Arteta is not Klopp, Arsenal are not Liverpool, and the comparisons need to stop.
Klopp signed for Liverpool in October 2015. That summer, Brentan Rodgers signed Christian Benteke, Nathaniel Clyne, Firmino, and Danny Ings. They also sold Raheem Sterling. It was a summer transfer window which would deeply hamper the Northern club for a year and followed on a season after which Brentan had sold Luis Suarez and used the money to buy half of Southampton. Liverpool were in real trouble: their attack was awful, their defense was almost worse, and they had a lot of players on the books who were not very good. Sounds familiar? Sure. But that’s where the comparisons stop.
In Klopp’s first season Liverpool finished 8th. “Klopp made them worse” some say because they dropped two places in the Premier League table. And yet even still, even with a squad which featured Benteke as its main striker, Klopp’s underlying numbers were outstanding that season and gave the folks in Liverpool reason to have hope.
When Klopp signed for Liverpool he was already a well known manager who had developed a playing style in Germany, where he is still the only manager to beat Bayern Munich to the title since 2010. His teams were known for their Gegenpressing or what he called “heavy metal football”. And in his first season in charge of Liverpool the Scousers led the League in tackling and while they did concede 50 goals that season, they allowed the 2nd fewest shots per game and teams overperformed xG against Liverpool by nearly 12 goals on the season (put another way: the opponents got lucky a lot). Not only that but Liverpool also took the 2nd most shots and using expected points, probably would have finished 5th in a normal season.
Liverpool were so impressed with Klopp’s first season in charge that they signed him to a six year extension the very first summer after he was hired. That was after losing the Europa League final to Unai Emery and finishing 8th. “What were they smoking”?
The next summer, the real transformation started. They sold Benteke and bought Mane and used the money from Jordon Ibe and Joe Allen to buy Wijnaldum. Two players who would fit in to Klopp’s system perfectly. With Mane up top and Wijnaldum in the middle, now they were playing high tempo football, pressing high up the pitch and ruining other team’s defenses. Again, they took the 2nd most shots of any team and conceded the 2nd fewest (just 8.2 per game, which is incredibly good).
And yet, there were still some weaknesses in the team. Shot numbers were high but a lot of them were taken from outside the box because Coutinho wasn’t a real #10 and was more of a poke and hope kind of player. Meanwhile the defense often featured some very old players and players with questionable pedigree: in the Europa League final, the starters were Moreno, Lovren, Kolo Toure, and Clyne with Simon Mignolet in goal.
Klopp and Pool sold defender Sakho in summer 2017 and brought in Mo Salah, another attacking player. And in January of that year, they sold Coutinho for 100m and bought Virgil van Dijk.
The way that Liverpool have been able to manipulate the transfer market to their own benefit is nothing less than masterful. Getting 100m for Coutinho is extraordinary for sure but getting Crystal Palace to fork over 65m for Benteke and Sakho is some kind of evil magic. Liverpool were able to sell their assets for far more than they were worth, which was used to fuel their purchases and again, they bought exactly what they needed to get in order to play football the Klopp way.
Not only that but they have built incredible value in guys like Mane and Salah. Those two would easily sell for double what they paid. And given Liverpool’s track record in the transfer market, they will probably get triple.
Yes, they lost a 2nd European final and finished 4th in the League (again). But this time things were very different. They were now a major threat up top (scored 84) and their xGA was 3rd best in the League. And using the money they got from the Champions League, they bought Alisson, Keita, and Fabinho and won the Champions League. And then the next season went on to win the Premier League.
This is a club and manager who are pulling together to make the best possible product. They are maximizing value at every turn and they use advanced analytics to identify players that fit their system. It hasn’t been perfect (Keita spent most of his first few years at Liverpool injured or benched) but it has been overall excellent.
We cannot compare Arteta and Arsenal to Klopp and Liverpool. Arsenal are an organization which doesn’t seem to have a clear plan for purchasing players. And Arsenal have failed miserably (for five plus years) to get good value in the transfer market both in sales and purchases. There have been a few bright spots, Martinelli for example, but largely we are a club burdened with overpaid wasters who we cannot sell.
But it’s also worrying that Arteta doesn’t have a very positive style of football. There’s an interview with the dot com today in which he says that he wants to be positive but we have watched him manage Arsenal for a year and it’s been getting more negative, not positive. And while Arsenal have spent some (fucking) money the last few years, the hits haven’t been great and we can’t seem to sell players who we need to unburden ourselves of.
Our hope for the future is that we can get rid of huge salaries by watching them literally just let their contracts expire. Though, even that seems like a problem that will hang around for a while: we just gave extensions to Mari, Soares, and a new deal to Willian – three players who have been less than spectacular. And we also have to hang our hope on the idea that Arteta has a master plan for getting us attacking again. Right now, everything is grim. The actual numbers are grim, the underlying metrics (both in attack and defense) are fucking grim. We have to hope that this is our nadir, that there’s nothing but up from here.
Nothing but true fact and opinion Tim.
Managers don’t change philosophy and beliefs overnight or in a month or years. Name a manager (top or not )that changed their playing philosophy other than mourinho who did for 6 months at Chelsea then reverted to ugly football.
Thinking about this just has me thinking Arteta is won’t cut it.
I’m willing to give Arteta some more time as a coach. This is a crazy season, and he’s had a lot of player transition.
The transfer business on the other hand, has been largely awful for years, and has shown no sign of improvement. My tolerance for that is basically gone. Soares might be OK as a backup. There was no need for Mari, plus he’s ended up perpetually injured. And Willian is doing nothing more than keeping promising younger players out of the team.
I saw an article today about Arsenal potential interest in Boateng. He was a fantastic player 5-10 years ago. Now he’s getting to be old and slow. So I bet we pick him up during the winter on a big salary 🙁
And if you want to see how much Arsenal have wasted down the years:
Cost of players purchased by Liverpool since 2015/16: £587m
Cost of players purchased by Arsenal since 2015/16: £557m
Net spend by Liverpool since 2015/16: £141m
Net spend by Arsenal since 2015/16: £331m
Yeah, our level of wastefulness is more in line with Man Utd, Real Madrid, or Barca, except we don’t have anywhere near the financial resources to be that wasteful.
Well said.
Surely a good manager makes good and efficient use of his assets, and buys in the occasional improvement.
That is what Wenger did to great effect for many years until he did not have the funds to do even that. At least we have the new stadium form that period of time.
There seems to be so little rhyme and reason about our acquisitions, especially as they tend to be players no one else wants.
My concern about Partey is that, if he was so good, why have none of the really top sides, who spend like there is no tomorrow, showed no interest, especially at the price we paid.
In an area that we have little or no established talent that we are prepared to use, the midfield, anyone is likely to be an improvement, hence Elneny’s renaissance.
I fear that that will be short-lived as even the weaker teams will work out a way to smother him.
The complete lack of creativity means that we are and will continue to be completely predictable.
Oh to be upbeat and positive, but there are no shoots to indicate that anything worthwhile will grow.
My takeaway from this is when Arteta was hired the club either didn’t have a clear style they wanted a coach for; or (God forbid) they did and Arteta gave them answers or a vision which so far doesn’t match with what we’re seeing. I just can’t imagine there was a recruitment process and the question ‘what’s your football philosophy?’ didn’t crop up.
Football is a romantic sport. There’s something about the geometries on the field, the role chance plays in the outcome of each game, that defies any single, summative piece of analysis. For a hopeful like me who can’t help but look for the bright spots, distant as they may seem, it’s a real credit to the failsons in charge at Arsenal then that I read something like this and can’t muster a single “but”, “what about” or “however”. They’ve killed hope Tim! They’ve taken it away!
I prefer your sandwich analysis these days.
You just loved the Wenger melt. Unfortunately it was undercooked for the last 10 years, lacked seasoning and the ingredients went stale.
Time to work on that new sandwich. It will take time to get it right, but it’s hard not to compare it to the old favourite.
FFS – he’s been at it less than a year, and what a year it’s been. Are you REALLY blaming Arteta for the cock ups made in 2015/16/17/18/19? Is it his fault that the players who don’t fit into his project, can’t be moved on? Is it his fault that players he thought might fit into his scheme, worked hard but haven’t fully integrated? (Xakha, Socrates, Kolasinic, Ozil). Is it his fault that at the moment, Lacazette is having a rough spell (look at his whole career), or that Auba is overwhelmed at carrying the burden of trying to play out wide, be top scorer, and captain of an under developed team?
Another thing, that seldom gets mentioned, is that Leno appears to have lost confidence in those in front of him. Why is that? Why does he look better when David Luiz is playing in front of him that a much younger Holding? On the other hand, why IS Leno playing both EPL and EL? If he has to play every game, then give him some consistency of defenders in front of him. That IS Arteta’s choice, but then again, it no doubt comes down to giving some of the older guys a rest.
There are so many things Arteta has to fix, but 11 months is not a lot of time for any manager, let alone one in his first job, to fix everything. Just remember, when he arrived, Arsenal was not just broken, it was fucking destroyed.
Give him time to fix it.
Where am I blaming Arteta for 2015? Where am I calling for him to be fired?
I feel like you just want something to be angry about.
I’ll look for some silver linings, and the most obvious one is that Arteta himself says that current form is not good enough, and he has used Liverpool’s strategy and targeted spending, laid out here by Tim, as the model to follow for success.
Problem is Arteta is missing the part where Liverpool sold their biggest assets for squillions. By his own logic, we should have cashed in on Auba to help rebuild (especially with Martinelli in the wings) but Arteta was desperate for him to stay.
Another silver lining: I don’t actually think our stats are as bad as Tim does. I don’t think it’s as cut and dried, especially when you compare our stats to other teams to try to get a sense of our level and our identity.
For example, our penetration is pants. Arsenal are 7th from bottom in the number of touches in the attacking 3rd. Not good, but then Southampton who 5 minutes ago were winning the league are 8th from bottom, having taken only 12 more touches than us.
We don’t really press. You know who also don’t press? Burnley, Fulham, Wolves, but also Man City, Man Utd.
We pass, a lot, 3rd highest overall (roughly level with City) and 3rd highest under pressure (behind Liverpool and close to Southampton again). Does this make us passive?
We take the highest number of touches in our own penalty area, and second highest in the defensive 3rd, but the team we are behind here is Chelsea.
In some dimensions we are very close to Southampton. In others we are very close to City, in others we are close to Chelsea or Man United.
My point is that not that we are great – the table doesn’t lie and we clearly aren’t – but that:
a) stats will only give you the team’s identity if they happen to measure the defining part of your identity. For Liverpool it’s blindingly obvious, they press like crazy high up the pitch. For teams like us, United, Chelsea, Southampton, it’s less obvious what we are doing.
b) there are plenty of good teams in there who have underwhelming or downright bad stats in various areas, this does not make them passive and it does not make them bad teams.
I’m not saying Tim is wrong, we are at the wrong end of most measures that predict success, but there is a risk of mistaking the map for the territory and thinking that because our numbers are not good, we are doing everything badly. We may be doing some things very well. I’d say that solidity, shape (standing in the right place!), defending in our own half, passing, passing under pressure are some of those things. It’s not nothing, and in many respects it’s a decent platform to build on, but we have to kick on and build on it.
One thing I 100% agree on, we are nothing like Liverpool and we are clearly not trying to be like them on the pitch, we are going for something else, so let’s leave those comparisons aside.
OK, really gotta do some work.
A few clarifications:
Man City are a mess this season and one reason that they are a mess is that they stopped pressing up top. They were third in final third pressures last season, 2nd in 2018-19, and third in 2017-18, etc. Pep is a huge proponent of high pressing and his teams (almost) always feature pressure as part of their set up. It’s actually one of his main philosophies.
Almost every team has a defensive philosophy: Chelsea, interceptions and blocked passes (playing the passing lanes); Man City and Liverpool high pressing; Leeds, Leicester, Everton are all big pressure teams (Leeds also love tackling). You know what Arsenal are good at? Blocked shots.
We are a passive team. There isn’t anything secret being measured or forgotten to be measured. Standing in places and not being adventurous isn’t a good platform to build on. Sorry, it’s just not. It’s bad football. It will always be bad football.
Personally I hope Arteta finds a way to revolutionize his approach because this is just not working at all.
Yes and no.
Arsenal are good at blocked shots, we are also second lowest for being dribbled against, which means that we are well organised and keep our shape in transitions.
But that’s kind of my point, those are the two standout defensive stats so it becomes the story, when there is more to it than that.
For example, we are 8th in the table in making interceptions, and we block more passes than Chelsea do, so I think we are closer to their style than you do. Although we block shots we are also not a “low block” team like Palace or West Ham, we tackle as much in the middle third as we do the defensive third, again like Chelsea.
I think that what Arteta is working on is controlling space out of possession. Good positional play, being organised, controlling space and not getting caught out in transitions – this is not bad football, in fact it’s a fundamental part of good football! For years we have been pulling our hair out about how bad we were at it, and now we’re much better. It’s also, whatever you think of it, a philosophy.
To be clear, I agree that this approach has only half worked, on the one hand we’re too conservative with the ball and on the other hand we still give up chances, and we need to do more – but I’m not interested in being active (v “passive”) for the sake of it.
I think you have it a bit wrong. As I have pointed out several times the reason we have low tackles/low dribbles is because we don’t engage in hardly any defending. We don’t tackle. That doesn’t mean players aren’t literally just getting the ball forward. We are 7th worst at allowing touches in our own final third. Teams that are above us in that category: Palace, Sheffield, Nuke, Wham, Brom, and Wolves.
We are 7th worst in allowing progressive passing distance, 7th in passes in the final third, mid-table in passes in the penalty area.
That’s low block defending, bro, and matches what I see with my eyes.
And yes, of course it’s a philosophy.
Sorry for these long replies, it’s because I find it interesting, not because I’m an ahole. Feel free to ignore me.
Couple more clarifications…
The dribbling against stat (att) is number of times dribbled past + number of tackles, so if we were getting dribbled past loads and not tackling, it would still show up. But we are bottom of that measure, too. So it does show that we are well organised and controlling space, no?
You call this engaging in hardly any defending, but I guess I just don’t really understand what it would mean to say that. What is it we’re doing when we don’t have the ball if it’s not defending? What you really mean is that our tackling and pressing stats are low. OK, fine. But we are still defending space, and lack of dribbles, plus blocks and interceptions show that.
I also disagree that we set up as a low block team. Yes, we are often forced back into that shape because we give the ball away and I think this is the main problem that allows opposition teams chances and touches in our final third. It’s related to our style of playing out from the back, and the amount of time we spend in our own final third with the ball, more than our lack of pressing or tackling out of possession.
The philosophy looks more and more to me like a City-esque one of controlling space and wanting to dominate the ball, neither of which we are stellar at yet. (We don’t do the City high press, but that is as much an offensive as a defensive tactic and only a part of the way City defend). If this is the case then I’m ok with this as a philosophy, we just need to get better at execution.
Forget the Financials, since we have had snake oil salesmen in Gazidas and later Raul. But then
We sell a better goalkeeper who finally was stabilising the side and was vocal
We have a hitman Auba who is being played wide to accommodate a favourite Laca. He has no adequate strength nor speed to pick the ball lower , move it up and have the speed to pick up the return in the box. Therefore 2 players with specific ability reduced.
Williams runs around like a headless chicken without purpose ( sorry haven’t figured this )
Xhaka is unfit to play most games except when the opposition permits him the leisure to execute his lofted pass. Incidentally this appeared to be our only strategy and teams always have a counter to intercept and isolate the forwards.
But it is impressive how Arteta can dress things up with figures of dubious relevance and have quite a few believing his eloquent bullshit. ( If need be he can dish it out in 5 languages )
Thanks for the post Tim. Great stuff as always.
I have not tried to suggest Arteta is a great manager. Only time will tell how it works out. What I have suggested is we are being overly harsh on him and he needs time.
I think you hit perfectly on the real problem which is the fact that the club has done an absolutely terrible job of resource management and squad building for most of this decade. Arsene was so desperate to maintain his run of top 4 finishes that he left us with an overpaid underperforming aging squad that was in a state of rapid decline with no sellable assets and we still have not dug out of that hole. Unfortunately our decision making and squad building has not been much better since Arsene and its left Arteta with a poorly constructed undertalentrd squad. Even the worlds greatest tactical managers are going to struggle under those conditions.
Arteta will precede Ozil simply for refusing the obvious and playing to the board. That He can’t improve ozil and claim that Willian is better? Or Elneny has improved? Sorry on this he cut his nose to spite his face.
We are pathetic one route team. Kill our left attack and game over. No pressing, no creativity, zero movement off the ball and no team defending.
We will finish 10th on the highest.
Great piece Tim.
Comparing Arteta to Klopp at any level is just silly. Klopp’s Dortmund were often built on a relative shoestring budget, yet one of the most exciting sides to watch anywhere. Not to mention able to absolutely spank the likes of peak RM.
Arteta, on the other hand, was a first assistant to an elite manager on a £1b club, who developed an anecdotal reputation for tactical tweaks and making an already very good side and players marginally better.
Arsenal’s worst transfer move was not getting Klopp when he became available, but truth be told, right now ,I’d still take back Wenger circa 2015 over the football Arsenal are serving up theses days.
I know Arteta has been faced with different financial realities but even if he had money, based on his moves thus far, I doubt he’d get the right players in.
While Klopp has been laser focused on building his side with a core of proven PL players like Milner, Mane, Wijnaldum, VVD, Jota , and even Salah had a decent PL spell before he blew up in Italy.
Not to mention making total unknowns into household names worth mega money.
I hope Arteta can recovery from this slump but there’s a real possibility he’s just a fast talking , erudite assistant who’s in over his head.
Players’ reaction will give us the answer.
The funny thing is that Arsenal have spent (net spent) £331m in transfers since Liverpool signed Klopp and Liverpool have spent (net spend) just £140m. Our transfer business has been astonishingly bad since 2015.
This.