It should have been a moment to celebrate. This was the first home match with fans since COVID-19 struck back in March 2020. The stadium was bubbling with excitement. Folks were posting pictures of themselves in the stands all over social media. It was a carnival atmosphere at Arsenal.
And yet, despite the full stands, COVID was still there. Arsenal took to the field yesterday against Chelsea missing six players who might have started: Ødegaard, Gabriel, White, Bellerin, Lacazette, and Thomas Partey. In their place, Arsenal started Cedric Soares, Pablo Mari, Rob Holding, Gabriel Martinelli, and Albert Sambi Lokonga.
The match got off to a good start. A brilliant turn by Lokonga, a chip from Xhaka to Saka, and a knockdown for Smith Rowe’s first shot of the game. The crowd was cheering.
And another good bit of play from Lokonga, a long pass out to the rapacious Tierney who took a brilliant touch to settle the ball and struck a cross on the half volley. No one was there for the shot but it looked like Arsenal might be able to give as much as they were going to get.
But Chelsea settled the game. Romelu Lukaku reintroduced himself to English football, showing a new side of his game that few will have seen unless they spent time watching Serie A these last few seasons. Lukaku is no longer just a player who runs at defenses, he’s evolved his game into something of a basketball post-up style. He loves to get tight to a defender, box him out, and receive passes in the area close to the D. From there he can turn his man, have a shot, or ping back a simple pass to one of his teammates to create more space for himself. It’s a clever trick and one which many teams are going to have trouble defending.
But it wasn’t Lukaku’s low-post play which scored the opener. He did collect the ball and pass to a teammate but the entire left flank of Arsenal’s “defense” had gone to sleep and Reece James just walked down that side, passed across the goal coolly, and found a wide open Lukaku.
Assigning blame for what happened in that moment is a bit of a shell game because so many things had gone wrong. Saka didn’t track back, Tierney was covering as a CB instead of wide left, Xhaka joined the clump of players (not that he would have ever been able to get that far out), Pablo Mari went down easily looking for a foul by Lukaku, Rob Holding didn’t get to Lukaku in time, and Bernd Leno was unable to stop the cross. It was a masterclass in how not to play defense.
More than the goal, though, was how Arsenal played in the first thirty minutes. Apart from the two bright spots mentioned above, Chelsea toyed with Arsenal. It was frustrating to watch Arsenal “press” the ball, only to be opened up easily with a straight pass. Or see how Chelsea could just switch play to either wing and watch the Arsenal players chasing after shadows.
And time and again, Chelsea attacked down the Arsenal left where there was no one left to defend. It was so bad that even the commentators were making light of the situation, and Lee Dixon at one point said “Arsenal’s pressing is embarrassing” as Xhaka ran around like a headless chicken, 50 yards from the midfield. Xhaka would win just 3 of his 26 pressures on the day as the Chelsea midfield bypassed him almost like he wasn’t even there.
The phrase “unorganized grabasstic pieces of amphibian shit” comes to mind to describe that first 30 minutes of play by Arsenal. Players were running all over the place, surging from spot to spot as Chelsea just passed around them. If there’s a debate in the comments about what coaches do and what their role is that debate was silenced as we saw what a badly coached team can turn into.
Missing “nine” players as Arteta mentioned after the game is a convenient excuse. It will give his supporters some measure of comfort and they will continue to say that he hasn’t got the players to compete. Perhaps that’s true to a degree. Arsenal weren’t supposed to beat Chelsea yesterday: they have better players in many positions and a striker with 252 career goals.
But it wasn’t the losing that was the problem. It was the pitiful lack of defensive organization that was a problem – both of their goals came from the left side where Arsenal were starting their three most prized players: Bukayo Saka, Kieran Tierney and Granit Xhaka. It was the pathetic effort in the first half that was the problem – Pablo Mari falling over to try to draw a foul, Xhaka throwing himself into a tackle or running around aimlessly. And it was the downright insane game plan to get touch tight to Lukaku at all times that was the problem.
And what makes that first half so much worse is that Mikel Arteta fixed all of those problems in the 2nd half! As the 2nd half got underway, Arsenal were much more organized in their pressing, no more one-off pressures, and Chelsea struggled to get the ball forward. And Arsenal didn’t leave giant gaps on the pitch anymore. Players were very visibly covering for each other (Xhaka). And Pablo Mari dropped off Lukaku instead of letting himself get boxed out, making quite a few important interceptions and tackles. And the crowd responded, cheering the Arsenal on, urging them to get back into the game. Auba had a half chance, Holding had a chance, Saka had a shot deflected which drew a save from Mendy, and Smith Rowe got a shot off from a good area.
Whatever staffing problems Arsenal had in the first half, they didn’t seem to have in the 2nd. Whatever “lack of talent” Arsenal suffered in the first, they managed to muddle through in the 2nd. Arsenal weren’t great in the 2nd half and the talent levels were clearly below that of Chelsea but we kept a clean sheet and managed 4 shots. So what happened, then?
What happened was that the first 30 minutes was squarely on Arteta. Defensive organization is one thing that a coach has control over and it was Arsenal’s strength last season, this season that has evaporated. A lot of us gave Arteta credit for taking Arsenal’s leaky defense and plugging the holes. It wasn’t beautiful to watch at times but at least we were a solid team, no matter who played. Of course it’s not Arteta’s fault that Pablo Mari fell over like a terrified little child but it is Arteta’s fault that the entire left side of the Arsenal was exposed multiple times in the game. The tactical game-plan was also on Arteta; playing touch tight on Lukaku, getting Tierney forward for every possession, the sheer lack of creativity in our attacks. Thomas Tuchel would have seen that Tierney was Arsenal’s main threat and perhaps he’d even invited him forward, knowing that his side would be able to exploit the Arsenal defensive line. Tuchel also would have seen the video from the week before, where Ben White was left spinning around wondering where he was supposed to be standing and Tuchel would know that Arsenal’s problems at the moment are a clear lack of structure at the back.
Nearly every single cross caused Arsenal players trouble and made us look like children playing bumbleball. But these aren’t children, Cedric Soares is 29, Rob Holding has played 148 professional matches, Pablo Mari has hundreds of matches under his belt, Kieran Teirney is widely considered one of the best left backs in the League, and Granit Xhaka is so well thought of at Arsenal they just handed him a pay raise and contract extension.
If this was just a one-off I wouldn’t be concerned. But this is two weeks in a row now, which follows from some pretty poor play in pre-season as well. Maybe Arteta’s system will suddenly gel when he gets all the perfect players back, but then that begs the question: what happens when the next person gets COVID? Do we go back to playing like we did in the first half? And why were we so much better in the 2nd half? Why were the effort levels higher? Why were we more organized? I don’t know, folks, it feels to me like this wasn’t about the players but more about the coach. At some point, we really have to start wondering if Mikel Arteta is actually a good coach or just a good talker.
And at the end of the match the fans let him know. Jeers rained down on Arsenal. What should have been a good day for all of those Arsenal fans turned out to be quite a bad day at the office.
One last word on the referees. I don’t like complaining about the refs because the laws of the game are subjective, so much so that when it comes to a foul it’s almost “whatever the referee calls is always right.” But the new interpretation of the laws has added a huge element of chaos to the game by making it more difficult (supposedly) to win a penalty. We’ve been told that referees are no longer going to award pens for slight contact in the box, and especially not going to award pens for when a player falls over before the contact and sticks a leg out to draw contact, and I’m ok with that. However, I’m not seeing that applied quite yet.
Earlier in the day, Dele Alli won a pen for literally sticking his leg out to draw contact as he was going down. Then on the other end of the pitch the same ref refused a pen when there was clear contact. And our very own Bukayo Saka should have had a pen against Chelsea when he was clearly taken out by James. I’m ok with refs not giving pens for diving and slight contact or accidental contact but Reece James literally just tackled Saka in the box and no pen was awarded. Look, I’m not a conspiracy theorist when it comes to refereeing but it is awful frustrating when my club isn’t awarded a pen for what looks like a clear foul and I was under the impression that tripping a player was a foul. When I played it was. So, I guess I’m just saying that I understand your frustrations. Not much we can do about it, however, and the best solution is to play better football. Because that’s the thing that we can control.
Supposedly.
What is happening is arsenal are trying to push high up the pitch and press.
Our CBs are both slow and too scared to engage high up so they naturally like to drop deep. This makes the shape vertically stretched. Which means there is space b/w the lines. Xhaka is immobile and Lokonga has zero defensive awareness.
So it was tough for them to cover pretty huge amount of space.
We will have growing pains as Arteta tries to encourage the CBs to push up and keep a high defensive line.
You may have noticed that Chelsea created quality chances but they didn’t sustain pressure in our final third for a long time.
This should indicate a different defensive approach than last season.
Now specific to this game,
In the Chelsea’s build up phase, they build with 3-2 shape – 5 players.
Arsenal pressed their 3 CBs with 3 forwards but ESR was overloaded with 2 CMs.
Hence either xhaka or Lokonga pushed up to ensure Chelsea don’t have a free man and play out.
At that time,both havertz and Mount dropped as wide #10s into their respective half spaces to create overloads out wide. It was 3v2 overloads out wide, Chelsea progressed through that,as arsenal shifted to match the numbers, Chelsea switched to the underloaded side where the FB was overloaded with the wide #10 and the WB.(Generally Chelsea build through the left and switched to the right,where Tierney was left 2v1 vs mount and James)
From there,crosses came into the box for Lukaku to contest.
This was a tactical error.
To make sure Chelsea didn’t have a free man in build up, arsenal needed to play back 3.
Front 3 Pressing their 3 CBs
2 CMs zonally marking their 2 CMs
Our WBs Pressing their WBs.
Basically what Arteta himself did at the Stamford bridge.
Ultimately Chelsea beat arsenal with Arteta’s style of play.
Overload in the build up, build through the thirds via wide overloads+ switch to create cutbacks/crosses into the box is Arteta’s favoured style of play.
As Arteta slowly builds this squad, arsenal will look kind of like how Chelsea currently do.
Arteta is a superb coach,it will become obvious as his career advances but he made a mistake today.
All of that is well and fine but we conceded two goals not because of overloads and formation but because our players left an entire side of the pitch uncovered for 45 minutes. And if you’re trying to say that we are supposedly playing high up the pitch we spent a huge amount of time in the low block, which again doesn’t fit with your description. And none of this explains the atrocious pressing, with individuals running around and dragging their own team out of shape. It wasn’t so much the formation as it was a LACK of formation on the Arsenal side which killed us.
And frankly, I disagree that Arteta is a superb coach.
Arteta may become a great coach one day, but it won’t be anytime soon and most likely not at AFC.
Honestly, if he was at Tottenham I’d be begging them to keep him and laughing at their performances.
Felt like this one was on Arteta. The squad is clearly below Chelsea standard, but I really don’t see how Arteta is anywhere close to getting the best from this team. Our chances against City look bleak, but the Norwich game is going to be a big one. It’s becoming harder and harder to really care about this Arsenal team.
On the bright side, Lokonga looks like a proper footballer. So much more positive on the ball than El Neny. A Lokonga/Partey midfield could be very interesting.
I thought we’d play a back three. Indeed, match summariser Gary Neville said that was the plan until the withdrawals, particularly of White. Im not the tactics guy that Tim is to say what difference it would have made to how Chelsea set up, but it’d have been interesting to see. I’m going to guess that the defensive doziness/confusion was down to practising that way during the week, and going with a different formation on match day. That’s a guess.
Penalties are so subjective. I felt in real time it was definite; and on the replay that Bukayo went down too easily. Im not going to quarrel about this, though. I wasn’t the one feeling the pressure.
One thing puzzled me. Even a clearly half-fit Auba looked lively through the middle, but Arteta subbed on Balogun centrally and moved Auba left. To me, one of the coach’s weak points is his tactical substitutions.
I don’t like booing the team, and certainly not on home opening day. I dont think there’s any justification for that, ever. Let rip against the team in front of your TV… cheer them, lift them, in the stadium. The price of your season ticket is nota good reason. That is the entitled behaviour.
Gooners keep talking about the City game, but should worry more about the West Brom game on Wednesday in the Carabao. They’re going to throw everything at our defence.
Claude, I watched a slo-mo of the non-call on Saka– then a screen cap of the frame prior to any contact of either Saka or James’ legs. Saka was goalside. James slightly behind and at an angle.
First contact was James forearm to Saka’s ribs. The screen-cap shows James following through with the shove– before any other contact was made. Understand how referee Paul Tierney could have missed it in realtime. But the VAR Chris Kavanaugh has better equipment than I do– and there was a stoppage long enough to have asked Tierney to review it on the sideline monitor. That’s just poor decision-making by a VAR. What else is he there for?
My links don’t often make it through the spam filter– but here’s the screen-cap if interested:
http://jw1.com/png/sakanoncall.png
Maybe Arsenal didn’t play well enough otherwise to deserve a result. But a PEN given there– and a goal from it– maybe changes the complexion of the match. That’s how teams that aren’t at the same level as that day’s opponent– sometimes steal a result. That wave off by referee Paul Tierney and the VAR failing to ask Tierney to review it– sealed the match points for Chelsea in the 41st minute.
Fair enough, JW.
My favourite sport is cricket. And the video umpires are not shy about overturning on-field mistakes (the tech is more empirical than subjective, but still…)
Refs act like they belong to a union. They almost never reverse bad calls. And they proudly, unabashedly say so.
btw, I laughed out loud when the ref blew for a foul, when Sambi held a Chelsea player on an Arsenal corner. It was nowhere near the level of impediment that Leno was subjected to by the Brentford player. This isnt conspiracy talk… this is just saying that EPL refs are wildly inconsistent. The sort of shove by a defender on an attacker that James did on Saka wouldve been a FK the other way.
Agree, in slo-mo, that looked a pretty clear pen, certainly enough to overturn the on-field call. Hard to say if it would have shifted the match. Chelsea always looked pretty comfortable.
Not sure about the yellow on Holding either. While he looked pretty out of control, he didn’t appear to make much contact. Seems like a lot going against us.
Did have a laugh about the … a FK the other way. 😄
PGMOL. Professional Game Match Officials Limited.
Seems more than a union by that description. Like a privately held company.
Will say this about tech being used to good end in US professional sports. No one cares if a ref got one wrong– because it’s rare anymore when it isn’t overturned correctly.
Now, baseball is one US pro sport I still follow. And the calling of balls and strikes is still subjective. Still unable to be challenged or overturned. Here’s where I favor the idea of robotic umpires. They’re still in testing in the pro minor leagues and results are a bit mixed. There are still certain types of breaking pitches that fool robots.
Maybe we need robotic VARs to rid the English game of these inconsistencies?
A pen for me all day every day and twice on Sunday.
James alters his path and runs into Saka , which one of the replay angles clearly shows.
PGMO have finally cracked it……all these years people called them incompetent and for a good reason, so now they decided to muddy the waters enough that any blown call can be interpreted as a conscious decision to let the game flow.
Brilliant!
About yesterday:
Chelsea in full force with a new terminator, us with a young side missing key players. The result was never in doubt. Not sure how anyone could think we’d get anything from the game or that Lukaku isn’t an elite striker.
Yes Arteta could have played a back five. And he really should have made earlier adjustments that saw us exposed time and again on Tierney’s patch (did he have a game to forget), but we’d have still succumbed. We were missing most of the team’s spine, haven’t addressed our lack of goal scoring creation and are over reliant on the youngsters for a bit of magic.
Tierney was clearly identified ad a weakness as he’s our get forward guy. A back five wouldn’t have had this problem but we pressed narrow and they went wide. There was a point when Arteta was barking instructions at ESR about pressing. Frankly our press was weak and Xhaka was so far away from his pivot you have to wonder what happens on the training ground.
Tuchel’s Chelsea are a highly effective defensive and offensive unit. It just goes to show what a capable organiser and tactician can achieve. Remember Tuchel took over on January 26 (matchday 20) when Chelsea and Arsenal were 8th and 9th respectively on 30 points. Just let that sink in. They won last season’s Champions League, qualified for this season’s Champions League and are heavily favoured to compete for this season’s EPL title. Yes the Chelsea squad has a higher ceiling but the trajectory of the two clubs since could not be more stark. Tuchel deserves an enormous amount of credit for that. Arteta on the other hand continues to under perform.
Looking to the next match:
WBA are 2nd in the Championship under Ismael who I tipped last season for bigger things. He’s a great organiser and motivator. WBA will be hard pressing and very direct. At Barnsley last season they were arguably the most durect side in the Championship. We could well lose. I hope not as this team needs confidence. Arsenal could do much worse than look at Ismael (and a whole heap of managers for that matter).
Finally, did you watch Bissouma? How we prioritised other signings over a baller midfielder is beyond me. Xhaka will always hold this team back (and we keep rejecting opportunities to sell him). And I’ll say it now, Partey is not the answer. He has the physique and technique but his fitness has been poor and he’s not a leader. He worked well at Atleti where Saul was the organiser. We desperately need someone to run midfield and knit defence and attack and lead. Until that happens we’ll continue to struggle.
Yeah, Saul is world class (whatever that means).
Mateo Kovacic was excellent first half, till we adjusted after the break. But it wasnt hard to look good. His lofted pass found James in acres on our left. Mari’s man marking of Lukaku was weak, but Tierney and Saka left James free. Would we leave the left free again? You betcha, as the great Sarah Palin would say.
Tough return for Saka. He’d also lost his man for Brentford’s second goal the week before. Again, Im not a big time tactics guy, but there seems to be confusion about defensive role-playing.
Partey? I don’t doubt his game or his quality. He looked much more offensive minded for us in pre-season. It’s his frequent injuries that worry me.
The challenge with Chelsea used to be neutralise their playmaker Jorginho and you stood a chance which in fairness to Arteta he did well last season.. Now you have to neuter Kovacic as well. Tuchel is a smart cookie.
There were positives yesterday. Leno kept the score respectable. He’s an alpha male and will want to set the tone for young Ramsdale.
ESR always delivers. He desperately needs Saka back at his best, MO as an outlet and Auba and Laca’s runs. Bless Pepe but he just doesn’t have the smarts. And Martinelli needs to learn to look up.
Lokonga has skills. With the right partner he looks like a player.
Team needs a win for morale.
“We were missing most of the team’s spine,…”
Arsenal have a spine?
We are the invertebrates of big clubs and Arteta’s constant “coaching” from the touch line only further weakens whatever imitation of a backbone we might have.
I do give Arteta a bit of a break relative to the absences. Injuries and COVID are not in his control and they made what would have been a tough match against Chelsea a real longshot.
But some of the other choices are definitely down to him. Not sure what the deal was with Soares instead of Chambers. Chambers wasn’t great last week, but surely would have been a better option.
And we could have played a back three with either Chambers or Tierney. Against Lukaku, I’d have thought that would have been more likely, not less, with White out.
Also not sure why Xhaka was the designated first press point. I get it, he has a good engine, and can run a lot, but he’s not quick, and once he’s bypassed doesn’t have the speed to recover. If you’re going to have a midfielder do this, someone like Torriera would have been a better choice.
On the positive front, Lokonga and Tavares both look like good players and good values.
Pretty much spot on, Tim. The game was crying out for 3 centre halves and two wingbacks. I’d have played Tavares from the start. He’d have filled the space that Reece James was taking up, which would have at least given us a dog’s chance.
I could see what was going wrong. You could see what was going wrong. There are undiscovered tribes in Papua New Guinea who could see what was going wrong. How come Arteta didn’t or couldn’t fix things. Two nil down against Chelsea and it’s much too late.
Watching Mari get taken to the cleaners by Lukaku brought back memories of Didier Drogba wiping the floor with Phillipe Senderos. I bet he still wakes up in a cold sweat.
Thanks for another great post Tim. Chelsea showed last season in the PL and especially in the CL run that they were one of the best defensive teams in Europe. They kept clean sheet after clean sheet against the best teams in Europe last season. Realistically I don’t think we had much chance to score. I am not a tactics guy but I know if we keep conceding 2 goals per game we are going to end up in the bottom 1/3 of the table. We don’t have near enough firepower to compensate for a leaky defense. I think Emery was sacked because he could not fix the defense and Arteta will get sacked also if we continue to concede goals at anything close to this rate.
Well, I think if I were to predict a score for the match against Man City it would be 2-0 to City
Tim. You may well be right. Scoring against City is not going to be much easier then it was against Chelsea. I am hoping we play better defense in that game.
Is it just me or did the club take down the Ramsdale piece Claude brought up on the last blog that was critical of Leno’s distribution? I was reading through the comments on the previous post & noticed access is now denied. Seems they realized the error of their ways…
https://www.arsenal.com/news/what-ramsdale-will-bring-arsenal
Looks like it. All the other tactics/analyst content is accessible (including from the excellent video analyst Adrian Clarke)
Wait, Arsenal no longer provide scouting tips on their own players’ shortcomings for the rest of the league to take advantage of?
Since he took over Arteta has done a good job of organizing the defense and improving our ability to prevent the opposition from scoring. It seems unlikely to me that he would suddenly forget how to organize the defense or have the team prepared to play solid defense. Additionally the fact that something changed at half time suggests the players refocused rather then making some major tactical change. To me that suggests the issue is probably the players have had a couple bad games. We saw a short run of bad form on the defensive end last season and hopefully this is the same thing.
Attacking and scoring goals requires talented players, however, playing solid defense does not require great talent but it does require players to focus and be willing to stay committed and organized. Emery was a an experienced manager who has been mostly successful over the course of his career. Emery clearly was not stupid and he understands how to organize a defense but he could not get the players to focus. If Arteta can’t get the players to do their job and focus on the defensive end then all of the coaching intelligence in the world can’t help he will probably end up getting sacked just like Emery
West Ham picking up where they left of last season and torched Leicester today. They are top of the table and leading the league in goals scored after 2 games. David Moyes is a fine manager but he never struck me as someone who is a great attack minded tactical manager or has an over developed ability to improve players. I don’t follow West Ham closely and they fly under the radar for most fans but I think they have put together a better squad then most people are willing to give them credit for. The league is a lot more competitive now then it was 5 years ago especially in the top 1/2 of the table. The fact that teams like West Ham and Leicester have a lot more resources and can compete for signing good players is a big difference compared with all of those years when we were finishing top 4 every year.
60 games in people claim that Arteta needs more time. Possibly 1-5 through the first 6 games. League will be toast, and possibly a cup run, first time losing first three games to start the season-ever.
Still need Bissouma, but with continue with Xhaka, no chance creation and 50 goals max this season.
stan the maN in charge of this $h*te show, and will AFC will continue to decline everywhere…
I really do not think Arteta has improved Arsenal defensively AT ALL. I feel people are looking for something to compliment him on, but it is not true. Yes the stats say we have a lower XG now, less goals conceded and etc, but that should only apply “ceteris paribus”.
“Ceteris paribus” is a Latin phrase we use a lot in economics which means “all other things remaining constant”. It acts as a shorthand indication of the effect of one economic variable on another, provided all other variables remain the same.
The unfortunate thing for Arteta is that his time at Arsenal and his coaching (the variable in question) has shown major positive effects on the defensive stats, but also a similar/proportional negative effect on the attacking stats. I say this because an improvement should be relative to keeping the attack where it was or improving on it as well. To me, all Arteta did was make Arsenal more defensive, which for any team playing football, would happen if you take away focus from the attack. It’s not an improvement, it’s a refocus/realignment of priorities.
It is usually said that how you defend should determine how you attack, and how you attack should determine how you defend. Under Pep, Barcelon consistently had the best defensive and attacking numbers in La Liga and he is doing something similar at City as well. This is not done by a mismatch in his approaches to defending and attacking. His side’s pressing, it’s triggers, the traps and the positioning are dictated by not only stopping the opposition from causing danger, but also by positioning in prime areas to punish the opposition when you do win possession back. When they attack, they also position themselves in such a way that they can maximise their attacking threat, while being in position to transition into the best defensive shape as quickly as possible. Klopps Liverpool are the best example though, they used their aggressive press by the central midfield not only to defend but as an attacking weapon too. They counter pressed to create chances and they would often attacking in areas where a counter press was ready to be sprung if the ball was lost.
I learned that as a team, you can never completely stop your opposition from scoring against you, but you can dictate to the opposition the type of danger they can pose to your side. Liverpool and City mostly concede similar goals, which are counter attacks, spectacular goals and set pieces. This does not mean that they are bad at defending those, because they concede them in lower numbers th a everyone else, It is because that is the only threat that can be exploited against their tactical setup. Arsenal used to be similar under Arsene. There would be comp,aunts about how we were weak on the counter and at set pieces, but at the end of the season we were always one of the best defences around in terms of goals conceded.
Now, I understand the fixation with organisation at the back and how we were exposed time and time again, it is completely valid in the context of a single game, but for the duration of Mikel’s time here, we have had no plan that aligns our attack to be maximised by our defending and vice-versa. Every way we play does not align with our play on the other side of the ball, for example:
1. We sit deep to defend, but try to play out from the back – that is a recipe for slow football, which is predictable and allows teams to attack us with full confidence and more players, knowing that even I they lose the ball, they can get back to cover.
2. Put up a high line without an organised press – another delicious recipe for teams to counter against us, especially with our fullbacks so high up, and the wide channels open for the lacy dribbled of the EPL. We give teams numerical and technical overloads in wide areas with our press, a single ball behind, to the head or feet of a capable forward causes us more danger than it should.
3. We play possession football, but with players having to stay disciplined positionally (but aggressively positioned though) – recipe for predictability and for the opposition to create traps for us where they can send us into culdesacs, win the ball and attack a team that is stretched due to its positional possession play and high line.
To improve should be to add to what is already there. He has taken away as many goals for us as he has allowed us to keep out. That is not improvement, it’s a shift in priorities. Arteta’s coaching has not been shown to be of any good standard in his time here. Not at all. It is the reason he will not fix the attack as most are hoping he does. It is not something to figure out or stumble across. A good attack is backed up by a complementary defensive structure, and a good defence is backed up by complementary attacking structure. These are not things a coach stumbles upon or figures out. It is a process, it takes time, it’s a trial and error thing, it is something that requires humility, it requires a coach who is willing to learn and not held back by his own arrogance, it is a a deliberate act of seeking out ways to not only play football your way, but to also be open to learning from different players about how that football can be implemented and made effective.
If the defensive plan is not a thought out and deliberate way of playing, but just a way to improve the stats, then trying to attack more will expose us BADLY! That is what will be the end for Mikel. He can only revert to turtling up because any time he opens up his side to attack more, this “defensive improvement” will be shown for what is, just stat packing.
My prediction is still that he will be out by November.
I say all of the above as a guy who has been working on a 4222-structure/Wengerball philosophytactical setup for the past seven years. And because I mostly work with youth players, youcan’t sign and have to then learn how to get your tactical setup to work with various types of young players who graduate to your side every year.
Fast forwards, big center forwards, dribblers, poachers,false-nines, and those are just the various strikers you encounter, and you have to let them show you how your setuo can be improved by what they bring to the table, as well as covering the responsibilities you set out for them.
Sometimes you get a graduating class of short and fast center backs, or big and slow center backs. What do you do? You learn how they can function in yourtactical setup.
In the same way that Henry, Wright, Kanu, Adebayor, Van Persie, Giroud, Anelka, Walcott, Sanchez, etc were all strikers in Arsene’s sides, but the football never really changed.
Both sides of the ball were aligned, and any personnel changes did call for changes in the tactical setup, but it never changed the overall approach. The team still kept its way of defending and attacking.
Back three, four, midfield two, three, front two,three…
It all didn’t matter. Balance was key and the plan was still the same, no matter who was on the pitch. The same way that Pep’s sides will play the same philosophy, even if he goes with a back three. Klopps side would play the same philosophy even if they switched to a back three.
Our Arsenal side in the Chelsea game, even with our missing playersback and using a back three, we still didn’t show what our identity as a side on both sides of the ball is. Nothing complimented the other, and partnerships (which are built primarily through tactical means rather than just knowing each other) were completely missing.
Without an idea of how to align and sometimes compromise on certain things, Mikel will never find balance. Especially if he “already knows” what he wants, even though he has never coached before. His defensive structure is small team football. No top side uses that because it is not a viable approach if you want to score goals and win as many games as possible.
Great comment, Dev.
Just wondering since Sunday if time is a circle….
Wasn’t too long ago we had a youth project under Wenger and the big criticism was the lack of leadership on the pitch. Wenger would counter that leadership was a collective endeavor, but we knew it wasn’t.
I am in strongly in favor of the youth movement, the recruiting trends this summer, but am also kind of coming around to the idea that we lack that senior winner on the pitch to help make the mid-game adjustments and to be an ally for Arteta in the locker room.
Xhaka, Auba, Laca, Partey… are these guys leaders? The kinds that will organize teammates on the pitch, have a word in the locker room and have the gravitas that will make young players listen?
For all of Luiz’s faults, he had won a lot of big things and (not that I’m arguing we should have brought him back, God no) I feel like Luiz might have helped a lot on Sunday. He did a lot of talking out on the pitch and when he was in form, he knew how to battle. Might he have recognized problems on the left flank before Arteta could make adjustments at half time?
Chelsea and City have very strong coaches, and the on-field leadership need is reduced (but they have players like Fernandinho and Jorginho), however look at Liverpool and the quantum leap they took when they added van Dijk to Henderson and Milner.
Tierney should be captain, but he’s young, hasn’t won much and is chronically injured.
I have a feeling our recruitment is finished and all we will see is exits now (might be addition by subtraction), but I would say we’re heading straight back into an era where we start wondering where is the leadership amongst the players. If it’s not there then the coach has to be a much more dominant personality – not a micromanager, but a proven winner who drags teams to better results.
I think it’s not just that we lack leaders, I think Arteta also actively crushes anyone who would veer from his gameplan. He’s such an absurdly immature coach.
For example, what would have happened on Sunday if Mari had screamed at Xhaka to help him out with Lukaku? Obviously we don’t know but I can guess a few things: 1) Mari would have been reprimanded. 2) Xhaka probably wouldn’t have helped him (unless Arteta said it was ok) and if he had, he would have been reprimanded also.
It’s telling that Xhaka was the captain on Sunday and his ideas of “geeing up” the crew were to 1) run around chasing after pressure like a nimrod 2) put in absurd two=footed tackles (which thankfully missed) and 3) hide on the right side for half the game so that Lokonga could take the blame.
Xhaka is not my idea of a leader. Although we hear he’s popular in the dressing room, popularity does not equate to leadership. Same with Auba. Laca seems to have an air of frustration about him. I don’t think strikers can ‘lead” a team anyway. Partey is too quiet, and again, not an iron man, he seems injured more often than not.
I don’t know the solution. I doubt if it’s Trippier, who’s a year older than Cedric, but maybe that’s why there are rumors we’re interested in him, bring in some senior leadership with a more expressive personality. Since we seem to be sending Willian to Corinthians on a free, the brass must think we have capacity for another 30+ player.
Trippier would be a disaster.
Atleti want £34m
He doesn’t even want to join us
He’s 31 next month
My money is on Willian still being an Arsenal player on September 1st. No club in Brazil can pay his Arsenal wages, and I doubt very much that he would want to voluntarily make himself less rich.
What a stupid decision the award of that contract was. Six figures a week for 3 years to a 32 year old.
Claude
I agree about Willian. I was never a big fan of the move but I understood why they did it. He had just finished the best season in his career. I had not looked at the numbers until relatively recently and at the time we made that move I had no idea just how much of a significant majority of attacking players start their career ending drop off in the age 31-32 range and knowing that data makes the decision to give him that contract really stupid.
Devlin
I understand where you are going with your analysis but the thing you did not take into account is the quality of the players a manager has to work with markedly influences his ability to play with a specific style in a consistently effective manner. You can’t score a lot of goals no matter which style you play if you don’t have players who are good at scoring and the inability to score goals makes any team look “unbalanced”. The examples you give of Pep, Klopp and Arsene all had significantly more talented players to work with. If you want to blame Arteta for not doing a better job of acquiring the attacking talent he needs then I will agree with you.
Bill
Of course Liverpool, City and Chelsea have far better players.
However.
We still manage to get outplayed by Brentford?
Last season, we looked decidedly average against West Ham, Crystal Palace and even Brighton. Do their player’s names roll off the tongue? The list goes on and on. Wolverhampton is hardly an economic powerhouse. Neither is Leicester.
How do you begin to explain any of that?
This is not true. We beat Brighton home and away. We got 4 points and 3 points against Crystal Palace and Westham respectively. No need to bend the truth to fit a narrative.
Bad examples then. There are plenty of others I maybe should have chosen. It doesn’t get away from the fact that we don’t look particularly convincing against many teams with vastly reduced resources.
Early days obviously, but it shouldn’t remain unnoticed that both Brighton and West Ham are currently in the top 4 and Arsenal in the relegation zone!
Like it or not we have mid table attacking talent. Top of the table teams such as Pep’s play their way every game because they have significantly more talent and know they can force their game plan on almost anyone they face. Pep’s and Arsene’s struggles over the years in the CL are evidence that trying to force their style on other teams that have close to equal talent does not work nearly as well. Mid table teams like ours do not have that luxury of dictating how they are going to play in every game.
Uhm Bill,
I was going to reply to your assertions but I just…
There are so many things that I could say to your points, counter arguments and the like, a clear analysis of what the ACTUAL midtable sides are doing right now, but…
I just don’t think there is anything I could say which will not be retorted with “our players are not good enough quality and we do not have a good finisher”.
So… uhm… yeah
This is a project that is going to take time, says the manager.
Unwilling to commit before the Brentford game that it was time to deliver, basically saying our capacity doesn’t match the expectations, but of course this doesn’t apply to his capacity.
He lacks the humility and honesty for us to improve. We may see more transfer movement, but this manager is an extremely mouthy albatross around our necks.
Yes, I’m annoyed.
Devlin’s fantastic comment reminded me of when Emery said the plan is to reduce the attack to increase the defense (or was it the other way round?)
I looked at pre-season and predicted that’s what Arteta intends to do. He knows we need more shots. His solution is to win the ball back higher and catch the team out because he cannot coach us to play through a set defense. But in doing so he will leave the defense worse, and players like Ben White are meant to bring the speed and anticipation to cover. I also predicted when (not if) we start conceding more goals, this pressing will be abandoned in favour of a low block again.
We play like what used to be called minnows. That’s our outlook. Except, we aren’t good at set pieces, nor even really at the counter attack. We’re such a weird mess.
Devlin
The examples you gave of teams who play their style and have a good balance of attack vs defense were Pep’s Barcelona squad which is probably one of the most talented teams in this century, Klopp’s Liverpool which won the league in a stroll and won the CL and Arsene’s teams which were top 4 talented teams. Those teams are not comparable to the squad we have now. Last season I think this Arsenal squad finished with 6 wins in a row and I think had more ball possession and shots then our opponents in every except the one against Chelsea. We had a plan and we were able to execute it against teams lower in the table. We dominated the teams in the Europa league until Villarreal. Against Brentford we have 65% of the ball possession and had 22 shots vs their 8. We lost because we did not have anyone to score a goal and we conceded 2 stupid goals. However, we have not been able to execute our plan against the better teams in our league or against Villarreal. How often do you see a mid table team go against Pep’s Man City or Pep’s Barcelona or Chelsea or Liverpool or Fergies ManU or Arsene invincible team and execute their own balanced game plan successfully? Football does not work that way.
villareal does not have better players than arsenal and neither does brentford. however, both of those teams executed a game plan given to them by their coach that gave them the best chance to win. that’s the job of the manager; to prepare the players he has to go out and win games, not to snivel and whine about the players he doesn’t have. arsenal could still be playing those games against inferior players and would still lose.
no one is interested in the excuses of a manager with the resources of a club like arsenal. you’re the only one making excuses for this dude. to say that no other manager could get more from this team is absurd. wenger did it for two decades. there’s tons of talent available at arsenal. what’s disgraceful is arteta’s inability to get consistently good performances from exceptionally gifted players.
Bill, I think you are confused by the term style. It does not mean stylish, it means the way you choose to play. It could be eye catching or it could mean sitting back. Both qualify as style. But they both need an attack and defence that allows them to maximise what they do on the pitch, on both sides of the ball. My comment on balance isn’t based on the best sides only, but since those are the ones that most people watch, they are the ones I have used.
But if you like, I can tell you how Burnley’s way of defending is aligned with how they attack. To be honest, I could use Swansea City AFC under Michael Laudrup, Wolves under Nino, Stoke under Pulis, Bolton under Owen Coyle, Bournemouth under Howe, Leeds under Bielsa, Norwich under Farke.
It’s basic things like, if you are a team that sits back defensively, it makes sense to counter attack and use set pieces as your way of attacking. And when defending, you could leave a man or two up top to release whenever you win the ball back. If you are a side that wants to dominate possession, you can compress the pitch in the opposition half so that you are in the best position to deny the opposition space to pass out when they win the ball. This is done by trying to create overloads, especially in wide areas, which means when the ball is lost, you have a 3v2/2v1 to press the opposition. These are not technical qualities I am speaking about, these are the structures that allow quality players to make a difference with their abilities, but also provides a basis for the rest to be as effective as they possibly can be. As Brentford showed us. We lost to players who had a great platform, on both sides of the ball, to use their limited abilities to beat Arsenal.
Balance does not mean you win the League, but it is the platform for every successful side, EVER. Whether that success is winning trophies, qualifying for Europe, gaining safety, winning promotion, and everything else in between.
Every sides’ way of defending lends to how they attack, and how they attack lends to how they defend. It’s not a technical thing, it’s not a personnel thing, it’s a tactical thing. It applies at every level of football. Amateur, development, semi-professional and professional. It’s not an option a team can do without if they have objectives to hit because it is the tactical foundation for what ever you are planning to do. It’s about deciding what you want to be, based on what you have and what you can get, then you come up with the best way possible to achieve your objectives.
In Argentina, there was a very intelligent man who came uo with a way to build your football philosophy. He is one of Marcelo Bielsa’s biggest influences, who then went in to influence more managers/coaches than anyone , and that man was 2011 Copa America winning coach, Oscar Tabarez, who revolutionised the Urugauyan youth system that has led to the flurry of talent in Europe.
What Tabarez did was divide the tactical states of football into four, which should all lead into the next. These states are,
1. Defence
2. Transition from defend to attack
3. Attack
4. Transition from attack to defence
These four should be planned for and should align based on each other. A side that knows what their coach asks of them in each state will not only play with more confidence, they will have more options, they will not panic, they will be able to hold each other accountable and most importantly, without knowing what to do in these states, the team can’t succeed.
So an example with Burnley should do.
1. Sit back, stay compact, keep the opposition in front of you, force them outwide to put in crosses and stay focused for 90 minutes.
2. The two man up top drift with the ball from whatever side it is in so that when it is won, they can have an option down the line and one centrally to hold up the ball. The wingers track back, while the winger on the opposite side almost moves into the CAM role to support the strikers when the ball is won. When it is won, a long ball is the first option, but winning a set piece is a big way to transition to attack. (They dive a lot).
3. Use the strikers to bully the defenders and play through the pacy wide men who can come inside and shoot and also get to the by line, beat a man and send in a high cross for the two big men up top. It is also good if they get out wide and kick the ball against the opposition to win corners or just plainly dive.
4. In attack they push up as a unit but maintain their default shape of 442 so that they can compress the pitch quickly if the ball is lost, so as to either win the ball back or use a tactical foul to give their teammates enough time to get back into their default defensive shape.
If you play possessionfootball and don’t press? Those don’t align and won’t give you balance. If you sit back but don’t counter and instead play out,? Those don’t align and won’t give you balance. If you play possession football, slow build up and without positional rotation? Those don’t align and won’t give you balance.
Phew!
I hope that all made sense.
good comments here. i really appreciate devlin’s comments criticizing arteta’s lack of humility and willingness to learn. arteta thinks he has all the answers of how the game should be played but there are many questions presenting that he has never even considered. instead of solving those problems, he’s making excuses or trying to talk around the problems.
likewise, instead of enlisting help of these new problems from senior players, arteta often disrespected them, treating the same as junior guys and sometimes worse. arsenal had players with tons of experience and silverware that could have helped him but he minimized them, instead endeavoring to micro-manage things from the touch as if only he had all the answers. as an fng manager with no pedigree, he came in with his “non-negotiables”. how can he come in make demands when he has no experience winning as a coach or even as a player?
arteta tries to manage the game from the touchline the same way he did as a player but you can’t do that. as a senior player, i was a big mouth, always barking out information to team mates during the game. however, as a manger, i had to learn to do all of my barking during training. he really won the lottery getting the arsenal job but he’s not cut out for it.
when i consider sean mcvay, he’s a very young head coach in the nfl for the la rams. i believe the kroenkes wanted to recreate a similar vibe with a young head coach. the difference is mcvay has been coaching since he finished college, meaning he has experience. arteta does not. brendan rodgers fits a similar profile as he began coaching at 19 or 20-years old….when he developed injuries meaning he couldn’t play anymore. it’s not just that these guys were young, but they were very experienced and made their mistakes at the lower level.
arteta’s in the hot seat. generally, i’d feel empathy. however, his lack of humility means i can’t feel for him.
jack, i loved your post as well.
ugh, just read that atletico madrid have signed matheus cunha from hertha berlin. i really wanted that kid at arsenal…potential lacazette replacement.