I woke up this morning and after a few minutes mucking around on twitter I remembered that Arsenal play tomorrow and felt a little tinge of excitement. It turns out that the international breaks are good for more than just injuring Arsenal players, they can also make me (briefly) excited about Arsenal again. Though, I will be specific here and say it was an excitement about the idea that we are playing football and about playing football only, not anything to do with the club or the hierarchy.
Almost before that feeling of anticipation had subsided, however, I asked myself “I wonder how Norwich play this year? Is this going to be a good game?” And then the doubts “surely we are going to win this, right?” I think this is what Philippe Auclair calls Arsenal’s “depressive state”. Football is happening tomorrow, I should be excited, but because we are in a sort of depressive cycle, I quickly move out of excitement and into anxiety.
I haven’t seen a single one of their matches this season and just a handful last season. And why would I watch Norwich? Apart from a vague interest about how Buendia is doing (and he’s at Villa now) they are not a team I would seek out to watch.
Thus armed with no experiential data, I turned to the only thing available: the stats.
And one minute in to reading the stats, I’m back to depressed.
Both Arsenal and Norwich have had a tough start to the season. Norwich have had the tougher start of the two having to play Liverpool, Man City, and Leicester (and now Arsenal.. right? We are a big club?) but the stats between the two clubs are virtually identical. And that’s not great.
The biggest stat that I see immediately is the -9 goal difference both teams share. Norwich, however, have scored a goal, so I guess their -9 is slightly better than ours.
Both teams lost 5-0 to Man City, though we have an excuse because Xhaka got a red card. But they scored an own goal, so I guess that’s worse? Or better?
In Norwich’s other two matches against Liverpool and Leicester they managed a combined 3.0 xG, where Arsenal managed just 1.8 xG, almost all of that against Brentford. Norwich got that xG because they managed 15 shots against Liverpool on opening day. And they generated superior xG against Leicester at home as well with another 13 shots taken.
Both teams have taken 29 shots total, but Arsenal took 22 shots against Brentford, while Norwich have a much more normal distribution of 28 shots against Liverpool and Leicester. I’m going to go ahead and predict that Norwich will get chances against Arsenal and vice-versa. I know, it’s not some great insight, but just think of it as a warning: I doubt this will be a 2014 style Wengerball possession-romp over a newly promoted side. I’d even be willing to bet that both teams end up somewhere between 12-16 shots each and xG somewhere close to each other.
Tim Krul is off to a significantly worse season than Burned Leno – having chucked one in his own net but also having a league worst -0.91 psxG/90. That means he’s letting in almost 1 more goal than expected per game. Most of that comes from the City match, but I’d still like to see us have some shots at him. “Shoot at Krul!”
Now before you get too excited, Leno is 3rd worst in the League with a per game psxG of -0.66 – letting in over half a goal a game that he’s expected to save. Not great!
As far as I can tell, Norwich aren’t a big “set play” team (now watch me be wrong). Of course, neither is Arsenal.
Defensively, Norwich are the 4th “most dribbled past” team, meaning that their midfielders and wing players try to tackle a lot. Their failure rate isn’t bad (44.3%, Arsenal are mid-table at 39%) and they win the ball back off dribbles more than anyone else (27/61 times) so that’s not actually a bad stat.
But.. they end up trying a lot of defensive pressures (most in the league) and they tend to win the ball in at the 5th worst rate. But Arsenal win the ball at the absolute worst rate, just 21.6% of our pressure result in a regain, where Norwich are 24.8%.
Arsenal do like to press high (4th in the League) and Norwich have the most touches in their own defensive penalty area and 2nd most in their own final third. Even with Arsenal’s spectacularly poor press recovery rate, that could end up being the winning factor. If I would give any advice it would be “press high, Mr. Process! Maybe! I could be wrong!”
See, that could be a bad approach as well. They are the most high pressed team in the league and are the 4th best at breaking the press (Norwich’s opponents have only won the ball back 107 times in 426 pressure (25.1%, 4th best in the League). Meanwhile Arsenal are 5th worst at breaking the press, conceding possession 134 times on 401 pressures. And not only that but we’ve only been pressed high 89 times this season, compared to 161 for Norwich.
Norwich do carry the ball more than Arsenal but they struggle to get the ball forward: they’ve only had 18 carries in the final third this season (Arsenal 36). And their progressive receptions are massively below Arsenal’s (just 55 to our 84). So, they do like to play it out the back, they aren’t terrible at it but it doesn’t go great for them in terms of getting all the way forward.
One area to watch is the Norwich right side. RB Max Aarons has 4 KP and is 2nd in xA while RMF Lees-Melou is the undisputed team leader in chance creation with 0.6 xA. Todd Cantwell (darling of the stats intelligencia) plays RW and also chips in in the attack. They struggle to get their forwards shots, however, which probably sounds familiar to Arsenal fans.
All in all, it’s a depressing bit of data to look at if I’m honest. But also if I’m honest, I have to feel like this isn’t Arsenal’s real level. At the risk of angering you, I would almost say that we need to discard these stats.
Perhaps I’m being overly snooty but that’s only because I’ve never seen an Arsenal team get off to this poor of a start. And in theory we have the players who should be able to dig us out of this position. Arsenal’s numbers in the first three matches were greatly effected by the fact that half the squad was either out with a case of COVID or (in Granit Xhaka’s instance) a case of Stupid (it’s chronic). I guess I just can’t believe that this is where we are and I have to believe that this is our nadir.
Arsenal are of course going to turn this around, right? And it has to start tomorrow. Because if we don’t, then things are going to get very ugly inside and outside of the Arsenal camp.
I was hopeful too. I just played my first football game with my u23 boys since November and I lasted the 90 without any pain. It was a tough friendly and in the game we kept trying to combine like old Wengerball sides and it really was fun. Everyone is fit and ready to start the season, and I am back to kicking a ball again.
After games, I usually like to let the boys speak out about what they thought about how the game went, where they saw weaknesses which we need to work on and the strengths that we showed plus those we need to utilise better. This helps to not criticise these young players on specific aspects of their performance, especially if they can provide valid or understandable reasons for their actions, or just clarify what they saw. Players have a different view with regards to what is happening at any given time on the pitch, where the space is to attack and also the spaces that need covering. I love discussing what they see on the pitch and how they decided to react to certain situations.
I used to love using Arsenal to teach these boys but in the last few years, the lessons have been more about what not to do, rather than what to do, and its mostly been just about the systematic issues rather than the individual players. One of the boys even said something that really got me thinking all the way home. He said that Sambi is a less creative but more defensively capable version of Gedion Zelalem. I just got back home and checked a video of Gedion playing and the boy has a point. (They also all wanna be Emile this season).
After all of the discussions on the game we had just played, we started speaking about the state of the Arsenal team (mind you, not the club, because it serves them no purpose to focus on any of that) and It just went down hill from there. I like your hope Tim and I would love for us to play to our players’ level, but unless the reasons for our performances are dealt with, then the most we can hope for is luck and for our players to pull off some 10/10 moments that can decide the game.
Hoping for something to click can’t be a long term solution to take us back to the top. That’s like hoping that green tea can somehow cure COVID. At some point a better and more deliberate actions have to be the plan on the pitch.
Hope isn’t optimism but I’m optimistic that one day perhaps even this season, I’ll be optimistic about Arsenal again.
I’m much more excited about watching two born-in-Canada teenagers playing in the U.S. Open Ladies final. Great Britain’s Emma Raducanu was born in my hometown of Toronto and Canadian Leylah Fernandez hails from Montreal. Hope our kids perform like these kids.
Or, speaking of ladies, follow the Arsenal Women. Who have won their first 5 matches, including against Chelsea, the defending champs.
And they also have arguably the best current player in women’s football, Vivenne Miedema, who just hit the century mark in barely 100 matches, and without any penalties.
There’s something Arsenal to be positive about.
They are a fantastic group even after losing Viv’s countrywoman Danielle van de Donk to a French side this season. Been following them for the last three years.
In fact, Vivienne Miedema may be the greatest Dutch player ever to play for the Arsenal, DB10 included.
DvD was arguably replaced with a better (and slightly younger) player in Iwabuchi.
Must win for Arteta, no
The season starts here folks. Except it doesn’t. Maybe Arteta didn’t get the memo that this first month was not pre season, or a video game, or page 1 on his pro-license.
You can argue, and I will, that Mikel got every single selection wrong in this first month of games. Instead of mitigating risk and keeping things sensible he set the team up to fail week after week after week.
Having had a fortnight to digest the month from a management perspective, it doesn’t get any better. Yes, he’s had COVID absences, but that does not excuse the complete lack of tactical logic and common sense. From the players he’s had available, he has not played to their strengths and has highlighted nearly all of their deficiencies. Tanking club moral and player value in the process.
This is not hindsight in any way, I wrote other comments at the time, saying just these thoughts. It is hardly complex analysis, but I am struggling to believe some of the things I’ve seen from a so-called professional manager this past month. I will go game by game.
Brentford play with two strikers, have just come up, and will be bang up for it on a Friday night at home. While our Ben White is new to a back 4, in a new team, with a new partner. So why don’t you just start off with a back 3 Mikel? Everybody knows Brentford will be aggressive and target aerially, championship style. Instead White is left to drown, exposed. He gets bullied by their striker and we fold to a two nil defeat. There you go son, have some of that on your debut. Sink or swim. Thanks a lot boss.
Next game, surely, surely Mikel you’ll play a back three against Chelsea? After actually beating them 3 times in 2 seasons with that exact formation. But no, instead you leave Mari totally alone against a peak Lukaku, and Reece James the freedom of London, not once, but twice on the right wing. Both pre-game and in-game, it is appalling management. You have Tierney who literally plays international LCB and you ignore that, twice. You don’t swallow your pride, you don’t change it and you just roll over and give Chelsea the points. Tuchel couldn’t believe his luck. He didn’t leave his seat all game, it was embarrassing. He’s had harder games in his sleep. Thank god I didn’t spend my hard-earned on that.
Game 3, Man City. We’ve not won there for a while, but Lokonga did well in the last match and everybody knows they play 5 central midfielders. So what does Mikel do? He benches Lokonga, for no apparent reason, empties the CM and leaves Xhaka, granit f’cking Xhaka, all alone as a one-man midfield. Against one of the best midfields in Europe. It beggars belief how stupid this decision is. I cannot see any logic what so ever. And what do you know, when Xhaka is stressed, his emotions take over. And there we go, down to ten men. Just like that, directly due to Mikel’s ‘tactics’. Give Xhaka support and legs around him for f’cks sake. How many more managers are going to die on this hill? It is staggering.
Don’t even get me started on Kolasinac. What on god’s earth was that. We have Mari sitting on his arse right there and we chose to play a guy who has spent all summer trying to tear up his contract. He who was so surplus to requirements last season we went without any left back cover just to get him out of the door. A decision which had a huge effect on the EL semi final. Where Arteta was mugged by Emery, who, with a far weaker squad made him look like a fool. Not a single one of their players would get anywhere near our XI, yet Arteta managed to engineer a collapse out of nothing. Xhaka at left back? Against Chukweze, their most dangerous threat? Do me a favor man. Call yourself a manager? You are a joke. This is under 12s stuff. Everyone can see this a mile off.
I’m am so confused by Arteta. He seems to be getting worse at management and decision-making, not better. Never mind the constant burning of bridges and jettisoning of key assets. Keeping Nketiah, only for him to get 30 minutes game time in 6 months. Saliba? Two years into a contract he’s played one pre season game. Spending 50million on a replacement of questionable suitability for the back 4 you supposedly want to play. Not strengthening a midfield with a senior player. Last time I looked that has been our week point for 5 straight seasons. What the hell are you doing man?
This Norwich game is a real test. A test of whether Mikel stops shooting himself in the foot with these bone-headed decisions. He is making life so much harder for himself. It’s almost as if he is allergic to the logical. Compare that to Tuchel who, within a week, had setup a failing Chelsea to be near impossible to beat. Two years later and Arteta is setting The Arsenal up to be near impossible to win.
I thought the same in the Man City game. After two weeks of crying out for a back 3 when it made perfect sense, ohh finally now he pulls it out?! With two right backs, two left backs and one midfielder. You’ve got to laugh. It was completely the wrong formation to play them and to me that showed a weakness. That he actually had been listening to the media response after Chelsea. So instead of stepping back and analyzing what his team’s strengths were and setting them up appropriately, he rowed back on his 4231 ‘non-negotiables’ and cocked it all up.
What is just as concerning to me is what the two stooges Albert S and Steve Round are doing. Do they have zero authority? Or do they just have no input. In which case why are they employed?
When Arteta wheels out that weak back five with only one midfielder in front of them against the champions. Yet he has two solid central midfielders and a senior center back on the bench. Do they say say, yeah great plan boss. Good job there: nice idea.
What are they playing at? It is clear as day Mikel needs help. What is most concerning as these are not difficult choices. First-time manager or not, he is getting the very fundamentals of player positioning and team structure completely wrong and he refuses to change anything mid-game, no matter how obvious the solution. His combination of naivety and arrogance is a terrible mix, and not what these young players need.
I hit some kind of limit on football this summer and with spectacular good timing I haven’t watched much of the first three rounds.
Over the summer we watched loads of the Olympics and Paralympics and I loved it, and honestly my heart sank when the football started up again.
My tolerance for all the bullshit of the PL has nosedived – the money, the commercialism, the commentary, punditry, self-importance, pompousness, the endless arguments among and between fans. And I have to watch Ronaldo again? I thought I had been spared any need of seeing that smug face week in week out.
It’s just a fecking game and often pretty dull in comparison to, say, wheelchair rugby, or gymnastics, or diving. Or watching an athlete dance for joy after finishing 6th in a 800m final with a PB.
So I’m surprised that after the interlull and with backs to the wall for Arsenal, I’m genuinely nervous and excited for today. Arsenal as underdogs against Norwich: well if that’s where we are so be it, let’s go and get them.
“And I have to watch Ronaldo again?”
+1. Hours and hours of fawning commentary before he has even kicked a ball! Just keeping him from scoring against us will feel like a win.
Greg! Missed you, fella.
Was about to send out a search party to the Scottish Glens or someplace like that. Could see the headline… “Arsenal fan found wandering, mumbling about transfers….”
Your cheerful spirit, politeness in debate, willingness to see another POV are of great value.
Very kind, fella
Great post Tim.
I agree with the overall optimistic view of the coming season and stats we have put together are probably not very useful with regard to predicting what will happen the rest of the season. The first 3 games were a complete mess and there is no excuse for conceding 9 goals in those games. However, during the Arteta era we have a large enough sample size to know the club can do quite well at preventing the opposition from scoring and just like last season the bad run of form we have seen so far will be reversed at some point, hopefully starting today. Every season its inevitable there will be runs of good form and bad form and so far this season we have been really bad, but over the 38 games those good and bad runs tend to balance out. There are occasional exceptions but history teaches us that over the course of a full season most teams tend to finish about where they should based on the talent of their players and just like last season I believe we will finish somewhere in the top half of the table most likely around 7th place with a realistic chance of making one of the Europa league spots.
Every win is to be cherished! It’s a young team with Odegaard as one of the key jewels; I’ll get behind it!
Worked way into the night, needed a late lie-in and got up round halftime. At which point I couldn’t be sufficiently motivated to watch. My match of the day is Raducanu/Fernandes in the US Open final, and I don’t know who to root for. Wish they both could win.
But welcome, much-needed win at the Emirates. I’ll watch a replay of the whole 90 to see how Ramsdale, Tomi and Ainsley in midfield got on. Speaking of Ainsley, told ya so. Said last post that everything pointed to his being deployed there by Arteta. Just didn’t expect it, in a start, first game after the break.
Saw the Ramsdale injection coming too, though not this soon. When your own club tells the world that you (Leno) are not that good with distribution, the tea leaves are pretty easy to read (post since removed). And no, Leno’s not being eased back after the international break. Sambi played for Belgium, and moreover was an injury worry coming into this game.
But a win is a win. Shame the season isn’t starting now.
Excellent result. I suspect we will need quite a few 1-0 wins this year. A clean sheet was a necessity today. We talked a lot this summer about the critical factor was needing more shots and from that standpoint tactically it was a well planned and well executed game. We outshot them 30-10. In this game and the game against Brenttford we outshot the opposition 52-17. It seems like we can certainly execute our game plans when we play a team that is similar or worse in talent. Unfortunately we don’t have a critical mass of players who are good at turning shots into actual goals scored. We only have one goal in those 52 shots and I suspect that is going to be a recurring theme
That classic football adage about how when you need a goal and you just can’t score, and then 39 shots later you finally shank one in after 5 deflections… that was this game.
In the first half I was a bit worried. Arsenal had flagged after a bright start and you sensed we might be susceptible to the same tactics Chelsea used; pulling midfielders toward the ball and exploiting the space behind them with Aarons in this case. It almost worked. The difference was that we had strong individual defenders in this game and that Norwich just aren’t that good.
We looked much better after the interval. The sock g issues were addressed by Odegaard dropping deeper. We began to control the game. Norwich intelligently allowed Maitland Niles to be the spare man in possession and immediately doubling up on Pepe or Saka. AMN being an irrationally confident player didn’t shy away and variously either found nice passes or gave it away needlessly. Seeing this, Arteta responded by putting Odegaard in AMN’s central midfield position, slotting AMN at RB, and putting ESR forward to the 10. I think criticism of MA’s in game adjustments has been justified so I found this move very pleasing indeed. The introduction of Partey and Odegaard gave us the kind of forward progression options in midfield that Norwich’s press could not cope with.
Norwich’s only recourse was to drop deeper in the face of so many capable technicians and they became more and more nervy playing out from the back. Tim Krul in particular was shocking. The goal was inevitable and hilariously messy, but they all count. We should’ve had a few more.
Individual accords…
Tomiyasu was impressive. Strong on the ground and in the air, made good decisions. Similar to Chambers in a lot of ways. I don’t know what kind of end product he has in the final third as he mostly stayed home and didn’t overlap very often.
Ramsdale’s long kicks can be a real weapon. He was able to find players in the opposition final 3rd almost with a few of them. I wasn’t entirely comfortable at times with his touches at the back but some of that was nerves (mine or his??) and overall he did well. I like his body language and attitude right now and I think Arteta alluded to that too as a reason to pick him over Leno. Looks the better keeper on current form.
Saka has incredible balance and strength on the ball. At one point Norwich’s bulldog faced CB Hanley tried to bully him off the ball running towards the Norwich goal and almost fell over as he bounced back off Saka. That boy is a treasure. Should’ve had a few today.
Odegaard/Partey
Partnership of the future in CM?? We might be on to something here. Shades of the old Cazorla/Coquelin or Fabregas/Flamini duos. Odegaard may not tackle too well but I love the idea of him progressing and controlling play back there and Partey is an ideal foil for him with his range and size. And MO already wears #8, so was it meant to be?? Something to chew on.
Doc
Norwich is worst team in the league right now and they are in poor form to start the season. I suspect that most believe Norwich has a good chance to be the worst team in the league this season and potentially the worst team defense in the league. Drawing conclusions about which tactical tweaks might work against better teams based on what happened today is probably not accurate
Looking at the game in isolation, I guess we were alright. But it’s hard to ignore the level of the opposition.
Positives were Lokonga and Tomiyasu.