hated the result but this description gave me a laugh. it made me think of us doing our press by movie fight rule where people run into attack one at a time. :-D
The problem is neither of them are elite. Laca was signed to solve the problems of Alexis and Giroud, but it not as good as either of them. A B-list striker signed years too late for far too much money, and the entire investment will be lost in order to offboard his silly salary. Auba was signed because Laca failed. Auba was elite, but now is old, on a poor team being paid far too much. Now you can of course afford a mediocre 9 who links play and presses well, if you get goals from the front 5 as a unit. But that means Pepe, Saka and ESR are going to have to score a lot, and MO would need to chip in from midfield Remember Ozil and Ramsey used to be worth 20 odd goals between them.
It's kind of amazing that in the year of our lord '21, a 'big team" still can't manage to do this. Rene Maric wrote about the poor pressing 7 years ago! 7! https://spielverlagerung.com/2014/11/16/wengers-problems-and-arsenals-long-term-crisis/
Let's be real, the one thing mid to late-period Wenger teams were good for was demolishing average to bad teams at home. They would have buried this Palace team--and we know this because they practically played this team circa 2015--Ayew? Benteke? McArthur??? We turtled most of this match away when it was 1-0 up--and we know that Wenger, for better and for worse, would not have done so, given similar circumstances. So I don't think there's much credit to go around here to be honest.
Yeah, this. Lacazette has shown that at his best, he can score 13-14 goals in the league, but now he's 30. With the lack of goals from midfield, Arteta needs 20+ goals from his striker. If last season was just an off year from Auba and he was poised to bounce back to his 2018-2020 form, it would be one thing, but he's 32. I'm not a Laca fan, but I will admit he looked good yesterday. Can he bring the same energy and drive for 90 minutes instead of 30? Can he score the 20+ goals this club needs from a striker? Extremely unlikely to me. Until they can sign a new striker, I'd like to see Pepe moved closer to the goal. When he plays on the right, with Tomi staying deep, it seems like Pepe ends up further from goal, whipping in crosses and trying to take on defenders. I don't know why he isn't on the left, with Tierney pushing up, allowing him to get into the box and try to score. Let Saka drop deeper in the right where he's had success.
True. And I had a similar thought afterwards. But unfortunately that was balanced against more than a few concerns: * We struggled this much... against Palace! What would've happened against one of the big boys? * Why did we start well for 15-20 minutes and then go missing in the next 45 mins or so? Arteta's post-match remarks seemed to indicate that he didn't know why either... so there's lack of control by him and a disconnect with his players? I'm sure I could come up with more concerns but let's just leave it at that for now.
I too missed your comment at the time. TBF when Martinelli did that, I thought to myself "that's foolish". With a few mins of injury time left, and an equalizer still to find, OK maybe you'd back Salah to dribble through 2 tight markers, but Martinelli?? Sure, I respect his confidence to try that, and I'm generally a big fan of going forward rather than backward, and I was super relieved he didn't cough up the ball at that crucial late stage (IIRC). But still I can see how a manager might pull his hair out watching that.
Y’know, I just realized that other than the fact he’s not from the Championship, this is a pretty accurate description of Granit Xhaka. But perhaps if we can find a player of Xhaka’s “talents” who is British, most of those red cards turn to yellow.
Paddy was basically that kind of player. And we were seconds away from losing to him as a manger yesterday. Just sayin.
It’s not like martinelli can do anything. He has no moves lol. Odegaard. Something has to Change with him.
Arsenal have the moral high ground to live up too. And someone said it earlier about “big club is still doing this…” Arsenal is not a big club and doesn’t behave like one and hasn’t for over a decade.
Odegaard has been real bad except for one game against Spurs. But to be fair to him, I watched him several times drop into the LB slot to receive backwards passes from Partey yesterday. Something tells me that wasn't on his own initiative...
I disagree. He's been poor in the last two matches, but was good against Norwich and good against Burnley, including scoring that great free kick for the winner.
Predictability = Defendability. This is where Arteta gets it wrong. He tends to marginalize players that don’t adhere to his concept of team shape.
I dunno, agree to disagree. I think he still has way too little end product for how advanced a position he’s regularly playing. His xG+xA per 90 has fallen off a cliff this year so far—early days still but he’s offering less than a third of ESR’s output this year when they were roughly equivalent in that metric over the year last year. And neither of them were particularly great in that regard last year, around 40th percentile. So far the numbers don’t look great. Maybe there’d be a case to be made for our midfielders if we were possessing the ball well and just not creating chances/having shit finishing but we aren’t even possessing well. We’re thirteenth in the league in possession. I’m not seeing what Odegaard is contributing at the moment
yeah. you *might* be able to get away with it if you have the kind of players that PSG and manchester city throws out there who can create individual brilliance out of nowhere on the regular. we don't have those players right now. i appreciate and like the desire for structure and i get that it helps shore up defense which was a big need for us. but you need to allow for some creativity. i'd love something of a compromise between arteta who requires players to simulate foosball players and wenger who just throws his hands up and say he cannot control what players do.
This is the trouble with the whole composition. If the front 3 can manage 15 each, and the rotation chimes in for 10, and only 5 from midfield, you have only 60 goals - which is not really CL level how do you get 60 yet alone 70 from this lot?
This is essentially the Kloppo approach The midfield play more conservatively to manage the game, while the fullbacks are the extra attackers In the title winning season, the front 3 had 46 goals - but look how everyone else chips in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019–20_Liverpool_F.C._season#Goals