happened on Ramsey’s departure from the lineup. He is the answer to your question about why we don’t press. No one else can lead the press from the middle. And no one brings his toughness and leadership to our team.
2. Torreira is not right. His injury must be more serious than we know and he’s trying to gut it out. But he’s just not the same player who made tackles and interceptions and frustrated opponents early in the season. If it’s a groin injury, that kills mobility and keeps him from moving laterally. I see a guy who can go forward and back only, and who can’t protect our back line as he used to.
We are wounded and tired and as you say lack the character to come back when down. I doubt we find a way to 4th, unless Chelsea fall apart too. And that’s my reason for a glimmer of hope. Chelsea are very capable of taking just 4 points from their last 3 matches. We could still win 2 home games and back our way to the CL. Here’s to them outbottling us.
2. Torreira may, just may, not be as good as Gooners think. I haven’t been that impressed and thought he should have been sent off for that ridiculous two-footed challenge. Maybe it’s the systemic problem that Emery is talking about – space between him and the other DM but honestly, I need another year to decide if it’s him or the system. He’s so, so, so tiny. Like smaller than Cazorla by a few inches and maybe even a few kilos. Very strange player.
Well, I think he just might be taller than Valbuena…
I wouldn’t call it a massive failure Shard, but it would be a failure of sorts I suppose.
In the PL no one outside of Arsenal fandom gave us a chance at a top four before the season’s start so it really wouldn’t be a shocker if we delivered on that.
In Europe most likely opponent in the final will be Chelsea and why I would like our chances against them in a two legged tie, not so in a one off on foreign grounds.
That, and Hazard who can singlehanded tilt any game against you.
So , as disappointing as it would be not to win it, a massive failure it would be not.
But here is where I agree with you , I haven’t been impressed by much Emery has done thus far.
It’s about expectations. You’re right no one else gave us much of a chance. I always thought they were wrong. We really underperformed last season away from home, and I think we made the right additions to the squad. (Except, as it turns out, Licht who I felt was better than this)
I expected top 4. I never accepted we were favourites for the EL precisely because of the unpredictability. It would be disappointing not to win it having made it this far, like it was last season, but not a failure in itself. The failure would be to not make the CL.
I have a feeling Frankfurt might end up beating Chelsea.
I would still argue that Emery has done a pretty good job. The one glaring exception was the CP match, where he took a calculated risk to rest some key players and got burned.
The biggest problem he faces is the squad. There’s a reason Tim believes a clear out is coming. We don’t have truly elite players and we don’t have depth. What I think has happened over the last few weeks is that we were on a great run with a lineup featuring Ramsey in CM and Sokratis and Kos in the back. He was starting to rely on that grouping. Then Ramsey goes down and he is scrambling to figure things out. Same happened after Holding’s injury and Bellerin’s. He goes into chop and change mode, trying every possible combination to stop the bleeding after a key injury. It takes a few games to get it right, and we look like $hit in the interim. It’s hit us at a very bad time with Ramsey, and we just don’t have the depth to replace him and play the same style. One injury forces a complete re-think. I agree with Tim’s clear out prediction, and we have a lot more depth, and fewer elite (or almost elite) players next season.
This is the most convincing explanation for what we’re seeing. It gives me hope, but at the same time I’m concerned we won’t add players of the calibre we need.
Yeah, I agree with this, and it speaks to Tim’s post as well. We don’t have a robust system to fall back on, so when key players are injured we have to reinvent the team again. This might just be because Emery hasn’t had enough time to build the squad he wants for the system he wants, and so he’s improvising with the squad he has, or it might be because he wants the team to be flexible and play in different ways against different opposition. Only time will tell.
Increasingly feel like the team is trying to play attacking possession football but the players are not technically strong enough to do this well. Opponents know that they can let Arsenal have the ball and if they sit back and defend in depth, Arsenal will fiddle-arse around on the edge of the box, with the occasional pass back to Leno. When Arsenal lose the ball, they will be vulnerable to a fast direct break given that the defenders will either: a) be upfield and slow/negligent in getting back or b) they’ll do something dumb. Not an original thought I’m sure but I think Emery wants the team to play like Man City but the players don’t have the technical skills to do so. To a degree, I blame Emery because the team should play to the strengths of the squad but mostly I blame the quality of the individual players because at this point, I don’t see any outstanding strengths in the squad especially given injuries. The fact that the team is collapsing again, with a lot of the same players as under Wenger, is telling.
Emery keeps bringing up Liverpool as an example of building to get to the top. Leaving aside the fact that they’ve opened the purse strings like we won’t, they needed to make the CL. Which they did at our expense 2 years ago, by a single point.
Not having the same budget means our need to make the CL is greater. Frankly, making the CL would have been Emery’s prime target this season, and though Arsenal won’t sack him, it would increase the pressure on him were we to not achieve it.
Emery should not make comparisons to Liverpool if he knows what’s good for him because from Day One of Klopp’s tenure, you knew what he was trying to make Liverpool into. As Tim described, we have no idea what Emery wants to make Arsenal into. Klopp, Guardiola, even Pocchetino and Sarri, have very clear visions of how they want their teams to play. Emery is more pragmatist than we were led to believe last year.
Right. We don’t know what his vision is. Maybe he doesn’t even really have one suitable for anything other than an underdog.
Next season will be make or break for Emery. Not just at Arsenal, but to define his career path and if he’ll ever make the jump up to a higher level than the Sevillas of the world.
i knew when reuben neves started his run up up to take that free kick that it was going in. wow, what a shot! despite xhaka playing a little bit of dodge ball in the wall, that was lovely technique. i have a huge respect for any young man (or woman) willing to put in the work required to develop that level of technical skill. that ball didn’t go higher than 7 feet in the air and he does that all the time; absolutely nothing any keeper could do.
okay, getting off of neves’ nuts, i was impressed with how arsenal started the game. it’s unusual for arsenal to begin away games so strong. emery had the boys ready to play, probably gave them a speech about champions league qualification. arsenal dominated but didn’t score and, it’s like they say, “goals change games”. the neves goal changed the game but the diogo goal ended the game. what a dagger, right before halftime to go down 3-0.
faith mentioned just the other day how an important approach is to press the cdm. i don’t remember how the first two goals were conceded but the last two, i do. on their third goal, arsenal’s cdm (xhaka) gave the ball away in the central area and diogo attacked an unbalanced defense. mkhi was trailing and couldn’t foul after seeing what neves just did and sokratis had to be careful not to get sent off. bottom line, a cdm can not lose the ball right there.
on the arsenal goal, ozil pressed their cdm and he tried to swing the ball. guendouzi read the attempted swing and intercepted the ball and started a counter that ended with wolves scrambling to concede a corner. sokratis scored from that corner. bottom line, a cdm can’t lose the ball right there.
A lot of good points here. Obviously the Holding, Bellerin and Welbeck injuries have hurt across the season. And the recent Ramsey injury couldn’t really have come at a worse time. Kos and Monreal are getting on(and that’s become very obvious with Monreal lately). And I agree with the comment above that Torriera seems significantly down from where he was in the first half of the year for whatever reason. And to give Emery some credit, even with all that, I feel like we’ve mostly done better against the top PL teams this year, and we were up for the Napoli matches.
But the injuries don’t explain all the line-up shuffling, the issues with formations and tactics changes or the poor away form. That’s largely on Emery. And these last two games really made it seemed to me that we’ve made zero progress over the course of the season on that front.
Even the best offense can be inconsistent. That’s where the axiom “defense wins championships” comes from; a solid well-drilled defense is typically a consistent factor and less prone to ups and downs.
That’s where Emery has fallen short all season – are we a possession team that defends basically by limiting the other team’s opportunities? Are we a pressing team that holds a high line and forces turnovers, bad passes and pins teams in their own half? Are we a resolute low-block defending team that bends but doesn’t break and lives off the counter-attack?
We are not a good possession team, we don’t have the skill. We are not a good pressing team because the roster is imbalanced. We can’t defend the low block because we lack the personnel.
It’s depressing. We can’t just make it up as we go. Someone in the club needs to pick an identity for this team and move forward with it.
“If you know the way broadly you will see it in all things” – Musashi
Musashi sounds a lot like Mustafi. I had to do a double take there. My word, any man quoting Mustafi on here would be a brave one indeed.
tim is absolutely right. arsenal are bottlers but it’s not the player’s faults. not only do arsenal lack clear direction from the manager, they lack leadership on the pitch. emery should be a trainer, not a manager. no way should ramsey had been allowed to walk on a free, no way should ozil have been isolated from the team for so long, and no way should xhaka be a cdm. this team is poorly managed.
speaking on the cdm piece, even when wenger signed xhaka, he knew he’d made a mistake and went as far as playing cazorla as a cdm to avoid playing xhaka back there. it wasn’t until santi got injured that we began to see xhaka regularly. it also coincides with arsenal’s fall from the top 4.
the primary role of the cdm is to control the flow of the game. in order to do that, you don’t have to be the biggest, strongest, fastest, or most skilled. but you do need some experience AND you have to be one of the smartest player on the field; it’s not either/or. so much of what a cdm does goes un-noticed and they tend to be undervalued by novice observers. cdms don’t score many goals, get many assists, or make many tackles. they make sure the team ticks by communicating, taking up smart positions, drawing fouls, sometimes making simpler passes, time wasting, or whatever the situation requires. it’s a situation by situation, game by game assessment. every situation is different and a good cdm is dynamic enough to do what each situation asks. that requires experience and intelligence. sorry folks, but that’s not granit xhaka.
arsenal have plenty of talent, particularly when you compare them to other teams. however, they’re not a champions league team because they lack that driving force and sound direction at the base of the midfield. if you look at the top two bpl teams, they have top cdms to accompany their talent, hence, the gap ahead of the rest of the league. when you look at arsenal, they don’t have a top cdm. that’s also a problem for an uber-talented man united. until arsenal address this problem, everything else is moot. however, if they only fix their cdm problem, at minimum, they’re in the champions league and competing for the title, which is where they should be.
please understand, my post isn’t meant to be a granit xhaka inquisition. it’s not his fault arsenal paid £35 million for him. it’s not his fault that he’s being asked to play as a cdm; he didn’t play cdm for gladbach and he doesn’t play cdm for switzerland.
arsenal are trying to fit square pegs into round holes. wenger was notoriously bad for getting positions wrong for players and this is no different. however, emery had a clean slate and an opportunity to assess. his assessment lead to xhaka getting an extension and ramsey being released. if anything, this is an inquest directed at unai emery’s management of our beloved club.
Great insight, Josh. CDM seemed like we were finding a solution with Torreira, but he’s really dropped off.
But i take issue with the idea that this is what stands between us and contending.
We desperately need a wide dribbler/goal scorer. Someone who can create something from nothing. Sanchez’ departure, however welcome and necessary, left a gaping hole. It’s no wonder we struggle so much when we go down a goal. We rely on flicks and intricate passing, which are nearly impossible when teams sit in the low block. We need that guy who can curl one into the corner and change the game in an instant.
This. While we do need our current CDMs to improve, we absolutely need someone who can dribble. And shoot, preferably, but at this point I’d take dribbles and assists.
Also we need another CM to replace a rapidly aging Koscielny
I really like the point about dynamism at the cdm position. The ability to do what the game demands. I think that is an underrated ability at all positions (see Ozil), but maybe especially so at cdm.
Xhaka is apparently very dedicated and intense in training, which might explain why managers like him, but he doesn’t have that game awareness and intelligence that Arteta and Santi did. I wouldn’t say he can’t develop it, and I like a lot of what he brings, but we definitely need someone with that ability to come in now. In addition to any Ramsey ‘replacement’ which I maintain we’re not getting.
Your comment about Wenger’s treatment of Xhaka makes me wonder about how true it might be that Xhaka was one of the first signings forced on Wenger by the club.
Made me think the same, especially as claude (I think) had pointed out how Wenger had publicly slated Xhaka’s inability to ….tackle? defend? I’m forgetting what it was.
But I wouldn’t go so far as to say ‘forced’. I think Wenger still had the right of refusal, but they must have pushed him hard for this. StatsDNA was the future Gazidis had backed I guess.
What’s interesting was that recently it came out that Wenger had invested in a stats company in the US (Chicago as I recall) Which it seems is not StatsDNA. Wenger definitely was pro-stats and analytics, but maybe he just had a different system that he favoured?
It may be mostly academic at this point, but it’s still interesting to me.
Your history of Cazorla and Xhaka is totally wrong, Joshua. Cazorla and Xhaka barely overlapped.
Xhaka wasn’t here when Santi was in his pomp (finding his home in MF from LW). And Cazorla’s injury-fueled downward spiral occurred once Xhaka arrived. Santi was not deployed at CDM because Xhaka was found wanting there.
It looks a good, neat tale, but it isnt true.
In fact Santi sustained that nasty, unhealable, heartbreaking injury 2 months into Xhaka’s first season with Arsenal, and a couple of years after Santi had made himself our linchpin central midfielder. That season of Xhaka’s arrival and Santi’s epic injury (2016/17) proved to be a disaster of a season for the Spaniard, and he came very close to ending his career.
Emery is a serial bottler on the road his record at Sevilla in his final season is clear evidence, and that 6-1 disaster at Barcelona with PSG was the mother of all collapses and a clear indication that he was never a solution for a team like Arsenal which had serious problems on the road
He even struggled to beat Wenger’s late-Arsenal garbage teams.
That is a troubling fact. I hope it’s something he’s capable of changing because I think we’re stuck with him for a bit. I’m hoping it’s part of a managerial learning curve and I’m inclined to write off a lot of what happened at PSG given how different the nature of the job was to what he’s expected to do at Arsenal. This is a rebuild job of a big club. He hasn’t done that yet and I really really really hope he’s a fast learner and that the club will give him what he needs to succeed.
I tend to agree (duhh) that the playing style (or lack of) is awful, but if we won against CP, this conversation would have been very different now. There is no debate as to whether we suck at the away games but even then, there are only a couple of points between four teams.
And given how we are very very good at home, this means that the other three teams kinda suck both home and away.
It’s far from ideal but somehow I don’t find it to be that catastrophic. If the dropped points against CP were in between the 22 unbeaten games, probably our perspective would have been slightly different.
I’m not saying Emery is doing a great job nor am I saying that I’m enjoying this season. Far from it and the stats back it up. It’s just let’s wait until the next 5 or 6 games pass and then we can see if we are the worst among the four other equally bad teams or the season ends with a surprisingly pleasant finale.
Mate this piece has your signature compelling writing…but you can do better than that. Calling Arsenal bottlers is way too easy and media analysis. This is not you. What is really going on? Wolves have had ridiculous results against the Top 6 away and at home both in PL and FA cup just take a look. This not a coincidence. They did a number on/beat us/Chelsae/Liverpool/Spurs/Man United this season + drawing with City. What is going own. Remember that time Benitez (2008/2009) almost won the title he did in a similar way – doing the double against his title competitors – he failed because he got two draws against Arsenal (including Arshavin’s ridiculous 4-4). Remember Torres holding his own against Vidic and Ferdinand in a devastating performance. Crystal Palace beat City at home too. So mate this is not about bottling it’s about two team being ridiculously prepared tactically for top teams. I don’t know how. The back-forth of the second free-kick wolves goal was a defo a training ground piece..What’s really going on?
LOL – are you a parody account? Is this Doc doing some weird act? Please stop telling me how great I am and then saying I could be better.
Arsenal are absolutely bottlers. We crumble under pressure almost every time with just one exception: the FA Cup. I’m tempted to switch my opinion on Ramsey just for this fact alone. Without Ramsey we seem to be bereft of any balls.
Have a great day.
Come to think of it..haven’t seen Doc on here in a while. Hmm…
Haha, Tim, Wasat, Tom. LOL You can reckon I’m a troll/WUM/parody account. That’s fine but my points are valid. I will keep it about the football.
Wolves have beaten all of the top six except City with which they drew at home(including PL and FA) . ONLY Liverpool and City have achieved this feat this season. We can all say Arsenal are bottlers but all the teams needed to beat Wolves for title/top 4/FA cup. Wolves are running a rouse on the sly. We all know calling Arsenal bottler’s is easy media analysis.
Emery by design is identity fluid. He changes his formation for the opposition. Look at our best games – Totts x2, Napoli x2, Man U (beat PSG Man U) at home, Chelsea – all different. The main fluidity lies in Ozil in/Ozil out, 2/1 up top, 3/4 at the back. Being like that means opposition don’t know what tactic to play/run until the last minute
It’s funny. If I was spewing vitriol/hateration at the team and/or you. You wouldn’t bat an eyelid but because I am not you reckon I’m trolling/faking. The content of twitter doesn’t have to set the tone for all on-line conversation.
Wolves beat City on Boxing Day.
I love this FAITH dude.
Nothing fades him( her) even if you dismiss his comments with sarcasm he just comes right back smiling for more.
If I didn’t know any better I’d say he was a stoner.
Tim, your interactions with FAITH has got me laughing my a$$ off.
Its interesting people are speaking about the manager but absolutely forget that the management team had a transfer window and they messed everything up by bringing in a midfielder. When in reality, we were in defensive straits and reinforcements were necessary. Raul, Venks and the Kroenkes have their parts to play in assisting the bottling.
Absolutely. Let’s not forget that they brought in the Lich as cover for RB, which was a 75k Pound disaster.
One thing I’m trying to think through is how much responsibility the manager takes/gets for a team’s performances. Also, how long should a manager be held responsible?
Ox is back for Liverpool. Welcome back to football, lad.
Ozil being frozen out for half the season was unacceptably incompetent of Emery. Same, to a lesser degree, with Ramsey. If Ozil and Ramsey play the first half of the season, we probably pick up three to six more points, which would have put us comfortably in the top four. Emery’s man management has been very poor.