Arsenal are most vulnerable to counter attacks when they lose possession in the defensive half well before the first 20 passes. Quite often it seems to occur before the third pass. Even a Pep organized team will have trouble dealing with these kinds of giveaways. They do get caught on counters when they commit to many players forward both for set pieces and during the run of play, but my impression is that the goals they give up because they have given the ball away in the defensive half when trying to transition into the attack are more frequent than goals given up on traditional counter attacks.
Well that's not really true. Everyone knows that an early turnover is highly dangerous - especially versus a gegen press side. So you can prepare for it. I post about Pep only because I followed him in detail at Bayern and he used 2 strategies because hyena pressing was so prevalent in germany and so i know the detail of it. Pep's preferred strategy was to protect possession carefully in the early phase and build to his 20 pass idea. So of course possession might be lost sooner, but the team were very focussed on protecting possession, and then using possession to walk the team forward into a favourable counter press disposition - i.e. a Barca type layout with centrebacks very high But this might be considered too dangerous - in which case Bayern could play extremely direct with an early ball over or through the press. Some of the games vs BVB you saw Pep's Bayern playing long for the first hour to go over the press. So you can adjust tactics depending I think Mebe's point is that Arsenal don't set properly for the counter press You have to do this while you are still in possession. City position themselves extremely well to counter press when they lose possession in the attacking 3rd
One thing Arse used to do very badly was resort to dumping the ball in the box from the wing with lots of players committed forward This would often lead to bad transitions because the defensive clearance would lead to 5 or 6 arse players being cut out in front of the ball and useless for counter press
It was a word used around BvB with players hunting the ball in "hyena" packs In any event over recent years pressing strategies in BL were taking to extremes when it was still relatively rare in England. A core idea is that in order to "turbo press" or hunt in packs - you have to set up for the counter press before you lose the ball. So for instance, it will be hard to counter press with hyena intensity if you have a big gap between the lines or pressing players or if you went long in a rapid transition, you won't have many players forward for a high press All of that leads to more complexity like pressing traps - see Atleti who used ideas like delayed press after the attacking team played the ball into wing "trap" zones
Aren’t all hyper presses based on short spurts of time though? I know Mourinho used packs of 3 and simeone uses narrow pressure but let’s teams have the call out wide Arsenal have never really pressed high or sat deep regularly We have random games where we did to good effect, in fact our 2006 cl run was based on a counter attacking philosophy after flamini played lb I just don’t know why we are so careless, we get countered where everyone does high up but how many goals have we conceded when a deep lying mid, cb or full back plays a stupid pass in our own deepest third? Is this down to in intelligent players or a lack of a proper midfield? CaOrla alleviates that issue but he’s never fit and probably will retire. Arteta used to do it well. Xhaka seems to be poor in this regard, to me he’s better at long passes. Imo we need a proper deep midfielder next to a holding player as well as a creative cm next season when ozil and Sanchez go With hardworking wide players we could surprise people. The problem is we also need a left back, a right back and a quality cb This shopping list could be up to 200 million these days if ou want proven quality
Wow what terrific spelling and grammar. Who are you and what have you done with @thebigman! Or maybe you just put down the phone for a computer keyboard.
Yes - usually triggered in a few seconds for a short period - which is why the players need to be in the right positions at turnover Although with the pressing traps its situational