I mean, yes, the buck stops with Arteta. But equally Arteta appears to be implementing something approaching a functional premium league team. So...yay?
We’ve seen this pattern a lot, keeper plays the ball to the defensive midfielder, who squares wide to the fullback, most of the time it has worked relatively well. It places the decision on whether it’s safe to play the ball to the defensive mid on the goalkeeper and Leno hasn’t always made the correct decision, We saw some variation recently where Leno was playing diagonals to the fullbacks about 30 yards out. It’s all about recognizing the holes in the other teams press.
Thats true, but we won't know if the decision Leno made was a bad one because he had a brain fart, or if because Arteta wants it played majority of the time to the dropping midfielder. The Xhaka one was a really bad idea because it was so close to goal, he was being closed down and tried to use his opposite foot. Maybe if Xhaka had tried to play it on his left the pass works and we hit them on the counter. But the image from today shows that it was the bad decision to go to Ceballos because to me he isn't great under pressure and also Luiz was free and a better option. So once again, is it Arteta ALWAYS wanting it up the middle to the dropping DM or CM to keep the wings/wide players free and dragging the opposition into the middle, or does Leno see Ceb calling for it and backs in his player when its absolutely the wrong decision.
Based on the results it was unquestionably the wrong decision. Sometimes pattern play gets a little to predictable. I suspect in practice they’ve focused on this one more than most, given the number of times we’ve seen it.
If you look at that passage of play before their goal, Leno passed it out twice and the ball came back to him. A better pass from the left outfield player, was to a central player just in front of our box who could have gone forward. Leno was put under pressure 3 times, I don't blame him entirely for this, he had done his job twice before it came back to him.
I disagree that the Burnley goal was Leno's fault, or if it was, very minimally. Xhaka should have been able to handle that pass easily and hit it first time to Luiz out right. The pass to Ceballos --- yeah, not a good decision. But even that I'd put at 50/50 for fault, as---to quote Arseblog---Ceballos took "the touch of a club-footed mule."
We still have gaffs playing out from the back, but I think you're crazy if you don't see that we are trending in the right direction. We've clearly been the better team in most of our games this side of the new year. We've been simultaneously shooting ourselves in the foot.
Imo the idea of that pass receives huge pressure of Danny one touches to luiz as it takes 4 opponents out in 2 passes same as xhaka vs Burnley, one touch odd to luiz again and we can break
Yeah, it's the modern way of the world. Hoofing it long every time is not how most teams play anymore. Even my son's U13 team plays out from the back.
Yeah but there's still a good argument for long goal kicks. And in fact, this season we've done more of that than the prior season. It seems that Arteta sees some value in not being 100% dogmatic about playing it out, and he's inched more towards a hybrid model or one in which he gives the GK more leeway to decide, based on game state.
After this result (and the ManU-Milan draw), FiveThirtyEight now has Arsenal as the favorite to win the Europa League. https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/soccer-predictions/europa-league/
That says to me that they don't have any idea what they're talking about. Seriously. TBF I didn't read the article so I don't know what their reasoning is.
i think it's a square-peg-round-hole thing. he is not a natural at distribution and ball at his feet but he is being asked to play in that manner. so he can do it mechanically because he is capable but not yet able to adapt on the fly like someone more natural at it. it's similar to, like, an american football quarterback who can do check downs when their receivers are covered. at this point, he is not yet able to check down from covered -> covered -> covered -> long kick. EDIT to add: we also do not currently have people at that position who can easily deal with receiving those passes under pressre - partey might be but we have not seen it yet. i was not his biggest fan but if either of those passes went to diaby, he would have turned the defender and been off to the races.
my bad. i was meant meaning to imply that leno was wholly at fault for either goal but that he shared responsibilities for them.
There is no text, it is just a statistical power ranking with odds of each club advancing. Who would you say is the favorite? 538 has United as the strongest side, but 1-1 at home was a poor result and they are only a 62% chance to get past Milan. Arsenal meanwhile are 98%. After that, you are looking at sp*rs, Ajax and Roma as the strongest clubs left.
I thought the Burnley goal was more on Xhaka, this one was more on Leno. Look how far he is from his goal. If he had been back on his own touchline, he would have made the save easily. But he didn't get back and was still way out of position when the shot was taken.
I'm saying if he gets the ball 20 yards from his goal, he needs to understand the risk is too high and boot it long rather than play out from the back.
It’s a purely statistical model, exceedingly complex, that uses their proprietary Soccer Power Index. It’s not based on ‘reasoning’ and isn’t an article, just a table that updates after every result. Are you familiar with FiveThirtyEight?
Maybe I need to watch it again, but I don’t think Xhaka can play that one-time. I recall the ball being played to his left foot. If he tries to play it first time with his right he would end up in the same mess that Ceballos did. Not saying he isn’t at fault. He is. It was really the heavy touch that I think caused him to panic a bit and then he just made a bad decision and a worse technical mistake with the ensuing pass. But Leno plays a poor pass to him at the wrong time.
Ah, OK. I don't really follow the other continental leagues/teams very closely, but of course I do follow EPL teams obviously and I would say that it seems odd for us to be favorites over Spurs or United, even with the latter's result last outing. And for all I know the other teams you mention (Ajax & Roma) are stronger than we are. My point was that I just don't see us as the most likely finalists, let alone champions. But I'd be absolutely PSYCHED to be wrong! No obviously not... couldn't you tell? And if it's a pure stats website with no narrative, then I'm not likely to. I used to watch ESPN FC when it was on TV daily and I think they used SPI a lot, and I found some of those ratings a bit silly at times. But surely those SPI ratings were based on some kind of reasoning, even if purely algorithmic reasoning.
Aha, that FiveThirtyEight! Thanks for connecting the dots for me. Years ago I was aware of Nate (although I've since forgotten his name) and his uncanny accuracy in some past US election results on his website (whose name I also forgot obviously, but am reminded now how the name was derived from the # of Electoral College seats) I didn't know that he'd sold his baby to ESPN years ago and that their SPI was derived from Nate & 538.