Tottenham 2-0 Arsenal: pressure drop

117 comments

1. With regard to pressures. I’d agree that our defending way too passive for the goals. But aren’t these stats skewed by us having so much of the ball in this game? Wouldn’t pressures be higher in games where we play on the counter?

   1. Not necessarily. Liverpool, Chelsea and Leeds average 59% possession of the ball and are in the top 10 for teams with the most pressures. We’re 17th – we’re in the bottom three in almost everything, haha!

      1. pressures, tackles, pretty much every defensive stat. I’ve written about it here. We are just disgustingly passive. I’m actually sick of it.

         1. is pressures the way you are referencing really an offensive or defensive stat. Sure we gave up 2 goals against Spurs and that sucks. But the real lack is that we weren’t able to create ‘transition’ (to use a basketball term) opportunities and were always trying to create against a set defense (that we clearly lack something to be able to score).

            When pressures is brought up the conversations tends towards defense but really we are talking about a method of creating offense against qualitee PL defense that we can’t break down if we just move the ball up the field from the back

            1. It’s both and all of that. The metric I’m quoting is how often a player applies pressure to an opponent who is receiving, carrying, or passing a ball.

               You can look at this tactic in a number of ways. Klopp and Guardiola use high pressure as an offensive/defensive tactic. Most old school coaches taught pressure as a single-player thing “GO TO THE F*CKING BALL!” Modern pressures are tactical and require the entire team to be on the same page: if one player misses his pressure it can expose the whole team in a huge way. It’s possible that the reason why Arteta stopped using pressure is because of this. We don’t know, he hasn’t been asked about it.

               One thing that’s interesting is that a lot of pundits and fans don’t really understand pressure. I’ve heard a lot of people describe Mourinho’s team as a low pressure team but they are actually third overall in pressures and 5th in pressures in the final 3rd. It is true that he’s got a counter-attacking team but they also try to win the ball back – a LOT. This is the thing that most bothers me about Arteta’s version of low-block and countering is that we are so incredibly passive. I’m not joking when I say that our training sessions must be all about where players are supposed to stand. Because we have no pressing scheme and we also have no ideas in attack. And again, no matter how much you want to blame the players being crap there are a lot of clubs with a lot of really crap players who have at least a defined style of play that isn’t just “ok, stand there on defense and now, let’s get it to the wings for crosses.”

               Seriously, this is mediocre coaching at best.

   2. not necessarily. high pressures are particularly useful as they show a team trying to win the ball back when they have a lot of possession.

      our pressures this season are way down (and our possession numbers are down) and this is a choice on Arteta’s part.

      1. 53 crosses sounds more like desperation to me. A team that had run out of ideas. The Spurs defence could have handled that all day. Never looked threatened.

   3. Pressure Drop?
      I always think of Robert Palmer.

2. If Arteta’s words are taken at face value then he is completely lost. This was the perfect Mourinho performance. Allow Arsenal all the ball they wanted, even deep inside the Spurs half, with no fear that we could generate a clear chance. The second goal was simply shocking: even with TP, they would have had a man over. It would appear MA simply does not know what he is doing. A shame, but the best thing now might be call the experiment off and get someone experienced in. Transition period is one thing, clueless crapness is another.

3. Where did you find your “pressure” stats? I’d be really interested in taking a look myself. Thanks

   1. try fbref.com and look around, it’s a great site

4. Appreciate you putting the post together Tim. There was a good summary on F365 today. Just so many things we’re not getting right.

   https://www.football365.com/news/premier-league-winners-losers-mourinho-arteta-man-united

   I’m increasingly disengaged with Arsenal. Let me know when we get someone with good ideas and people skills.

   1. …good ideas and people skills. ha!

5. arteta is wrong about putting the ball in the box. doing that is called the law of averages and that is not a strategy. likewise, it’s not about putting the ball in the box, it’s about putting the ball in the goal.

   he’s also wrong when he simply praises son for the goal. sure, the technical skill was great but what about the build-up? how did son get that chance? son’s a professional player and those guys get paid millions of dollars to train every day…they can do things such as hit the target from 30-yards out. what did he expect?

   it’s reckless to play with your fullbacks so high. if playing with a back 3, then okay. however, they’re not wing backs in a back 4, they’re fullbacks. both fullbacks can’t go so far forward at the same time. one doesn’t have to be brilliant to figure that one out.

   i know a lot of people wanted arteta but i did not. i wanted vieira & bergkamp. i even preferred the emery appointment to the arteta appointment because at least emery has experience. bottom line, i don’t think arteta has the experience to maximize the use of the resources he has available. as a result, we’re eleven games into the season and arsenal are in 15th place, having lost 55% of their games and are averaging less than a goal (.9) a game.

   1. Vieira just got fired by Nice.

      1. i heard the other day. that means he’s available.

         look, nice don’t have any players. i think vieira did a fantastic job with what he was given, finishing 5th and qualifying for the europa league. likewise, the nice owner is worse than the arsenal owner in that he’s a clown. i still think he’d do a better job than arteta and i believe he’d get bergkamp off the couch to be his #2.

      2. Ha Ha Ha!!

         There is ALWAYS a counterpoint, innit?

         Nobody knows nuffink. Like, could we actually go down? Nah, but who really knows?

6. …30-yards out with no pressure!

   1. I was more concerned about the casual way Kane was allowed the space to turn and play the ball into Son for the goal. That’s where it started to go wrong.

7. Im kind of still haunted by Rob Holding playing space instead of man and ball. But i suppose he was concerned about Son dumping it off to the overlapping left back, if he committed and got too tight. But that’s exactly the kind of back off play we used to slaughter Mustafi for.

   Im kind of still haunted by Partey walking off the field during an active passage of play. What was he thinking?

   Im kind of still haunted by the fact that we may have aggravated his original injury, and will probably lose him for longer than we otherwise might have. A lot of things have changed at this football club, but rushing back players from injury is an unwelcome new thing (see also Koscielny, L). Did a manager feelinng the pressure, transfer that pressure to his medical staff, whereby neither doctor nor coach made the right decision, in the PLAYER’s best interests?

   The club is dysfunctional… on the field and off of it.

   To be fair, we gave it a go second half, although we never truly threatened.

   1. Regarding Rob Holding, what was Bellerin doing during all of this? Remind me.

      1. Also, where was the Swiss Tractor?

         1. Did you coin the “Swiss Tractor?” Genius.

      2. Pretty sure he was passing by. Because he clearly caught up with both Son and Holding, but didn’t get involved in the episode at all. I don’t know what was the instruction or his thinking.

8. I do think the pressures stat in this match isn’t super meaningful. We had so much of the ball in the second half, didn’t need to pressure that much.
   I’m also not hugely bothered by their two goals. While we could have done better on both, the defending wasn’t dire, and both goals were well taken. I’d honestly have said Auba’s header chance was better than either.
   The general tactics are pretty poor. The problem is that we pretty much have no idea how to come from behind. So unless we score first, we’re screwed. Teams will have taken note that all they have to do is sit deep and central. The crossing strategy is very low percentage with the players we have. If Giroud was still around, it would be better, but he’s not.
   That means we’re going to need to play through the middle, and/or with more dribble penetration. Nelson, Willock, Pepe, ESR. Lacazette hustled more yesterday, but I still don’t think he has the right skills to help us. Frankly, I’m not sure Auba does at this point. Never mind friggin Willian.
   There has been talk Szoboszlai…not sure why we’d think he’s any better bet in the PL than ESR.
   The most awful stat I saw was a quote over on Arseblog from Duncan Alexander. It said we have the fewest second half shots of any team in all of the 92 teams in the PL/EFL. That’s almost unbelievably bad, particularly given how much we’ve been chasing games. At this point, we need to play some of the younger guys…it literally can’t get any worse.
   I really like Arteta. But in some ways we are seeming more broken than we were under Emery. If this keeps going, it will be hard to see how we can stick with him. We really are starting to look like a relegation battling team.

   1. the lack of pressure allowed the goals and it’s notable that after half-time we decided to step up the pressure and prevented them from getting any real chances.

      you can’t play high up the pitch and apply no pressure.

      1. +1

      2. Even if you have good pressure, a team like Spurs is still going to get a couple chances…they took them. Auba had a decent chance. He didn’t.
         I didn’t read that second half about us applying more defensive pressure. It was much more Spurs being content to sit off us knowing that we weren’t much of a threat, and then dumping it back to halfway when they got the ball.

         1. no. we pressed them when they had the ball in the 2nd half and didn’t in the first. it was obvious. go watch the game again.

            1. But you just said above that we didn’t really press them… fewest of any match this season. Maybe we did press more in the second half, but it wasn’t very much and off a very low baseline.
               I wouldn’t argue that we have been too passive, and not pressed enough generally this season. I just don’t think the second half of yesterday’s match was a good one to make that point.

         2. I agree with SLC_Gooner’s comment above. Spurs had only 30% possession in this game. This game was the 11th time a Mourinho-managed side has had 35% possession or lower in a Premier League game, and Mourinho won nine of those games and drew one of the other two (I got that stat from bbc.com/sport/football/55118788 ). It’s a safe bet that in the bulk of those eleven games, Mourinho’s side got an early lead in the game and then focused on protecting their lead for the rest of the game. In this game between Arsenal and Spurs, you don’t need to actually watch the game to be in the know that the second half was about Arsenal’s inability to penetrate Spurs’s defense, and to likewise know that Arsenal’s pressing work when Arsenal were not in possession was not consequential.

9. Still can’t figure out why Arteta has abandoned the back-three that gave him so much success.

   1. Interesting point.
      I’m beginning to wonder that myself. Has the drop in form coincided with this change?
      If you’re going to encourage your full backs to plough on up the pitch, then best have an extra defender for when the move breaks down.

      1. Yeah but a mobile cdm in a MF 2 that can cover ground and destroy counters, providing the same kind of defensive coverage as extra cb. Additionally if your CB’s can play the ball, or your team is struggling to create opportunities, having an extra player further up who can also help out to stop a break may benefit. I wonder if Arteta anticipated Partey playing that role.

   2. My point exactly, Mikel needs to stop being so obstinate and return to a 3-4-3.

10. Thanks for the post Tim.

    I am not sure how to interpret the pressure stat. In the games we have won recently against big team such as ManU and Chelsea Man U and Liverpool we averaged about 30% of the ball possession and the opposition was camped in our half of the pitch for almost the entire game so it makes sense that we would have a lot more pressures in those games then we did yesterday. On the other hand our passing stats looked better then they have all season in yesterdays game but I don’t think that means we played a lot better.

    I am not going to suggest that Arteta is doing a great job as our manager but I am not sure that any manager would be doing much better with this squad. Tim you have been predicting we are going to start conceding more goals and if you are correct we are in big trouble. We can’t get results without keeping clean sheets on a consistent basis but we have conceded 2 against Wolves and Tottenham and that is not acceptable. The defense has been solid for most of Arteta’s tenure but it needs to do better then it has the last 2 games

    1. I’ve talked about the pressures stats about 100 times. We chose not to press.

       19th in tackles, 15th in tackles in the opp final third (Leeds, Man U, Liverpool, Fulham, Tottenham lead the league in that category)
       18th in pressures, 10th in high pressures (Liverpool, Sheffield, Leeds, Fulham, Tottenham lead the League in that category)
       15th in interceptions
       9th in passes blocked
       5th is shots blocked (this is bad)
       20th in tackles won against dribbles (tackles against dribbles are a deliberate action and we literally don’t try to even tackle opponents. We just let players walk the ball at us with no attempt to tackle or stop them.)

       It’s infuriating.

       1. Sounds like we are gonna get to where we have started before Arteta arrived: allowing opponents come at us and take 20-30 shots per game.

11. We’re a poor Sam Allardyce Blackburn side and it’s really depressing.

12. So, basically, we had kind of a good defence (according to goals conceded at least), but our attack was pretty poor, so Mikel decides is time to let go of the 3 at the back crutch.

    Can this be a period of adaptation/transition? Is he rushing the transition to his more prefered 4-3-3?

13. I watched the game and had no idea what we are trying to do.

    If you know the way broadly you will see it in all things – Miyamoto Musashi, The Book of Five Rings

    I don’t see a plan, just desperation.

    And it will only get worse the further this goes. We’re in a relegation battle. Maybe getting relegated is what it would take to get Kroenke out.

    1. “When you do not-doing, nothing’s out of order.” Le Guin, Ursula K. translation Lao Tzu: Tao Te Ching .
       Wu Wei, doing by not-doing/effortless action is a key precept of Taoism.

    2. it’s not kronke’s fault arsenal are in this spot.

       1. it is 100% Kroenke’s fault.

          1. it’s not kronke’s fault that neither jack nor any of us understand the drivel we watch on match days. while he hasn’t thrown in abramovich money, kronke’s put money into the club. he doesn’t know anything about what happens at the subordinate level, such as recruiting, player retention, or strategy. he didn’t pick the players that arsenal bought, he just bought them…and stays out of the way of the football folks; which is the way that it should be.

             sure, the buck should stop with the owner but, bottom line, arsenal have far too much talent to be playing such dreadful football and be 15th in the league this late into the season. that’s not on kronke.

             1. I would argue it was Kroenke that ultimately let Sanhelli misspend £72m on Pepe, £28m on Saliba and then let Edu do his buddy Joorabchian a solid and sign a 33 year old to £250k a week deal. Imagine if we’d just used that Pepe money to go in for Aouar. Agreed though – Kroenke is trying but it’s the incompetence that’s damning. All his teams stink. They just don’t know how to run winning franchises.

             2. Kroenke isn’t trying. That’s the misnomer here. Go read that Athletic article: his entire business plan for sports is to hire “good people” to do the job for him. HE PICKED THOSE PEOPLE, that’s the extent of him “trying.”

             3. there’s a lot more to being an owner than just putting money into a club and no he has not put money into the club: he refinanced the stadium and put that into his own businesses – why? I’m not sure but it makes me uneasy. but this nonsense that he put money into the club needs to stop.

                the lack of investment and care for the club since 2015/16 is the reason we are in this mess. Kroenke didn’t care about the club as long as Wenger was finishing top four. He didn’t invest in the club – he put the club’s own money back into the club, huge diff. He’s not out there writing off Arsenal’s debt FFS, like Chelsea and City do.

                But then he’s also an absentee owner. That worked for a while when Wenger was in charge because Wenger is such a nut case and basically ran the club like it was his. But Kroenke should have sacked Wenger in Summer 2016. I actually called for it earlier than that. You could see he was a manager out of ideas and players no longer respected him. He then installed the worst people to run his club (Raul Sanllehi) and now has installed a group of absolute novices to run a billion dollar multinational sporting franchise.

                I don’t know how you can sit there and absolve him of what’s happened at this club. We really do have a cult love of billionaires in this country. Jesus.

                Kroenke is a piece. He doesn’t give any fucks about the fans. He doesn’t care if his teams are good. He doesn’t even care if the clubs win. And you’re here protecting him? Weird

          2. In theory, the buck stops with the owners, so it’s ultimately their fault. What’s not their fault is investment. At this point, I don’t have any time for the “spend some money” argument.
             They have spent plenty of money to be competing for the top 4 and Champs League. The problem is not the amount, it’s what they have spent it on. At this point we’re neck and neck with Barca for worst investment in the last 5 years.

             1. This

14. I’m nostalgic for the days when we were a mid-table team.

    1. hahahahaha

    2. Good one, Mike! 🙂
       I think we’ll all be nostalgic for those heady mid-table days if we slide into the drop zone.

    3. lol

15. Calvert-Lewin at Everton has more goals so far this season than Arsenal Football Club. We haven’t won a league match in over 2 months which was the last time we scored two (count them – TWO!) league goals.

    We played better football under Emery which is something I thought I’d never write.

    “Let me tell you time tough (Time Tough)
    Everything is out of sight, it’s so hard (So hard)
    Time hard (Time hard)”
    “Time Tough”, Toots and Maytals

16. It is getting increasingly frustrated watching Arsenal. Thinking of watching only Europa but that too will get bit tougher once it enters knockout stages.

    I have a feeling that though this squad is bloated & uneven it still has enough talent at least to be in top 8 if not top 6. Its been two managers now who started sort of well winning games, then sprial down.

    Is this squad too hyped.? Are they not decent enough? All this squad needs is a creative mfer? Will that fix everything?

17. How do you press spurs when, on the occasions they had the ball they belted it long to the wings. They weren’t holding possession deep for any length of time. We have pressed in other games, not for the whole game though. I think mostly because we’ve not been playing the midfield required for it. The exception would be the utd game where as i recall we pressed quite a bit, but then once we went ahead we played more of a low block. Ultimately we’re not going to concede 2 goals off the low quality of chances spurs managed every week, equally if our confidence and attacking movement improves we might make more of the ball progression we managed.

    1. you press them the way that we did in the 2nd half. that’s how.

       this is so weird, having this conversation.

18. While I agree with laying a lot of blame at Arteta’s feet, I also walk away from the match dismayed the squad. We are so desperately thin in key positions. Partey is brought back for this match because we have such a weak midfield. He’s the only PL starter-level MF’er in the squad. We have suffered in his absence and continue to do now that his injury is prolonged. We have a thousand CB’s and only 1 good one. Imagine this team if Gabriel goes down with an injury?
    And why are we Crossing FC when our front line can’t head the ball? That’s desperately ugly football. Arteta may have lost the dressing room yesterday, too. It might get uglier.

    1. That’s the part that got me… crossing to two strikers who don’t head the ball. If only we’d had Giroud… Christ, I’d even take Andy Carroll if that’s the strategy going forward.

       What did Arteta learn from Guardiola? I remember his Barca teams never ever crossed the ball, it was considered a low percentage chance.

    2. This is true and I’m gonna throw in a thought or two. Saliba and Partey. Saliba’s season ended early so we should have been up-to-speed with his suitability for this season. There were lots of rumours we were looking to sell or loan Chambers and Holding. In the end it sounds like Arteta flip-flopped and we’ve ended up without Saliba in the squad.

       Partey. We had a limited transfer budget. Was spending £45M plus his not inconsiderable salary a sensible decision bearing in mind Hojbjerg went to Spurs for £15M and significantly less salary? Could have used the balance to buy a CAM.

19. Jack, to your earlier point about our crazy transfer spends… our two most expensive defenders ever are Mustafi (ca. 35m) and Saliba, 28m.

    Think about that.

    Gabriel was about 27m, so you could say he was joint second as his and Saliba’s fees are close enough. But still. I know the market is much inflated now, but it’s crazy to think that we bought Koscielny for 11m. In Musti and Saliba, we have more than 50m in unwanted defensive talent.

    That is kerrr-azy.

    We paid a big chunk of change, 26m, for Torreira, who Arteta doesn’t want. Is paying 18m dollars a year to a midfielder he has frozen out but is still at the club, another 5m a year to Sokratis, who isn’t registered to play but is still o the books.

    Torreira, Guendouzi and Ozil are players the coach apparently doesnt want, and yet we are short of midfielders. IF Mikel did all this and was fourth, he’d look like a genius. We’re 15th. I know that there’s a lot of love for him, but his position is near untenable.

    And speaking of midfielders, Im sorry, but ESR and Nelson are not of the requisite quality, Willock does it in flashes. So what do we do?

    1. Emery almost finished fourth with the same, or arguably, worse squad. He must be a genius then.

       1. Genius might be a stretch 😉 but he certainly was/is a far more capable manager than many posters would have you believe. His communication challenges really let him down.

20. The squad isnt as poor as Bill, for example, is making out to be. Saying that absolves the coach, and doesnt hold him accountable, I’d take our collection of players over Leicester’s. Leicester are 4th on 21 points, 3 points off the leaders Spurs.

    If youre going to let Arteta off by saying he’s got a collection of duds, what on earth are you going to say about the likes of West Ham and Southampton, who are comfortably above us in the table? Despite some questionable moves, the squad is performing way below the sum of its parts.

21. Claude

    To each his own opinion. We looked poor in the last couple years of the Wenger era especially the last season. We got a new manager bump when Emery started but the team melted down. We got a new manager bump with Arteta but now the squad is melting down again mainly because we can’t score goals. A manger can’t manufacture creativity when he does not have players who are good at creating. Now that Auba misfiring we don’t have anyone who is good at scoring goals and a manager can’t change that. No way to prove or disprove it but with Auba off his game I seriously doubt there is anyone on our squad that would have converted either of the chances that Spurs scored yesterday. I just don’t see any evidence to suggest that we have a lot of quality in this squad especially in the midfield and attacking end.

    1. We were poor under latter-day Arsene, but never bottom-third poor with almost a third of the games played.

       I dont know what you mean by manufacturing creativity. A coach is responsible for plays and tactics. And he does so based on his raw material. The raw material of many of the teams above us is inferior to ours. A team does not need a peak Zidane to perform well.

       Also I don’t buy your argument that it is Auba or bust when it comes to scoring. There is goalscoring prowess in Willian, Lacazette and Pepe besides, and creative prowess in Willian, Saka and Ceballos. It CANNOT be purely on a duff squad. And you cannot seriously be arguing that THIS Arsenal is the 15th best (or 6th worst) team in the league.

       Our failings are coaching and tactical. Not exclusively, but significantly. Perhaps motivational as well… that is much harder to measure, but I don’t see a team playing for the coach. I see a team terrified of expressiveness, and low on spirit.

       I know that basketball is a different sport, but indulge me for a minute…. a coach doesn’t put LeBron James to play the 5 on a basketball court, and have Montrezl Harrell play point guard. The Lakers wont win many games that way. And even if you play them in their preferred positions, you need to coach them, tactically to beat the opponent in front of them on any given day.

       That team (mostly without Gabriel and Willian) has beaten every big team in the country in the past year.

       1. I don’t know if expressiveness is a word but I like it. Ha!

22. sorry, tim. you’ve got me wrong. i’ve never EVER tried to absolve kronke of anything he’s done or failed to do. my point is that it’s not his fault that the football we saw from arsenal looks like poo. ultimately, it’s his responsibility as the buck stops at the top, but it’s not his fault.

    if the football guys tell him they need £72 million for nicolas pepe, he has to trust that they’re smarter than he is and either authorizes the release of those funds or he denies it. as an american business man, i’m sure kronke’s first thought would have been “what the f*ck is a “pepe” and why does a cartoon character cost so much?” it’s not kronke’s fault that this very talented group of players have put in such poor performances and currently sits in 15th place.

23. We certainly have hit a run of bad form right now and no doubt 15th place represents underperformance. However I think the talent of the rest of the league from top to bottom has improved significantly in the last few years and to suggest this squad has more then mid table talent does not fit the evidence. I know its a worn out cliche but water seeks its proper level and by the end of the year I suspect we will finish somewhere around 8th -10th place.

    Again I can’t prove it but if we could give Arteta Son and Kane or trade squads with Frank Lampard or Ole Gunner and I think we could be competing for a top 4 spot

24. We could fire Arteta in hopes of another new manager bounce. If Auba rediscovers his shooting boots we could climb back into the top 1/2 of the table fairly quickly or even into contention for a Europa league spot with a good run of form.

25. If the PL plays a full season in a full blown global pandemic, that still 27 matches to play, almost 3/4 of the season still left.

    That’s a lot of time for things to either go further south or to recover our form and put a run of winning games together and at least finish 2021 with a modicum of respectability.

    Throwing in the towel now is premature. We have 6 matches left in this last month of 2020, three of them against top half opposition and three of them against bottom half teams. If we can take 9 points it will be an achievement.

26. Claude

    We were never a bottom 1/3 team in the late Wenger era but we were certainly on a downward trajectory and headed in that direction.

    I would suggest that Auba is our only realistic scoring option. Willian has averaged just over 5 league goals per year in the last 5 seasons before this year and he clearly looks to be on the downside of his career arc . Lacazette has averaged about 12 goals per year so he is a threat to break into double digits this year but he also seems to be in a downward trajectory over the last couple seasons. Pepe had one good year in France and so far has struggled in the PL been completely underwhelming with 3 different managers since he arrived. That does not give you a lot of options for goal scorers not named Auba. Arsene Wenger tried to build his own goal scorers since the start of project youth and was never successful. A manager can’t turn a player into something he is not.

    The reality is the current malaise is probably not purely a duff squad and its not purely coaching. We should be better then 15th place and I think we will hit a run of good form at some point and end up in the top half of the table. However, to suggest this is a talented squad and the right manager could revive our attack and turn us into something better then a middle table team is probably not realistic. IMO.

    1. Bill this is one of your finest:

       – Player on the downward of their career arc? Check.
       – Managers don’t improve players? Check.
       – Hoping for a run of good form soon? Check.

       If it was called Bill’s Bingo I’d say that was a full house (Ha!). Don’t go changing.

       1. Hey Matt, I’m just going to ask that we address the topics Bill raises rather than having a go at him. I’ve been guilty of doing this with folks here and I apologized after. It’s just one of our rules that we try to address the topics rather than the man. That’s how we’ve kept things civil for so long.

          Thanks!

          1. Hey Tim,

             Noted. Let my humour get the better of me.

             1. It’s ok! I had to apologize to Bill myself.

27. It’s interesting to look at the highly rated attacking players we have purchased from France since the start of last decade. Chamakh, Gervinho, Giroud, Sanogo, Lacazette and now Pepe. None have come very close to matching the goal scoring production they had in their best years in France. The only explanation I can suggest is the team defenses and the game is different in England

    1. it’s nuts for you to include giroud in that group. he’s probably the only striker to move from france to all of england, let alone arsenal, that maintained their goal-scoring rate. you’ve always seemed determined to make giroud out to be a poor player. bottom line, he’s not. in 5.5 seasons, giroud scored more than 100 goals for arsenal. despite numerous attempts by went to freeze him out of the team, giroud’s a centurion. heck, he scored 5 goals last week!

       when lacazette first arrived at arsenal, i wrote that wenger be better served playing lacazette with giroud instead of replacing giroud. wenger could have employed lacazette as a second striker behind giroud. this would get the best out of both players. lacazette can play as the lead guy when the momentum of play required him to but would be a deadly finisher feeding from giroud’s aerial redirects. likewise, laca was more likely to stay close to giroud, unlike mesut who tended to drift. i also suggested that it was lacazette’s best route back into the french team; sorry, but i’ve always rated laca, at worst, as good as griezmann. i think wenger missed a trick there. it might not have worked but he looked good in the deeper role last week.

       1. Exactly this. Giroud goes through slow periods, and misses some sitters. But that happens to pretty much all strikers.
          But he’s scored double digits basically every year consistently. Added in a decent number of assists. Plus he’s great in the air both offensively and defensively.
          You don’t score 100 for a top team and become your country’s second leading scorer by being mediocre.

28. -just watched the seattle sounders come back from 2-0 down…ridiculous!

    in 2013, i coached a U13 team…the youngest team i’ve ever coached. we were going over the principles of play. when asked, all of the kids, who had just finished at the academy (u9-u12) all knew the first principle of defense was pressure. then, i asked them what does pressure mean? crickets. no one could tell me what pressure meant as it applied to soccer. i gave them a homework assignment; be able to define and talk intelligently about what pressure is when they show up to monday’s practice. they could use a dictionary definition or one that they made up.

    sure enough, monday came and coach didn’t forget to ask what pressure was to each of the players. one of the players, a 12-year old named logan, declared that pressure is when you make your opponent uncomfortable. i marveled! it was a brilliant definition; very concise and from the mouth of a babe came truth. since then, i’ve altered my definition of what pressure is to align exactly with his. btw, he’s a junior at duke university now.

    arsenal didn’t apply decent pressure on tottenham. they seemed focused too much on what arteta told them to do and not enough on what the game told them to do. bottom line, you can not allow professional players to do what they want without pressure. they will rip you apart. and it’s not just direct pressure by the player closest to the ball. one can be 35-meters away and put pressure on the ball by taking up a position that makes completing a pass he might make that way much more difficult. if everyone applied pressure that way, instead of just watching your team mate who’s closest to the ball, hoping they make a play, arsenal could have induced far more pressure on their opponent. they didn’t and they lost. if they don’t change, they’ll continue to lose.

    i don’t care anything about the amount of possession they had when tottenham were 2-0 up. everyone knows mourinho, when he plays the “bigger teams”, always plays to keep a clean sheet. if he can nick a win, that’s great. however, he’d be plenty happy with a 0-0 result. in the second half, stats don’t tell a story. tottenham’s strategy changed; they came out to finish the game with a clean sheet…they allowed arsenal to have the ball and nothing else.

    1. it reminds me of the quarter finals in the ’02 world cup. the u.s. played germany. despite losing 1-0, i’ve heard so many say that the u.s. outplayed the germans that day. no, they didn’t. i challenge everyone to watch the first 38 minutes of that game, when it was still 0-0, and say the u.s. outplayed germany. once the germans, took the lead, their approach changed. goals change games. the u.s. didn’t play better, germany played to win.

29. It’s funny the impressions you come away with from a match. I’m not going back to watch that one again, by the way.

    Pressure was clearly a problem. But for me the biggest weakness of our play was our passing. I lost count of the number of times Xhaka passed backwards when he had a forward option. I lost count of the number of pointless forward passes that were instantly returned when a Spurs player took one step closer. I lost count of the number of times movement finally looked promising but an underhit or misdirected pass gave up possession way too cheaply. No overloads, no combinations. Nobody going past their defender. No penetration. Nothing we did even remotely looked like it was going to hurt them. We resorted to trying to win free kicks, truly we are an Allardyce side right now.

    I think this will get better, because it has to. But it requires a massive change in aggression, execution and tempo at the very least.

    1. I’m looking for Arteta to be decisive and drop Auba, who we are carrying at the moment and who for various reasons (not all of them his fault) offers no threat. It would take some balls and good man-management from Arteta to do that without blowing up the team, but on current form you wouldn’t pick our captain.

30. Tim’s kind of right. We did press more in the second half. But Spvrs were very obliging and happy for us to horseshoe in front of them.

    What we really needed to do (once we went behind) was not so much press as pull them out of shape and create overloads through quick passing, runners off the ball and dribbling (not through crossing FFS).

    I don’t know why Arteta decided not to play the gameplan that worked for him last season. Low block all the way and long balls for the forwards to chase. Must have been a combination of ego and panic over recent results.

31. Without a skilful passer of the ball, you cannot have quick passing through the middle.

    We do not have one available.

    The only alternative is crossing from the wings, but against a packed defence standing deep, that is useless, as happened on Sunday.

    No one uses initiative and inspiration, just doing what they are told.

    I agree with the person who says that Arteta needs to release the reins he has on the players and should allow, the forward ones, to play as they think best.

    I doubt if he will do that.

32. Josh

    In his last season in France Giroud was the league leading scorer with 21 and helped his team to be league champions. He came to a team with one of the best collection of creative players in the world and a manager who did everything to maximize creativity and play attack minded football. You would have thought a forward like Giroud could have thrived as a goal scorer in those conditions. However in his 5 years he averaged slightly less then 14 league goals per year so he never replicated what he was able to do in France and I would argue he didn’t live up to expectations in terms of how many goals he scored. You could argue the same for Gervinho, chamakh, Sanogo and Lacazette when he first arrived and played for Arsene.

33. So much handwringing and soul searching. I never understand the idea of finding a culprit in chief. It’s the owners! No the players! No the manager! It’s clearly not Gunnersaurus because he got canned and our form dipped. Guys, guys, it’s all of the above to varying degrees at different times. Arsenal Football Club is an ecosystem, and ecosystems are complex interdependent entities. But my take is cosmic and simple, an apparent oxymoron.

    One, we lost all belief and confidence in ourselves when it comes to PL matches. I believe this because of the stark contrast in form during midweek matches. Arteta tries to carry over the things that work from those matches to the PL like Willock’s runs from deep or Lacazette as an advanced central midfielder. For whatever reason, it’s Yin and Yang, and I don’t think it’s all down to the strength of the opposition. In the Europa, there is belief, conviction and cohesion. In the PL, there are none of those things, and personnel doesn’t seem to make a difference.

    Two, I think we are getting our share of the karmic cycle for the actions of the club during the pandemic and Arteta is getting his share for going along with it all. You taint public opinion by laying off your longtime employees, you become a laughing stock by firing your own mascot, you exile your best creative player on dubious grounds, replace your club record signing with a Bosman from Chelsea of all places, you extend AMN and then never use him, and then you make things worse by giving in to public pressure to abandon the 4-3-3 and start Auba centrally. Arteta has not stuck to the principles that made him so successful in the beginning and he has to right some of these cosmic wrongs before the Ball starts bouncing our way again.

    Three, the lack of urgency starts at the top with the strikers and trickles down from there. What do Auba and Willian have to do to be dropped for the PL? They have been the lone constant at the top throughout this dreadful run of form. Maybe it’s no coincidence that they are both about the same age and on comfortable long term contracts and come with established reputations. You can throw Lacazette in that mix as well and he has been much better after he was benched for a while. You can carry one guy like that, maybe, but not two. We need more youth and hunger up there, and definitely more stamina and desire.

    Four, further down the spine of the team, there is also a pronounced lack of mobility in key areas, particularly midfield. Partey’s injury is a massive blow as it forces the inclusion of, well, basically anyone else we have on the team besides Willock or AMN, who, in a defensive sense, is ok as part of a low block but catastrophic in the open grass facing quick opponents. I’ll include Bellerin in this as well who is amazing technically but a shadow of his former self in terms of recovery sprints and stamina, and he was never a strong tackler or 1 v 1 defender. Passivity up top and poor mobility behind them has been an issue since forever at Arsenal. Now that the goals have dried up, it’s more visible than ever.

    Five, the karmic cycle is reaching the Kroenkes too. I completely agree with Tim’s assessment of their involvement with this football club. It’s always been a side project to them. A decadent decade of passive delegation finally came to a head only when it was obvious someone was blatantly throwing the club’s money around without any regard for tomorrow. Welcome to the real world, Stan and Josh! Look what a pig’s ear it is. Now please take some responsibility for the mess you left. Not made, just left, like a pile of really stinky unwashed laundry.

    Coda: We are reaping what we’ve sown because the universe has ordained it so. Karma is real. Now let’s do our part to put more positive Arsenal energy out there. We need it.

34. Now for chapter II: THE SOLUTION a.k.a what I would do if I were Mikel Arteta.

    (Not pretentious am I??)

    Part 1: Play the kids, embrace the future.

    Our form could hardly be worse and there’s that adage about the definition of insanity, innit? Playing youth encourages growth, builds belief in a shared future, and shows genuine faith. Youth is the best thing this club has going for it at the moment so why not lean into it? Not much to lose by trying. Would also Light a fire under the old guard.

    Part 2: Admit you were mistaken: about A great. many. things.

    I’ve enumerated them above. I don’t expect the club to backtrack on the employees, nor can Arteta do much about it. But he can and should backtrack on Ozil and the formation changes that the squad underwent. The morph to 4-3-3 required a fit Thomas Partey. We don’t have that and we are not in a position to keep trying. The 3-4-3 got the best out of core players for our future like Tierney and Saka, and plays to the strengths of Xhaka and Ceballos, who will remain necessary I’m afraid. It’s overly simplistic and reductionist to think a conceptual formation change will make a difference but embracing the concepts that worked before is the key change I would make. Speaking of what worked! How about pre-pandemic Mesut Ozil? I agree with phasing him out, not freezing him out. Playing out from the back? High pressures? We have to get back to basics.

    Part 3: Don’t change too much.

    While embracing youth, it’s also necessary to preserve continuity. I allude to that above, but I also mean in terms of management and club structure. This Arteta phase has had its difficulties and he has made it hard for himself in many ways. However we were not wrong to believe in him and I do think there is a great coach in there. He needs to re-center and get back to his fundamental principles. We do not want to get on the managerial carousel. There are many candidates up there with a higher floor than Arteta, but we don’t know what his ceiling could be. He deserves to finish out this year at least so that we may come closer to finding out. I believe he is having an identity crisis at the moment and the squad is having it with him.

    I would say the same things about Aubameyang. For better or worse we’ve hitched our wagon to him and he deserves The chance to lead us onward. For me he is the one untouchable player on the team sheet, in a longer term sense. I do think he could use a little time on the bench in the near future though.

    4. Be a selling club

    It’s clear what we have isn’t great. Arteta himself said he has the wrong players in about 6 positions for a 4-3-3. We can’t be afraid to sell players with marginal value especially if we are not going to use them. We have to be more ruthless with the young players in this regard as well. If they can’t find a role in the first team with us by they time they are 21 or so, it’s time to part ways and attach a nice buyback clause or sell-on fee and on to next year’s batch. Each player we have needs to have an intentionality to him, a sense of exactly where he fits in the Bayeux Tapestry of Arsenal’s fabric, no matter the age or time of service here.

    With that I give you my team sheet for Everton:

    Leno
    Holding Gabriel Tierney
    Maitland-Niles ElNeny Willock Saka
    Pepe Aubameyang Nelson

    Critique away!

    1. Looks about right to me. At this point, I’d be inclined to play some of the more senior players against Dundalk to see if they can get their mojo back(Auba specifically). And keep a couple of the more junior players fresh to start in the PL.
       I’d consider slotting in ESR perhaps instead of Willock, but otherwise, I’d be fine with that. As stated, we can’t really do much worse than we’ve been doing.

    2. The job is yours, pal. Would you like that served with a 3 or 4 year contract? 🙂

35. Great post Doc

    The whole club from top to bottom has been on a downward spiral which started for real the last couple years of the Wenger era and nothing we have done so far has arrested the slide. The only thing I disagree with is your idea that our much better midweek Europa league performances are not about the difference in quality of the opposition. We have been dominating teams in the Europa league group stage level and then laying eggs in the league games for the last 4 years under 3 different managers. We have lost confidence in our league games for a good reason because we struggle against stronger opposition in our league games.

    1. It started with the Leicester game. We were the better team but got sniped on the counter. Should have been a bump on the road but instead it has been downhill ever since. Same players, same coach. It has to be 90% mental. We have to keep rolling that Sisyphean boulder up the hill and it gets heavier each time.

       1. It’s not mental. It’s the system. You get plucked on the counter when you don’t press the guys who make those long passes. That’s why when we started pressing in the 2nd half, they barely got out of their end of the pitch.

36. Is there a way back for Arteta? I think this is the big question. Whatever the problems or solutions, can Arteta marshal the club’s resources and motivate the team to turn this around? The 30+ members of the squad may be checking out, recognizing that they are unlikely to see the fruits of this rebuild before age catches up with them. That’s contagious. Will KSE back Arteta in January, given the results so far? With so much uncertainty, it’s easy to see why the club might opt to look elsewhere.

    1. 🤣🤣

    2. Hahaha! Well played, Tim.

    3. New Signing!

37. They scored that goal in the second half and Tielemans hit that pass more or less blindly around the corner. It was perfect. Nice bit of play.

    This game is almost all mental! The extra 10% is stuff like that, perfect passes at the perfect time, just the right touch, etc. The wow moments.

    Though he can add those 10% moments, Ozil wont save this. It has to be an organic, top down effort with everyone pulling together or it won’t work at all. Arteta has to start with himself and go from there.

    1. I agree that Ozil won’t save this season or all our problems (and he was on the decline anyway by the time he was frozen out). It’s just funny (above pic) because he’s so often been the elephant in the room for fans this season.

    2. lol.. ok 46th minute. great point. obviously negates the argument that for most of the remaining 48 minutes of the game arsenal pressed.

       how many shots did spurs have in the 2nd half?

       jesus.

       1. I’m not trying to negate your argument Tim… I’m not even arguing with you at all. My point was simply that we’ve been on this slide since Leicester and that that goal/result was a turning point of sorts, regardless of the reason(s) for it. No need to be sarcastic.

38. “The last player to create five chances in a single match for Arsenal was Mesut Ozil in November 2019…. the most in a single game by a player under Mikel Arteta”.

    @orbinho, a twitter stats guy.

    Look, the argument isn’t that Ozil is the saviour, or that we’d be getting the 2014 version. All that competitive inactivity must have dulled his edge. Games make you sharp, not practice.

    Arteta’s dropping Ozil from his starting XI can be rationalised. Heck, his not making matchday EPL squads of 18 can be rationalised, somewhat. Not being registered for any competition? Not being packed for ANY squad in any competition? Going from starting 10 consecutive games to you to a total blanking?

    Arteta is a worse fibber than he is a planner of a coherent attack. Arsenal’s deep sixing of Ozil has never been properly rationalised in footballing terms. Recalling him in January would smack of desperation on the coach’s part, and too much water may have already flowed under that bridge. This however exposes the lies and flimsy dodges of the Arsenal hierarchy, in which the rookie coach was complicit, but which I suspect was a call made above his pay grade.

    So back to Orbinho’s stat. We can’t do any worse than pick the one guy in the squad who can see a pass in forward areas. Even as half the player he was, he’d do better than Willian and co in plotting a way to goal.

    1. At this point, I can’t think anything other than Arteta has been told not to play Ozil by the owners.
       He’s not likely to somehow offer a 100% improvement and turn the team around single-handedly. But given how dismal the offense has been, I can’t believe that he wouldn’t be seen as at least a possible option to try, even if he does have defensive issues.

39. the club wanted the players to take a pay cut and mesut said kiss my a$$! any takers on that being the reason why he went from being a regular starter to not even making the match day squad?

    1. they figured that willian could come in and do a portion of what mesut did…and they were wrong. i know one man who was happy that arsenal didn’t play mesut on sunday: jose mourinho. while manager at real madrid, mourinho once said that there is no one in the world like mesut; not even a bad bootleg copy. that’s huge respect from a manager who rules with an iron fist and always publicly humiliates players.

       another mourinho gem; did anyone see how mourinho lavished arteta with praise after the game on sunday? that was two things: shade directed at wenger and gassing arteta’s head into thinking he was unlucky to beat arsenal, knowing that if arteta sends arsenal out to play that way again, he would beat arteta every day of the week.

       sorry, tim. arsenal didn’t play better in the second half, tottenham played to keep a clean sheet.

       1. The Ozil that Mourinho references is not the 2020 vintage. But even so, Ozil on crutches in 60 years’ time is good enough for this Arsenal team.

          1. That’s…maybe true. Sadly.

       2. ‘Gassing Arteta’s head…’ so true.

          Mikel has an immense amount of goodwill and respect in the game. But a large chunk of that is capital borrowed via his association with Pep.

          The recent tactical flaws and some of his post match commentary has called just about every outlet to question if he really is up to the job.

          We/I hope the criticism actually focuses his mind on creating the right environment for the team to succeed. Fingers crossed.

          1. It’s actually quite cool watching Arteta learn the downside of his job as the reviews get worse and the questions get more pointed, he’s turning into a regular stressed out, angry and depressed manager.

40. I think Arteta used Ozil at first because of his reputation and he had to give Ozil a change to show if he could still help the team. Arteta probably thought he could give motivate and reinvigorate Mesut. Emery probably hoped for the same thing when he started. I suspect Arteta dropped Ozil after the Covid break because he had several months with to do nothing but watch film and think about what he saw before the break and he decided that having Mesut in the line up was not improving the team. Emery came to the same conclusion about Ozil after watching him play for a couple months and tried to loan him out during the mid season transfer window.

    I assume both managers and the owners would do whatever they thought would give the team its best chance to succeed. We have 2 managers in a row who came to the same conclusion after watching their team play for a couple months so I am not sure why we have to search for conspiracy theories to explain what has happened.

41. I don’t think any manger or club wants to feel like they are caving in to pressure from fans or the media to use a player with a big reputation when they don’t think that player will help the team and perhaps that’s why Ozil was not registered. I think the non-registration has certainly been a bad move from a PR standpoint.

42. For any of you who are big fans of tactics and coaching this website has good articles. This link is their tactical analysis of the Spuds game. They’re critical of Partey and Xhaka for getting drawn out of position and praised Spuds midfield pretty much for making us dance to their tune.

    https://www.coachesvoice.com/tactical-analysis-tottenham-2-arsenal-0/

    Although I’m far from a fan Carragher on Sky was hugely critical of Arteta for playing into Maureen’s hand. The more I think about it the solves are simple. Just play Maureen football. Would mean dropping Laca and Xhaka as you need pace and players capable of following instructions.

    1. Not sure I agree with much said in that article. They claim we high pressed, we didn’t (until the 2nd half) and then they made it out that Spurs had some great master plan playing up the wings and that some really smart movement was what opened us up. Bellerin lost his mind, Partey was injured, and Arsenal didn’t bother pressing. That’s what happened.

       Anyway, I agree that you play anti-football to counter Moruniho’s anti-football. Chelsea did exactly that.

       I think that’s how you beat him and teams knew it when he was at Man U. You don’t hang out in his half for the whole game; don’t take corners into the middle of the pitch; don’t commit players high on any phase of play; keep your fullbacks back and wide at all times. I joke about this but I would probably instruct my players to kick the ball out on every possession. Just kick it straight out on their end line or deep in their half for a throw. Make the game about 5 minutes of actual play.

43. Claude @ 5:22 AM

    If Ozil on crutches is a better option then the players we have it really speaks volumes about how talent poor the squad really is.

    We all watched the team in the last 1/2 year with Arsene after Ozil signed the big contract and we watched the team with Emery and then with Arteta and I don’t think Ozil was having any tangible positive influence on the team when he did play during the those 2 1/2 . I may be wrong but it certainly appears that Emery, Arteta and Arsenals front office management who watch thousands of hours of film of those games and watch the team in training every day agree with my idea.

    Ozil is out of contract and will be gone at the end of this season and clearly not any part of the future and if he can’t help us now we have to move on. The only realistic reason for the club to bring Ozil into the regular squad at this point is because we are tired of hearing the fans and the press talk about him and/or we are desperate enough to try anything even though we don’t believe it will improve the team this season. The former is bad management but there is see some logic to the latter.

44. 2 1/2 year sample size of watching Ozil is certainly a large enough sample size to draw conclusions regarding how much he could help the team the rest of this season.

45. So, Ozil did nothing to benefit the team when he played, so how is it that before the covid break, when he played every game, we lost one of 10/11 games, whilst after it , we have struggled to win more than a few and have played awful defensive football?

    I am sure you will agree that we have no creativity whatsoever and struggle to get the ball to our attacker,s which explains their inability to even have a shot at target, let alone score goals.

    Are you honestly suggesting that if he did play there would not be a marked increase in our creativity, with increased shots, on and off target?

    Please, do not answer with the “lazy Ozil” nonsense, as it seems the statistics do not show that to be true.

    Please do not try to justify the unjustifiable.

    I believe that it would be extremely naive to think that the reason he is not playing now is because he did not fit into Arteta’s footballing style.

    Even if it is true, and I do not believe it for a moment, are you happy with that style and do you not think that it would be worthwhile having him in the squad, just in case he may be of use, rather than players who are injured and are unlikely to play any part in any meaningful game before January?

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