Just last week Jonathan Wilson wrote an article titled “Granit Xhaka improvement is clearest sign of Emery changes at Arsenal” in which he made the following proclamation: “Xhaka’s improvement is perhaps the most palpable sign of the difference Emery has made. No longer is he a fine but disassociated left foot bobbing unreliably around midfield, his positioning uncertain, the capacity for a mistake terrifyingly near.”
Wilson is a fantastic writer and one of the keenest football observers on the planet. I have read his opus magnum Inverting the Pyramid and thoroughly enjoyed both his writing style and the incredible depth of his research. He has forgotten more about football than I will ever know.
So, it was a strange bit of writing because Granit Xhaka has absolutely not vanquished his capacity for a mistake. And it was clear just the week prior to that article that this was the case when Xhaka dangled a leg out in the box so that Zaha would have a convenient obstacle to dive over. Sure, Zaha exaggerated and initiated contact but if Xhaka doesn’t attempt that tackle (which was plainly a dumb idea) and get it so late and so wrong then Zaha would have been booked for simulation. But Xhaka did attempt a tackle in the box.
This is how Xhaka has always played. He’s a talented footballer for picking out long crosses with his left foot and delivering set plays. He’s also always got a moment of madness in him. He’s been this way since before he joined Arsenal, a worrying proclivity that was first pointed out by Naveen four years ago. It’s a problem which he’s never overcome and probably never will.
Yesterday’s match against Wolverhampton Wanderers was the perfect example of Xhaka. He completed an incredible 97/109 passes and that’s an important stat. But just as important, he had zero key passes, he won just 1 tackle and he had just 2 interceptions. He also gave up the error that won them a point, and got rinsed by Cavaliero on a simple give and go for the goal.
In a match against an opponent who pack in their defense and who want to hit you on the counter, you need your two deepest midfielders to pick the lock of their defense and they also need to be able to read the game well enough to break up counter attacks. He did neither and it wasn’t a surprise that Emery brought on Guendouzi in order to try to get ahold of the midfield.
Guendouzi also failed to take control of this match. In fact, Arsenal’s midfield three of Guendouzi, Xhaka, and Torreira showed that they have a long way to go to earn the hype that’s been leveled at them since Arsenal squeaked a draw against Liverpool.
And that surely is the problem. They lack consistency. One match they are giving it to Liverpool, hounding them off the pitch, putting in one of the best performances I’ve seen from an Arsenal side since we beat Barcelona like 100 years ago when Lord Bendtner was still able to get away with attacking taxi drivers. In the next match, they are aimlessly bobbing about in the middle of the pitch and getting cut to ribbons. It’s no exaggeration to say that Arsenal should have lost that match exactly because we couldn’t control the midfield. So the Guendouzi sub was an utter failure.
Perhaps they thought that they could just turn up and beat Nuno Espirito Santo’s well trained, well organized, Wolves. I sure hope not. The Wolfpack played exactly how I said they would: they tackled a lot, they nipped in to steal the ball, they fouled a lot and they played a lot of crosses from the wings.
Defensively, I have to hand it to Wolves, they had a ferocious bite. I’m used to seeing Allardycian/Mourinho teams sit back in the deep block and not really tackle much. But Nuno’s side actively tried to win the ball back in their own half. They had three players with 5 interceptions each (Doherty, Jonny, and Neves). Jonny also had 6/7 tackles, Moutinho was 4/6 tackles and Bennet (who also had 3 interceptions) added 3/4 tackles. Also, as a team they blocked 9 crosses and 17 clearances (to Arsenal’s 1).
The tactical point of playing this way is that it’s easier for players who are a bit less good (how’s that for me saying “they’re crap”?) to score when there are open spaces around them. With a player whose touch is maybe not that polished, they need that extra yard of space to control the ball. And Arsenal obliged. With the Gunners pulled out of shape, trying to get the winner, Wolves created some fantastic chances in the final 10 minutes of that match – thankfully those chances mostly fell to Traore who is fast but not really a great footballer. And also credit to Leno who saved two more big chances yesterday, bringing Arsenal’s total big chances saved this season to a League high 13, the same number as Brexit Means Brexit Burnley – a team who, like Brexit, exact zero control over games and just let the bad guys wash all over them.
Arsenal were so weird in their approach. Arsenal are last in the League in crosses per game, 3.2 successful out of 15.1. So, why did we attempt 27 crosses? Everyone tried them. Xhaka was worst going 0/12, but Lacazette went 0/4 Mkhi 0/3, Bellerin 0/2, etc. The only Arsenal players to connect on a cross were Kolasinac and Iwobi. It even looked like Mkhi’s goal was actually an attempted cross. Why were we doing that against Willy Boly, who is nearly 2m tall?
You also have to question Unai’s approach. Once again Arsenal got off to a slow start. Once again Unai Emery made changes at half time. When are we going to stop saying that his half-time changes are brilliant and start asking why we have to change the approach so often after the break? As Wenger once said, it’s actually a bad sign that a manager has to make early changes. Yes, if they come off, it’s great, but early changes means that the manager got his analysis completely wrong in the buildup to the match. If it was once or twice, that would be one thing, but time and again Unai is getting the starting lineup dead wrong. It’s frustrating and worrying and it looks like we don’t really have a plan.
There was no injury to Iwobi. Emery admitted that he brought on Guendouzi to try to dominate the midfield. But it was, frankly, the exact wrong change to make and I said so at the time. I don’t care if Iwobi had 100 turnovers in this match, he is the only player on this team who can dribble and break down defenses. Wolves were packed in and when that happens you need someone good with the ball at his feet in the forward positions, not someone who likes to keep possession deep.
And finally, how much longer is Arsene Wenger going to take the blame for this team? We are objectively worse than we were under Wenger. Conceding so many more chances than Wenger’s teams ever did and making even more mistakes than ever before under Wenger.
Perhaps it’s a personnel problem. I know a lot of people think Wenger bought players like Mustafi and Xhaka but I’m not 100% certain about that. There was more than enough background smoke to suggest that Arsenal’s analytics team recommended those players. Regardless, Emery bought two midfielders this season and has been publicly charged with turning around the careers of several players. That’s his remit. That’s what he will be judged by. And so far, it’s not looking nearly as good as Jonathan Wilson would have us believe.
Even the idea that Torreira is some kind of tigerish shield in midfield is well overstated. Wilson said that his greatest quality is “perhaps is his capacity to make Xhaka look like a holding midfielder, even when playing in front of Shkodran Mustafi. He is only 22 and yet the summer signing has had a galvanising effect throughout the team. What Arsenal needed, it turns out, was not another technically gifted but physically unimposing forward but some muscle at the back of midfield.”
The stats don’t bear any of this out. Arsenal are conceding more big chances than ever before, not fewer. And Torreira hardly tackles at all. When compared to Coquelin, who was the last actual defensive midfielder that Arsenal had, Torreira looks extremely lightweight: LT, 1.8 tackles, 1.7 interceptions; FC, 3.2 tackles, 3.7 interceptions. And even compared to players like Kante, Gueye, and others he’s nowhere near them. He’s not even the most prolific DM on the team, that’s Guendouzi still.
I’m far from an “Emery out” guy. He must be given time to settle this team and get them playing organized football. He must also be given time to fix problems with the problem players.
In the meantime, I guess I’m going to have to get used to frustration and inconsistency. We just played one of the best matches of the Emery era and followed it up with one of the worst. And I have a feeling that we are going to see a lot more weeks like this before we finally turn the corner.
I guess I would really just like these stupid narratives that Xhaka is a player reborn and Torreira is the great wall of North London to just stop. Neither are remotely true. Maybe they will be true one day and on that day you can say “see, Tim… you’re a putz”. But until then, I’d love it if we could all just accept the team for what it is.
The other thing I would love to see is Arsenal playing great from minute 1 to minute 45. Maybe we need the groundskeeper to change the clocks forward 45 minutes and for Emery to announce the lineup and make a substitution before the match, for once. I don’t know. Nothing else seems to be working.
