Crystal Palace… I scan down the list to expected goals.. 16.2. And now to actual goals. 22. Expected goals against, 24, actual goals against 29. Points, 22. Arsenal points, 23.
Their best player this season: Andros Townsend. According to WhoScored. That’s odd because whoscored rates players who dribble and I’d guess that Zaha and Eze dribble more. They do, but not by huge margins. What makes Townsend their best player is that he’s doing it all: tackles, interceptions, dribbles, crosses, key passes, and assists. I still think Eze and Zaha are the keys with Townsend getting big numbers because those two take the pressure off.
Eze has opened up the game for Palace. He gives Roy a second player who will collect the ball and take people on one-on-one. With him and Zaha sharing the duties, along with Townsend, there’s quite a threat going forward. So much so that even Christian Benteke has had a bit of a revival this season, scoring three.
Zaha is going to Zaha and that means dropping to the ground at the slightest contact. He’s second in the League in drawing fouls behind Jack Grealish. I sense that defenders understand how the new rules work better these days and try to avoid any contact. Still, even accidental contact is usually punished which makes it so much more difficult to guard a player like Zaha.
For Arsenal, it’s all about the starting lineup. What will Arteta do today? 4231 with Smith-Rowe again? Who will play the 1? Who will start in the 2? Willian out right or Saka? Saka left Willian right? It’s hard to tell what he will do. Consistency is the key for Arsenal. Finding a lineup that works and sticking with it.
I mentioned Saka on the right in my chat with Scott for the Arsenal Vision Analytics podcast (only available to Patrons). Saka is much better on the left, which shouldn’t be a surprise. He can play on the right, and he’s better than Willian, but his best position (statistically) is on the left. This just leaves Arteta with about 6 problems to solve: Lacazette has been our best forward this season, and he wants to play him in the middle and needs to play Aubameyang but that means Auba goes out to the left, but Auba on the left isn’t working, and adding to that problem is the fact that Pepe on the right doesn’t work, Willian in the middle is not good at all, and Willian on the right isn’t as good as Saka on the right (which isn’t as good as Saka on the left).
I don’t know what Arteta does with this. It’s a mess.
Expectations: low; penalty for Zaha; 1-1 draw.
Last word: if Arsenal win by 3 goals or more they move up to.. 10th.
“This just leaves Arteta with about 6 problems to solve: Lacazette has been our best forward this season, and he wants to play him in the middle and needs to play Aubameyang but that means Auba goes out to the left, but Auba on the left isn’t working, and adding to that problem is the fact that Pepe on the right doesn’t work, Willian in the middle is not good at all, and Willian on the right isn’t as good as Saka on the right (which isn’t as good as Saka on the left).”
Above made me bust into laughter, thank God am no the one coaching the club.
What a conundrum….
Well there you have it, Tim… Auba left, Saka right.
For me, if Auba is fit, he plays. End of story. He is an elite striker, and he doesn’t stop being one because of 3 months of bad form. And if he plays, he plays left, because Laca is playing well as our central striker.
Partey’s almost back, and that’s a plus.
Tierney has been our heartbeat of late… I hope we dont miss him too much.
Luiz, a right footed CB, slots into the LCB post played so well by Mari of late. The whole left of the defence is deputies. If Im Woy, I’d let Saka run at Luiz and AMN all afternoon.
Notable: Elneny’s not even on the bench. When stuff like that happens in January, you know what to expect.
If Im Woy, I’d let Saka run at Luiz
Zaha, ofc. Imagine if we had Xhaka, Saka, Laca, Zaha and Salah. Make it happen, Edu.
Didn’t work very well, did it?
0-0 at HT, and Tim, your low-scoring draw looks a good prediction right now!
Eazy-E is a good player, as you suggested, Tim. Hadn’t really noticed him before. He came straight outta nowhere!
Anywhere, we really struggled this first 45 and were often outplayed by Palace. Wonder if we’ll see Partey and Pepe in the second half?
He’s one I’ve been keeping an eye on from the Championship for a few years.
BTW: Michael Olise will be the next “big” name from the championship to jump to the Premier League.
There is a noticeable lack of athleticism and aggression throughout this IX. AMN helps compensate for that but he doesn’t look match fit and his technique has been awful in this match. On the other side, I was impressed with Bellerin’s recovery speed against Zaha more than once and Saka and Xhaka are doing a nice job helping out on that flank.
To me the logical move seems to be to substitute Auba, move Saka to the left, and bring Pepe on. Auba isn’t going to be able to affect the game against such a deep block. After that, if we still need a goal, AMN has to go and perhaps we switch to a back three for the lack of other options. This is a game where Kolasinac’s offensive talents would come in handy.
We looked tired for a lot of that game, and they played it well. 0-0 is probably fair.
Well, better than us losing with Xhaka telling everyone to f*ck off.
Low bar!
I wonder if MA8 will learn something here about playing time. I bet he would like to have back his selection and substitutions from Saturday. ESR and Saka were very leggy. Auba looked tired too IMO. And running Tierney for 120 took him out of consideration. That hurt especially. Agreed that AMN was dreadful.
Credit to Palace. Their defense was excellent, and shut down the center of the pitch. Plus, they weren’t allowing ESR any touches for quick combinations. A learning experience for him too.
After an hour, it settled into a bore draw, in which we huffed and puffed uncreatively.
But in the first half an hour, we looked really good and dominant with decent, snappy combination play.
Not a fan, but I’ll give Xhaka his props. He was good today. Searching forward balls, plugged the LB gap when the dismal Maitland-Niles was attacking upfield, and made some decent tackles.
We had our chances early, but Laca and Auba elected to make that extra pass instead of shooting, and headless Hector charged in to take a chance away from Laca.
ESR couldnt really get into the game. He popped up left and right, and I was surprised that Arteta seems to have given him that much leeway.
Hodgson missed a trick by not letting Zaha run at Ainsley and Luiz on their right, instead of the impressive Holding on their left. And can anyone anyone beat Benteke in the air?
But hey. This game is going straight to DVD.
Ainsely’s main attribute is as a 1 v1 defender, the perfect solution against Zaha. That said, Palace did what they always do, which is combine on the left with Eze and Zaha. I thought Xhaka did a nice job on Zaha and tackled him several times when I was sure he’d be left for dead. Ditto Bellerin. If anything we looked much more prepared for them defensively than offensively. Their chances came from set pieces and deflections for the most part, except the one bit of nice combination play that set Benteke up for a characteristic fluff.
With the ball, I agree with you that we looked god for the first 10 minutes of each half. We couldn’t maintain that tempo and the game deteriorated into a territorial battle and attrition, one they were well equipped to withstand.
I’m not terribly bothered by this result in isolation but it was one of the more winnable of the fixtures we have coming up.
This is a pretty good summary of the game.
Im not bothered by the result either. Crafty old Roy has developed a pretty good Arsenal playbook.
In the past 2 hours, the stats men have been confirming what the eye could see about Xhaka’s play. But I was not prepared for this:
Most touches (129)
Most passes completed (97)
Most ball recoveries (13)
Most tackles (6)
Most clearances (3)
o
The point nobody is making is how much we missed Tierney. Our attacking play down the left as good as evaporated. Incredible to think that we are pretty much dependent on a left full back, but there you are. AMN can’t possibly give us what Tierney does as he is always turning in onto his right foot. If Tierney gets injured again, we will have a serious problem. Likewise Leno.
In the end the combination of Saka and Xhaka covering left defence did OK, but that is in no way ideal.
Also, we have the luxury of having two left footed centre halves and yet neither of them played. Were they unfit?
The team was unbalanced.
Yes, that was an obvious area of weakness offensively. Strangely it didn’t get much better with Saka moved there. Just too much was out of sync on the day.
Yes, it looked to me that ESR was playing far too wide and much too far forward. My guess is that he was told to do precisely that. He’d have been a lot more use to the team playing deeper and more centrally. We were desperately short in that area of the pitch. I didn’t see him combining with Laca, as much as he needs to.
1 goal against Brighton and shut out over 90 minutes of regular time in the last 2 games. It looks like our attacking revival was short lived. We are going to struggle to score unless Auba somehow regains form and I don’t think Arteta or ESR or any single player is going to fix the lack of firepower. On other hand the defense has regained its solidity and we have not conceded in the last 4. Arteta has certainly done a brilliant job of fixing the defense
Xhaka was good today. Worked hard, tried to move the ball forward, and had a number of crucial interventions.
AMN looked rusty, and he’s not as good on that side.
Luiz slows things down too much. Be glad to have Mari or Gabriel back to partner Holding.
Beyond that, the problem is the same one as we had for much of the season…we don’t seem to have much luck breaking down a parked bus. The team really needs to pull the trigger on shooting opportunities early in the match. There were a few passed up that were better than almost anything that came along in the second half.
Arsenal 0- CP 0 Eggshells, don’t score:
“Don’t feel
don’t think
don’t talk
don’t drink
don’t smoke
don’t move
don’t live
don’t die
don’t try,
you’ll fail.”
Claude
In the last 5 league games before today against Roy and Crystal Palace we scored 11 goals which I suspect is one of our best records in terms of scoring goals against any team in the league during that time.
Ah but that’s half the story, Bill.
How many goals did Place score in the games you reference? Nine. Score, 11 – 9. Not bad at all.
Since Hodgson took over in late 2017, Arsenal have scored 14 goals to Palace’s 11. Months before Hodgson, they had thumped us 3-0 at their ground.
And our last 5 results against them have all been draws.
our last 5 results against them have all been draws
Oh sorry, I stand corrected. In our last 5 meetings, Palace have won once (2-3), and there have been 4 draws.
Last 6? One win apiece, with 4 draws. That win for Arsenal in Jan 2018 was 4-1, but as I said they had beaten us 3-0 the previous year.
Claude.
You’re right its the results that really matter so I stand corrected.
Its interesting that Palace tends to sit deep and hit on the counter attack and those type of teams are usually the ones we struggle the most in terms of scoring goals and yet we have been relatively prolific against them compared to most other teams but for some reason we have also struggled to stop them. Yesterday’s game is much more the type of match I would have expected against a team that sets up like Palace.
Great post Tim
I looked up the stats on who scored and Townsend has 1 goal and 3 assists while Zaha has 8 goals and 2 assists. I know those 2 stats do not tell the entire story but I have to admit I don’t understand why the players who actually score the goals for their team don’t get more of a boost in those ratings.
I can’t speak for WhoScored and their ratings system. I do know that it is widely ridiculed and a lot of work has gone into deconstructing their algorithm, it very clearly favors dribblers. Which again would suggest that Zaha should be higher up. But Sofascore also has Townsend higher than Zaha so, I’d suggest that they are likely looking at the player’s total contributions.
Bottom line: don’t get too exercized about this rating system and note that I only mentioned it in my piece as a passing bit of navel gazing. I was certainly not suggesting that Townsend > Zaha or Eze.