If we had Giroud and Sonogo with the crosses we are pumping in we would have scored 12 goals the last two weeks. Lacazette is tiny.
I too, saw that Partey was injured and for Mikel Arteta to order him to stay on despite of it, shows the selfishness on our manager. I know he wants to win every match, but there is something seriously wrong in the team's morale on the pitch, I'd venture to join the (growing) #ArtetaOut crowd right about now, BRING IN FELIX MAGATH!!! HE will straighten these guys out in a heartbeat!!!
Good teams cross the ball, but not the way we've been doing it. They generally do so from the channel at the byline angled back toward the penalty spot for incoming runners.
Yep. We talked about all this in some detail when Willy Moyes ruined the high xG approach used by Rene Muelensteen to optimise RVP and replaced it with aimless crossing. So whereas Ozil could deliver goals for Giroud on that nearpost run, we are now just raining in crosses that trigger dangerous transitions. Remember we used to do this back in the Wenger years when Sagna would be crossing aimlessly when we ran out of ideas - which actually favours the defensive side.
Even if he is done, the one thing Ozil can do it hit a very dangerous diagonal from the slot for the nearpost or far post runner.
The problem is, how does he change it? The promising period pre-lockdown when the likes of Laca and Ozil were delivering league elite outputs in terms of defensive pressures vs Man Utdnow seems like a false dawn. Agree - goals like that can happen. I think that goal was basically due to the Partey injury - that is why there was that huge gap between the ines. All those crosses delivered negligible XG - its easy to defend against, because the defence retains its structure so actually the attackers are at a disadvantage. The moment before the 2nd goal is a much better example of how to cross - but we got no XG for that, because it did not fall to feet - but that is much more dangerous.
Partey really should have sat on the ground if injured and tried to stop play though. It was a bad look, but its something you learn as a kid playing. If you are legitimately injured sit down on the pitch if you can, get play stopped and get checked out. When that happened, it would have cost us momentum as we had the ball, but when he hobbled to the touchline we turned the ball over and gave them an easy counter.
Not surprising. Sp*rs only took 6 shots, and only one of them was a likely goal. Both of those totals are absolutely dire, but theirs was suppressed by score effects.
Even if Partey didn't hobble off injured on the second goal, Arsenal were still heavily outnumbered on that counter. Also the way Son was allowed to drive at goal for the first, where was the midfield? Xhaka has to step up in a leadership role. He is a good footballer, much better than Hojbjerb, but Hojbjerg was MOTM and Xhaka was nowhere to be found. Arteta has to get him to take ownership of that midfield or find someone else who can. Son, Kane, and Bergwijn put work in. They spent more time defending than anything else that game. Mourinho can get his players to expand their games. Arteta may need to make a couple of signings, but more than anything he needs to get more out of his players in a similar sense. And look at the confidence Son and Kane played with. No one at Arsenal plays with that confidence at the moment. I saw a comment that Arsenal don't have the players to attack the ball in the air. It's a fair argument, but look at Liverpool, they're always sending crosses in from Robertson and Alexander-Arnold, and they manage to score with players who are 5'9" at most. Arsenal's crossing fell flat to Tottenham only after Mourinho decided to sit pretty on their two goals with almost no intent to score thereafter. The stats only tell us so much. It's better to look at how Mourinho reacted by subbing on a third center--back once he realized how much of a threat Arsenal were with their crossing. This is something Arsenal need to work at and improve if they are to be more potent in front of goal. You need attacking width, to pull players wide, in order to create openings in the middle. Arsenal I think have the tools to do better, but Arteta has to get his players to step out of their comfort zones and do more of things they may not excel at, like Mourinho has done with getting players to defend who are anything but defenders.
Thing is, given the schedule, I don't see how this changes until January. You need a week or two off to actually fix tactical issues in the team, and the ultra compressed nature of the schedule really hurts here.
Yeah I think you have to decide whether Arteta still has the squad with him, in which case this is a complete reset - or whether he lost them, in which case he might as well go soon
Adrian Clarke was on today's Totally Football podcast. He's a pretty fair analyst, even though he works for Arsenal to some degree. Anyway he basically said: In the last few games (Leeds & Wolves) our use of a back 4 revealed our vulnerability to fast breaks, especially on the right side. For the Spurs match he was expecting (hoping) we'd go back to a back 3 and maybe a MF 3 But Arteta "went for it... boldly" which backfired when they sucker-punched us... A tactic that anyone could anticipate Jose would use, thus Arteta looked naive Some eye-catching stats: Final-third-passes were Spurs 34 - Arsenal 210! And Open-play-crosses were 3-32! Spurs were "just better" to which he modified to "just had the winning tactic" One last stat he threw out to exemplify our woes: Newcastle has more shots than we do this season.
was arteta telling partey to PLAY or to be on the pitch while injured to hope for a stop of play? there is a significant difference between those two.
I think Arteta wanted him to be on the pitch to try to play, not realizing how bad his injury was. Things were happening very quickly, which he admitted in his interview. And if he'd wanted him to try to stop play then he probably would've told/motioned him to sit down on the pitch. However that would likely have done nothing unless he totally faked a random head injury. Otherwise, Spurs would've broken anyway and the ref wouldn't have stopped anything. So anyway you look at it, we were screwed.
Yup that was his implied point I think. We had 210 passes in their third, 11 shots, 0 goals. While the were 34, 5, 2. Brilliantly executed.