Good morning all! I have good news: the state has cleared me to get my first dose of the vaccine and my appointment is for tomorrow morning. That means starting Thursday, this blog will be entirely controlled by Bill Gates. In accordance with this development, this blog will now be known as “MSkickoff” and product placements will be liberally sprinkled throughout every post.
From now on players will be branded with Microsoft names: Martin Ødegaard will be known as “Microsoft Ødegaard”, Emile Smith Rowe will be “Excel Smith Rowe”, Thomas Partey will be called “Partey 365”, and Bukayo Saka will be renamed “Bukayo Surface Pro for Business.” Players will receive names which recognize their unique contributions to the Bill Gates empire: players who rarely feature or lack a bit in the quality department will be named “Yammer, Microsoft Teams, and Bing.” Former players will also be referred to by their new Microsoft names. For example, Shkodran Mustafi will be called “SM Paint”, Mesut Ozil will now be “Windows 1Ö (pre-1906 service pack)”, and Matteo Guendouzi will be just named “Zune.”
But until I get my orders from Master Gates we can talk about normal things using normal names.
Arsenal won* 3-3 against Wham this weekend and I see from the comments section that you all have had much vigorous debate over the result already. Thank you for keeping it respectful and sticking to the community rules and now it’s my turn to throw petrol on the fire.
In my piece for Arseblog news, I highlighted the contributions of Thomas Partey 365 and I want to say here, officially, that he had a fantastic game. I know that all the love went out to Martin Odegaard – and that Adrian Clarke highlighted Lacazette’s role – but if you watch the match again you can see that it was Partey’s almost obsessive drive to get the ball forward which gave both players the platform to get Arsenal rolling.
I have been reading a series of articles on a site called “American Soccer Analysis” called “Where goals come from” (start here) and one thing that they prove is that progressive passing (passes which move the ball > 25% closer to the goal) accounts for around 40% of all goals. They go on in later articles to further refine that information, making clear that it’s a progressive pass which ends in a shot (key pass) and breaking progressive passing into five types with different values: throughballs (29%), cutbacks (27%), crosses (14%), regular progressive balls (13%), and long balls (9%). Just to be clear: what I believe I read here is that when you successfully play a throughball to a teammate and they get a shot, that shot has a 29% chance of scoring on average, across all players, across all leagues, this is a large data set. Of course there will be some players who score 10% and some who score 40%, but you get the point because you understand how averages work and we don’t need to discuss this because this is, again, a large data set and not a small sample, such as “but _XXX__ player”.
What this shows is how important progressive passing is and you could see all of these elements in this match. Lingard’s first goal? Dragback. Their 2nd goal? Ok, so technically that’s a set piece goal (which probably shouldn’t have been allowed to stand, plus Leno shouldn’t have been beaten so easily) but it’s got all of the hallmarks of a throughball. Their third? A cross. And the same with the Arsenal goals. The first was a cross, the second was what I consider an “unstoppable cross” (meaning that if you let the player put in that cross it’s almost always a goal), and the third was a cross! So, of six goals, 5 of them were outright progressive passes and one was an “ehh, ok, so that’s a set play, buuuuut…”
I think you knew this already because you watch football and you know that when a team can get a long ball out to a forward (or a cutback, etc) that these are typically “big chances”. And what I love about Partey is his vertical, progressive passing. Watch the highlights from NBC and you can see how much Partey was involved in most of Arsenal’s forward play: one phase in particular which I loved was when Partey collected, played to Laca (who’d dropped deep), and laca clipped to Saka for a pretty good chance. It’s the kind of old-school vertical football that Wenger loved – which I think Vieira referred to as “up the ladder.”
I had an exchange with Connor on twitter where he described Thomas’ play like this:
I love that description of Thomas as the “Elneny of forward passing”. When I watched the replays and the highlights of the game, it does “leap off the screen” how often he was the one providing the first ball to either Lacazette or Ødegaard. Watch it again, it’s as good a performance as I’ve seen from an Arsenal MFer since early Xhaka when Arsenal were still able to play that way (before teams started pressing Xhaka who Wenger played as the single deep MFer).
As for the goals we conceded.. well.. that sucked. The first was just good progressive play and an excellently struck shot which was nearly blocked by Chambers. The second was, as Arteta puts it “unacceptable” from Arsenal: we cannot be switched off at any point. And the third was, I think, a bit of wobbly legs by Arsenal.
It was frustrating to watch Arsenal get dominated in those first 15-30 minutes. And we now have a reputation for being soft early in games, which we need to eradicate, immediately. If I’m being generous I will say that Arsenal played two games that week and Wham played just the one, so there’s a reason for us being a bit tired and overrun but it would also be fair to point out that mentally we weren’t at the races – especially since we conceded that swift free kick goal.
All in all, it’s just more stuff that Arteta needs to work on this summer but I do like our forward, progressive play and thought we looked excellent against a well drilled West Ham team, after the 30th minute!
*It’s a draw that felt like a win!
I must have been watching a different game from you then, Tim, because just like the majority of the viewers I saw Partey having a bit of a tough time on the pitch on Sunday. I use a mobile app FotMob on my phone (highly recommended) which amongst many other things includes players’ ratings (not official). I just checked, and only Leno (that 2nd West Ham goal should’ve never gone in) and Xhaka had lesser ratings than Partey. Unsurprisingly, Lacazette and Odegaard got the highest marks. The game was truly a game of two halves. Abysmal first half (well, the first half hour), and a much better performance or perhaps I should say response in the second half. We do have to remember though that two of our goals were own goals scored by Soucek and Dawson, and we also benefited from Antonio’s huge miss from a yard out that struck the post and that would’ve put West Ham 4-2 up. What bugs me the most is that in the good ‘ole Wenger days I fully expected us to win these sorts of games 3-1 or 4-1. Now (under Arteta), I don’t even know which Arsenal is going to show up. Is it going to be Dr. Jekyll or the evil/ugly Mr. Hyde? Consistency is the key, and I have yet to see it. If anything, we’re consistently inconsistent. For me, personally, the successful end to a season is still winning the Europa League and thus qualifying for next season’s Champions League. I’m very much “table doesn’t lie” kinda a guy so finishing in 10th place or thereabouts below the likes of West Ham, Everton, Aston Villa, etc. is completely unacceptable and spells major failure. Over to you, Mikel.
I stand with Tim on this one. I would urge you to go back and rewatch the match if you can. Partey is a monster in his progressive passing in this game. He bangs balls into Laca who flicks them on to Saka and Auba by design. He gets passes to Odegaard, who then plays on to others. He misplaced some passes, for sure, but he was moving us forward relentlessly in the 2nd half. WHAM would kick it long, one of our backline would win it back and immediately give it to Thomas and bang, we were attacking. Over and over.
I think midfield is the toughest part of the game to assess, especially watching live. We are so focused on getting the ball into the net that our eyes are drawn to assists and finishing. The engine room work is a lot harder to spot. So much happens off the ball and off screen. Watching a second time takes some of the emotion out, and lets you look at things happening off the ball. Also, I find that twitter and discord have a way of creating a narrative during a game that proves to be unreliable on 2nd viewing. Don’t know about Fotmob but I will check it out! Thanks for the recommendation.
Thomas had 8 misplaced passes all game and led the team in so many objectively good categories (carries, progressive carries, progressive passing, etc) it’s hard for me to agree that it was a poor game from him. I think a few early misplaced passes helped to shape the narrative but he was behind almost everything we did well. Arsenal Vision Pod did a rewatch just of the second half and really lay on the love for Partey. https://twitter.com/ArsenalVPodcast/status/1374406292257742857?s=20
I’m not sure how fotmob rates players but a lot of systems only rate on stuff like dribbles (whoscored) and key passes, tackles, and shots which would have a progressive midfielder looking pretty poor.
As for the table: we are 4th in the League since december. So, I think there are signs of progress.
Yeah that rewatch was what I was referring to. When you watch the game live, those passes Partey makes can get lost, because they immediately turn into exciting attacking and chances. You’re caught up in the possibility of scoring and whether the finish is right, so you can easily forget who fizzed the pass in that started it. I was stunned at how many line breaking passes he made when I watched it again. Honestly one of the best progressive passing performances I’ve seen in a LONG time. The upside on this team is way bigger than it used to be with Partey and Odegaard.
I’m always a glass half-empty guy when it comes to these fightbacks to rescue a point. Like I never think about the 90% of the good, solid playing we do in a gig, only the bad notes that should’ve never been hit. We were abject in those first 30 minutes.
ha! i totally get it. i’m the same way when it comes to assessing myself. however, as i’ve gotten older, i’ve learned to find the good in what others do; particularly with something i’m trying to develop. with that, i’ll never stop being hyper-critical of myself.
Another superbly written post Tim. You’re the best. Thanks for everything you do.
I think Partey was a good signing and he certainly is a no brainer in the starting 11 when it comes to filling out the team sheet and hopefully he can stay healthy most of next season.
The thing which caught my attention about your comments about progressive passing and thru balls is the critical importance of whether you are passing to a player who scores on 10% of those passes vs passing to player who scores on 40%. If your team creates 3 thru balls per game to players who score on 40% your team will score 1.2 goals per game on those passes. However, if you make those exact same 3 passes/game to players who score on 10% your team will only score 1 goal every 3.3 games. Obviously that difference is ginormous x 2, its probably the difference between competing for the top 4 or struggling to get above the bottom 1/2 of the table. Passing is certainly very important but I think easily the single most critical factor which influences the number of goals your team scores is how good your players are at turning passes into actual goals scored. I also think what happened during the Wenger era certainly adds credibility to that hypothesis. IMO Arsenal’s single biggest problem which could hold us back is our collective group of players are a lot closer to the 10% conversion rate in your example rather then the 40%.
To compare eras is folly. I’m always amused by the idea that Arsenal is entitled to be in any position in the table– particularly in this day and age of football. Wenger was able to keep the team top-4 for so long– as most of the other 16 teams were barely average for 20 years. Those top-4 were able to corral almost all of the top talent. Meaning, the lower table clubs had to fil out their roster with less-than athletes. That era is long gone. Nearly every team is very athletic. Mostly due to athletes aspiring to be professionals for the last 10 years– having had the advantage of knowledge, nutrition and tech advances. No longer does a ‘very good’ athlete standout. Few average athletes can keep a PL roster spot anymore. Those that do are technically gifted. Those who are both, play for City. That we sit behind Aston Villa? Should be a clear indicator of the breadth and depth of the PL talent pool available to any team with a PL budget. Wenger (I do love the man) hamstrung this team with average players on big pay packets before being ushered out. Several we are still not rid of. This has kept Arsenal from improving– by spending.
So many factors have degraded Arsenal’s progress this season. If you want a clear, clean view of where Arsenal really place in the table? Tim turned me onto FiveThirtyEight’s SPI (Soccer Power Index) https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/soccer-predictions/premier-league/
Click on the column header ‘SPI’ to sort the table by the rankings. This is where I’m sensing many will have the scales fall from their eyes. It’s certainly confirmed my suspicions on how well Arsenal have performed this season when all of the unfortunate lunacy is stripped away.
JW1
I completely agree. The PL is much different and much more balanced now and the competition for top 4 is much much more difficult then it was during the vast majority of the Wenger era. Our record for top 4 finishes is what it is and certainly deserves lots of credit, however, our top 4 record probably would not look nearly so good if the PL had been as competitive from 2005-2017 era as it is now. The point I was actually trying to make is during Arsene’s teams focused most of their tactical and financial ethos on having the best passing and creativity but we never scored as many goals as the teams we were trying to compete with for the top of the table especially during the Ozil/Cazorla era. Fergies or Mourinho’s best Chelsea teams focused more on having the best goal scorers like Rooney, Ronaldo, Drogba, Lampard etc and those teams consistently out scored us. Arguably the best statistical season in terms of passing and creativity of the 2010-2020 decade was 15/16 but we finished 4th in goals scored because no one was doing a good job of turning the passes into goals scored
With regard to the link you provided the average season simulated goal differential and total points scored in that exact same table have us tied for 8th and those are the 2 metrics which determine actual table position. You can prove anything if you only focus on the evidence that fits your preexisting bias.
Agree, Bill. The teams you mentioned were lethal, ruthless and full of stone cold killers in front of the net like Ronaldo and Drogba. That ethos was paired with a nasty streak for rotational fouling and kicking opponents all over the pitch which I hated despite the amount of trophies it won.
I think the issue is we’ve been conditioned to view midfield success as keeping the ball and not messing up, Partey takes risks and we don’t feel comfortable with that justifiably given the clowns we’ve had but I think we need to calm our anxiety and reevaluate what top midfielders do, they try what’s hard and sometimes it doesn’t come off but you keep trying and pushing. I doubt if we’d had deBruyne in midfield we’d judge partey quite in the same way, alas with xhaka et al I think we’ve become too cautious in our appriasal added to our obsession with a CDM. Partey is a modern complete midfielder and maybe we need to be open to that if we’ve any desire to become a big team again as a midfield who’s main quality is not messing up is unlikely to win us anything
I think this is an interesting take. We haven’t had a top class midfield roughly since Cesc left. In our heads the model of a top midfielder is probably somewhat Cesc-shaped, and that may no longer be the optimal kind of player for this league and this team.
I can’t remember where I saw it but I read an article noting with excitement that when Xhaka was taken off we finally moved to the 4-3-3.
Partey as single pivot, ESR and Saka alongside, with Laca, Auba and Pepe up front – now that would be interesting.
I’d guess Arteta is reluctant to do that right now because we are still mentally fragile. But I did like that he took Xhaka off.
Thanks for raising the topic Tim, which was almost swept under our newfound love for Ødegaard (who was brilliant by the way). Partey seemed to address a longstanding concern of yours which is how slow and ponderous our passing generally is. It’s almost as if the player doesn’t trust his teammate to trap the ball well ( I think you mentioned Holding as an exception, placing firm passes). Partey’s willingness to make strong passes, particularly to the players on the right half of the pitch really stood out. And I don’t see another midfielder who does it as consistently ( or stylishly) as he does. He’s 2 signature passes- a beautiful flicked scoop and then, the grass-hugging, thunderous ball to someone who’s already tightly marked. A special player!
i have to take issue with the author of the site you linked. to be progressive, a pass has to go forward. no one calls a cutback or a cross a progressive pass. that means the 40% he touts just went down to roughly 25%. i understand the point he’s trying to make but you can’t lie about the data. with that, he’s not wrong. in order to score any goal, you have to play progressive passes at some point.
despite that disagreement with your analysis guy, i agree that partey is nice to see. bottom line, he’s a #8. too many arsenal midfielders from the emery era often play like a #6. xhaka, elneny, guendouzi, torreira, etc. all play passes to control the game, as that’s the job of the #6. the midfield was simply poorly assembled. the job of a #8 is to be that box-to-box guy who covers a lot of ground and truly supports the attack and prevent counters. emery froze out ramsey in favor of guendouzi and ceballos. the problem with ramsey is that he looked to get on the end of things and score goals in the box. that balance was always off as a #8 doesn’t typically get as high as ramsey often did, which left arsenal subject to counters…especially with xhaka being the lone #6. dani can play the 8 but he’s a step down to the older and more experienced partey. fyi, i’d buy him for £17 million.
despite partey being a breath of fresh air, most of the praise rightfully went to odegaard and lacazette. the most important quality is those guys made themselves available to recieve partey’s passes in traffic. likewise, they were able to WIN AND KEEP those balls that partey played. next, they also made their own progressive passes from the high-traffic areas. that brilliance can’t be ignored. finally, they’ve made moves that led to goals: clever runs, clean shots, deflected shots, fouls won, corners won, penalties won, good through balls, etc. they are the focal point of the team as they make arsenal’s attack dangerous. that’s what leads to goals and wins games.
i’ve made the point many times why lacazette should be playing center forward. i think it’s becoming easier to see now. arsenal’s attack simply look more dangerous when he plays. if he’d featured regularly, i believe arsenal would be at least ten points higher up the table. we can also see how good he is when he has someone who stays close to him like odegaard. it’s the difference between odegaard and ozil, who liked to drift. i’d love to see odegaard stay in north london but it’s so unlikely. we’ll see if arsenal can get lucky.
The paradox to your comment is that in order to part-fund an Odegaard purchase there is no question that we’d have to sell Lacazette.
You’re obviously very savvy on qualities required for a CF – do you think Martinelli could play there? Alternatively do you know much about Balogun (assuming we can keep him)?
I get what you’re saying. It’s the term used by nearly every football analytics team to describe these types of events. If you prefer, you could call them “attacking passes” and differentiate that from “progressive passes” which are more in line with what Partey offers (he does both, but attacking passes to a lesser extent).
perhaps i don’t really know what a progressive pass is. i certainly didn’t think a pullback would fall into that category. if all of the analytics guys are calling it “progressive”, i just need to alter my understanding of what it is.
Ok, so, I’m passing on my understanding of the definition but it’s just about moving the ball closer to the goal, 25% closer to be specific. With Crossing that’s pretty easy to see? But with dragbacks perhaps not? I can see it in my head because I see graphical pass maps but I get why it’s counter-intuitive. I agree with you, though, and think something like “attacking pass” would be a more intuitive description.
The more often you get the ball forward, then the more often you get the ball into attacking positions. It then follows the more likely you are to shoot at goal or create a chance. That means the more likely you are to score, which improves your chances of winning. At the end of the day, it’s not rocket science!
It should be noted that passing the ball in any direction usually requires the recipient to be in space ready to receive it. In particular, moving the ball forward is a two way thing. It is necessary for players to make themselves available. One of the shortcomings of the side, up until recently, has been a lack of movement. We’ve been far too static. The ability of players to find space must necessarily affect the number of times we make forward passes. Equally obvious.
That said, Partey did have a good game, although he does seem to fade.
The player who really impressed me was Lacazette. At the moment he is a shoo in for centre forward. He’s really responded well to this style of play.
At the other end of the scale is Auba, who on current form is hardly worth a place on the pitch. On UK TV they show the players warming up while Keown and Co witter on about something. PEA’s face is a picture. I can almost tell in advance what sort of game he is going to have just by looking at him. He’s got what my mother would have described as, “a face like a smacked bum”. Moody, sullen, sulky. “Officer material”? You must be joking! If I was Arteta, I would wait for him to get off the bus and look him straight in the eye. If I didn’t like what I saw, I’d put him back on the bus and send him home. It feels like his selection at the moment could be loosely described as “political”. God, I hope we have’t acquired yet another highly paid underachiever, who we feel obliged to play regardless.
Yet another painfully slow start to a football match. What is up with them? This month, we’ve had the rugby internationals, where England, Wales, Ireland etc play each other. Boy are those men psyched up! Watching them do the national anthems before the game, you can almost feel the adrenalin in the living room. They go at it, hammer and tongs, for 80 minutes. There’s not a single minute when they are not fully committed. Arsenal, unfortunately, are an entirely different story.