We will probably never get to see an Arsenal team really dominate Man U at Old Trafford. They are just too big ($$$) a club and even if they have a coach who is pretty mediocre, they will always be able to afford huge money players like Bruno and Paul Pogba or drop a hundo on a big headed center back. However, what we can reasonably expect from an Arsenal team is exactly what we saw yesterday: stay in the game, create some good chances, maybe nick a point, and if we get the rub of the green, even come away with the win.
That’s exactly what Mikel Arteta did. And that seems to be his game plan for almost every match. That doesn’t mean that I’m 100% comfortable with the way that we play, but there are 31 matches left this season and I think we are seeing some progress on multiple fronts.
First, of course is the defense. We still aren’t a pressing team, we don’t press high, we don’t press low, we don’t tackle, and it’s actually quite annoying that we will let teams with defenders who are slower than a barge just pass the ball around. In fact, we are bottom of the table in nearly every defensive metric, except the ones that count: expected goals and actual goals.
And what Arteta has done is – touching wood – somehow removed the errors. I suspect that these things (lack of proactive defending and fewer errors) may be related. I don’t know that for a fact but I do know that we haven’t had a bunch of penalties called against us, we aren’t (usually) diving in to win balls back, and we are just staying (mostly) tight and in position rather than trying crazy things. And that’s a pretty remarkable record if you consider that this season has been ridiculously penalty-happy, with Man U the chief beneficiary.
When I was watching the game yesterday it struck me that Gabriel might be the guy we have all wanted at Arsenal for years. He is nearly always perfect when he goes to ground (which I kinda wish he wouldn’t do so often!), he’s a ball winner, and he’s strong in the air. Now if we can just sort the RCB position out, we could have quite the defense.
Gabriel did make one (unnecessary) challenge on Matic but he won the ball and left United fans crying that they didn’t get a pen. And Arsenal did get caught out on one counter, early in the game when Mason Greenwood had a shot from an acute angle. It was a killer pass from Rashford too which sprung the counter on us.
But that wasn’t repeated. Arsenal did a fantastic job closing up shop against Man U. One key player in that was Thomas. He led the team in pressure regains with 8. He only attempted 15. Normally this is a low % activity (30% or so on average) and Thomas, Gabriel, Lacazette, Holding, and Tierney all had excellent pressure regain percentages. But it was Thomas, bossing the midfield, who led the charge.
Thomas also freed up Elneny. There isn’t any player who I can point to who has been more revitalized under Mikel Arteta than Elneny. Bellerin has been great but that’s more of a return to his pre-ACL-tear form. Elneny has been transformed from a guy who was mostly known for running around “like a headless chicken” and passing sideways into a guy who is using his endless stamina to collect deep, looking for a quick forward pass, and even carrying the ball forward. He led Arsenal yesterday (tied with Bukayo Saka) in progressive carries with 214 yards, was 5th in progressive passing with 229 yards, tied Thomas for the most passes into the final third, completed 91% of his passes, and wasn’t dispossessed – nor lost control – even once.
Elneny isn’t going to be some huge tackler but he doesn’t shy away from defensive duties and uses his positioning and tireless running to help the team win possession. He led Arsenal with 3 blocked passes and added 3 interceptions. Which is hugely important to stopping United’s counters.
Arteta’s plan was pretty clear in the first half but the 2nd half was a bit of a different story. I felt like Arsenal rode a bit of luck in the 2nd. Ole must have had a word with his team because they came out of the blocks going gangbusters.
They were pressing us high up the pitch and Arsenal kept trying to get the ball out and up to Lacazette but the Frenchman turned it over nearly every time. We looked bad, slow, half-speed but even in the midst of that Auba had a pretty decent chance: a long-range shot that he tried to curl around (Fred?).
Arsenal weathered that storm however, and United went back to sleep. That’s when Pogba fouled Bellerin and Mike Dean did the unthinkable: he awarded Arsenal a penalty. This is the same Mike Dean who absolutely hated Arsene Wenger. Remember that he sent Wenger to the stands once in this match. He was the referee in charge of the Eduardo leg-break match. He was the referee who reported Arsene Wenger when the Frenchman once called him a cheat. He is the most penalty-happy referee in the League and yet when Wenger was at Arsenal he almost never awarded Arsenal a penalty. It can’t be any more obvious that his beef was with Wenger than the fact that he has awarded Arsenal a penalty in each of the last two matches he’s refereed and 4 total penalties since Wenger was retired. In the 18 years he was a referee in Arsenal matches under Wenger, he awarded Arsenal just three pens and just one penalty from 2008 to 2018.
But we got a penalty and it was the right call. Pogba didn’t want to do the defensive work, so he went to ground. Bellerin threw himself over after feeling the contact (which is what he’s supposed to do) and Dean awarded the penalty. Dean also called Bellerin for a foul throw, though, which is Hector’s third foul throw in… his lats two matches? I think someone needs some throwing practice.
There were a crazy three minutes or so of Arsenal defending late in the match. Ole brought on Matic and United took control of the game. Gabriel fouled Greenwood on the edge of the box and for a brief moment I thought he was going to be sent off. Then Gabriel tested his luck again, this time with a perfectly times (albeit rash) challenge on Matic in the box. For sure Dean could have awarded a penalty there but didn’t. He did give Auba a yellow card for not leaving the pitch in the correct way or something.
But Arsenal weathered the “storm”. United mostly shot from outside the box and only created one non-shot big chance (header from Maguire across the box). In the end they only managed to generate 0.4 xG according to fbref and 0.52 by my account.
One more thing stood out to me: Arsenal’s non-shot big chances. The Arsenal attack has been pretty bad. We all know that. But what’s giving me hope is that yesterday Arsenal created four of what I call “non-shot big chances”. These are passes that are almost shots, passes into extremely dangerous areas, which the attacking players just barely fail to get a toe or head on. You can probably remember several: think of the Bellerin cross early on that Aubameyang nearly connected with; or the pass to Auba which just nicked off his toe; or the whiff shot from Lacazette (because a United player nicked the ball); or Partey’s pass inside the 18 yard box when he probably should have shot. Arteta’s team is creating those chances and just not quite connecting with them. And for me, it’s a great sign that we might be about to turn a corner in the attack.
Anyway, 31 more matches to go so there’s time for that to come together. And if it does, well, I think we have a really good chance at a top four finish.
An encouraging display: we looked more potent in the first half and mature in the second.
I really hope Elneny continues to provide high quality performances like this; not only is it a great story, but he feels a glaring need for us without having to throw money at it.
Fairly amazing that we have the lowest goals allowed despite having played City, Utd and Pool away. Plus having a fairly unsettled central defense.
Seems Arteta has done a very good job of organization, and hopefully that gives him and the team a little more room to play in a more attacking manner as we go forward.
Also, I will confess that I never would have thought that Elneny would be a better option than Xhaka, but on the balance of yesterday’s match, that does seem to be the case.
Still think I’d like to see a little more of the youngsters instead of Laca and Willian.
Mike Dean is more pantomime villain than actual villain these days. In most of the recent Arsenal matches he has reffed over the past few years he has been ok. Ish. His problem is that he’s simply not that good a referee, but who in the EPL is these days?
Gabriel does go to ground a lot (like the forgotten Sokratis), but his timing is almost always good.
Props to Elneny. Ive been a critic of that pretend press thing he does, but yesterday he was superb. Spot on about Bellerin, Tim. He has, of late, lookeda superb player under Arteta, and his defending has improved. Not so his throwing. Yes, a rare foul throw, but the real knock against him that he always seems to throw it to the most covered player.
Accountability resides with the coach, so Im giving him this one without conditions. First in 14 years at Old Trafford is huge.
I will never forgive Mike Dean for 18 years of atrocious and biased refereeing against Arsene Wenger and Arsenal. He literally cost us the title in 2007/08 and 2015/16. In 2015 he was the referee in the infamous Chelsea match where Diego Costa assaulted Koscielny and Gabriel and Mike Dean sent Gabriel off. He was also the referee in the 0-0 draw with Sunderland where he denied Arsenal a stonewall pen when Iwobi’s shot hit Yedlin.
It’s not incompetence.
The Chelsea / Costa game was probably the lowest low for me this past decade
McNair tackle on Wilshere that sent him to hospital for reconstructive ankle surgery wasn’t even a foul according to Dean……… adding insult to injury.
If Dean gives us another 10 soft penalties before retiring it won’t be enough to make up for his Wenger era sins.
exactly.
he was the ref who sent Wenger to the stands for kicking a water bottle where he then had to get yelled at by people who were chanting at him that he’s a pedophile.
“These days”, Tom.
“Recent Arsenal matches.”
Back then, even Fergie thought that the Wenger punishment was excessive, humiliating and wrong. And yeah, Dean had a clear disdain for Arsenal for a long time.
Great three points. Much needed as three losses wouldn’t be a great place to be. Positives for me:
– We attacked on the right side particularly through Bellerin
– No Xhaka or Mustafi – this is really important as they’re the most error prone outfield players and we need to be rid of them
– Even though our press wasn’t brilliant we did a fantastic job nullifying MU’s diamond and game plan. Stop Fernandes and you pretty much neutralise MU
Signs of progress and a much needed confidence boost. This ‘we win or lose by one goal’ strategy is very high risk and stressful. We really need to show we can put lesser sides to the sword or even better, take the lead early.
Tim, you seriously didn’t see us pressing in that game or dominating that game?
We did press, 100 times. That is a very low number but it’s not zero.
We created four non-shot big chances. Most of those were early. But apart from the pen, we had a very low, very poor xG. I can’t say we “dominated” the game. We had moments but I’m not a fan of us being so passive.
Where do you get the press number? Just watching the game it looked like we did it all game until we scored. Ole moved a spare man further back after the half to combat it but Arsenal figured that out too.
Lewis Ambrose discusses it better than I could here: https://arseblog.com/2020/11/tactics-column-under-coached-0-1-over-coached/
https://fbref.com/en/matches/75dd1359/Manchester-United-Arsenal-November-1-2020-Premier-League
“It wasn’t necessarily a high press in terms of making lots of challenges, but Arsenal simply cut off passing lanes and made it very difficult for a lacklustre United side to play any easy balls.”
whew… I was worried you were going to tell me something counterfactual!
Counterfactual? Love it. One of my new favourite words, up there with defenestrate.
I’d like to see the press stats before and after the goal. I’d guess 90/100 came before it, and then we sat back to protect the lead. Personally, I think this was the most complete high-press game yet from Arteta – the whole team was 10-15 yards higher up the pitch, with everyone from Gabriel to Aubameyang hounding them down and closing off passing lanes. Elneny and Lacazette in particular forced a couple of key turnovers into transitions where we nearly scored.
Sorry! But I don’t see how you can say we didn’t press much this game, for me it was its defining characteristic and our single most important weapon alongside those fantastic line-breaking runs from Thomas.
That is yet another very different observation. Adrian from Arsenal.com says that we sat deep and let them have the ball high for most of the game, matching my observations (my notes were full of “handbrake” and “both teams taking a break”). Lewis Ambrose says that we selectively pressed (matching my observations) and the stats say that we barely even pressed high up the pitch at all!
We made 26 pressures high. For comparison, Liverpool average 54 pressures in the opponent 3rd per game.
It is an interesting observation that we stopped pressing high after the goal and the stats do, sort of, bear that out. But what ACTUALLY happened is that we stopped pressing high in the entire 2nd half. In the first half Arsenal had 24 high pressures, in the 2nd half, Arsenal had 2 – and incidentally, both came AFTER the goal.
This is EXACTLY what I’m talking about when I say that Arteta’s Arsenal is often too passive. This is extremely “Bolton Wanderers” football.
I do agree, but there are many different types of pressing; man to ball, man to space, man to receiver. Isn’t the pressures stat just a measure of the man to ball variety?
I feel the pressure we exerted in the first half was far more territorial than physical. i.e. man to space. That would explain the low tackle numbers and higher interceptions.
Re. Liverpool. Understandable, but not surprising, as with 5 years’ gegenpressing practice they can keep it going all game. As you say the first and second halves were markedly different – perhaps Arsenal were tired after an intense first half. Although we cannot discount the fact utd changed formation and came flying out of the traps after the break.
I completely agree this team is too passive, as the only time I have seen balanced attacking football was that 10-15 minutes agains Sheffield. Otherwise, we regularly sit back and wait for something to happen. That is why the first 45 stood out so much for me, it was clearly much more front-footed and aggressive from the outset.
Cheers, gonna read your Pressing article next.
I thought we dominated pretty much the whole match bar the first 15 mins of the second half.
We forced a lot of turnovers from them by hemming them in, they just couldn’t get out.
Also, that is the best midfield display I’ve seen from us in years! I really can’t remember the last time I’ve seen our midfield outplay an opposing midfield. It’s been nearly always wide play for a long time now.
I didn’t think we pressed effectively at all. We gave them acres of space when in possession for way too much of the game clock. Luckily for us they were out of sorts enough that they could barely string together enough pass and move to penetrate into our third.
They sucked, we didn’t. Result: we nicked 3 points at a place where we’ve struggled for ages, under Wenger and under Emery.
Partey and Emery as a combo? WtF and who’d a thought?
Elneny now needs his own pyramid in Giza.
I was all ready to throw in the towel after Leicester but “as soon as I think I’m out, they drag me back in!”
🤣
It’s interesting the different perceptions of this match: you and I felt like we didn’t press very well (or enough in my case) and others (smart folks like Adrian from the dot com and Arseblog) seemed to think it was a masterclass in selective pressure.
Even more odd, Adrian pointed out that we didn’t press so much as rode the passing lanes while Lewis thought we played a sort of man-to-man formation. I feel like everyone has it right to an extent.
This is another step forward as, despite first impressions, were the games against Liverpool, City and Leicester. Were it not for momentary lapses, individual errors or simple bad luck these marginal defeats might have turned out differently and the frustration, gloom and even despair expressed in recent weeks might have been assuaged. It’s often said that football’s a game of fine margins. Those margins are the bounce of the ball, a deflection, a momentary lapse in concentration or a moment of genius.
Of course, more of us have a warm glow after this game because we won. However it is also seems a greater step forward because our midfield was so effective (it has been SO long since an Arsenal team dominated midfield) and because of the greater number of scoring opportunities that we created (and spurned). This is another large step forward in the path towards competitiveness.
We will continue to hear moaning about style from those who want an instant return to the beautiful game played by Wenger’s best teams but that too will come with time and the arrival of appropriate personnel. Arteta’s challenge has been greater than Wenger’s, The latter inherited a solid defensive outfit on which to build a stylish attack. Arteta inherited a disorganised shambles that had been defensively weak for several seasons and was a shambles. His first job has been to bring order to chaos. He’s made a great start. I’m looking forward to this journey.
great result and great performance on sunday. nine times out of 10, i prefer super-intelligent footballers over super-talented ones. talented players give you moments of brilliance where intelligent players give you lots of good football. on sunday, we got to see a group of intelligent players slap the uber-talented (and expensive) man united side.
with that, i only said 9 of 10, not 10 of 10.