banduan wrote:
Big Willie wrote:
His miss today was bad but honestly if it wasn't for some good improve by Tavares and Saka, or a worldie by Martinelli, we wouldn't have scored.
I knew even a good team goal would be discounted to be just individual brilliance bailing the team out. This is kind of reasoning would downplay most good goals scored in the league.
You can think whatever you want to think Bandy, no one has a gun to your head over your opinions. For me, if this was a AW team where it is our bread and butter then I'd be willing to credit the manager with giving the players the instructions to play in zone 14 with quick interchanging and passing. Can't credit Arteta for those types of goals because it's just not the type of game he's trying to promote. Our football under him hardly ever goes through zone 14 by instruction and its why we our heat maps are always in a semi circle going from the wing, back towards the centre circle and back the other way.
[video=vimeo]
Moments like this in yesterdays game show just what these guys are being coached to do. Odegaard plays it inside to Elneny, there is the option to go central with a ton of space in the middle.
If Elneny played it inside, we had Lokonga, ESR and Lacazette (just out of picture) ahead of the ball with just 4 defenders ahead of the ball. But instead he doesn't even look to see what's happening inside and we go wide back to Odegaard.
Odegaard receives the ball and can either choose to go towards the wing where he has a number of defenders ahead of him and an isolated Martinelli, or go infield towards Elneny, Lokong or ESR all in space with Laca ahead of them.
Odegard carries the ball forward and can now choose to decide whether to go infield into space or wide into traffic. He decides to not play it inwards to where he has support from Elneny, ESR with Laca ahead instead going wide. At this point Lokonga decides to fall back after the ball went wide and Odegaard plays it out to Martinelli.
The ball goes to Martinelli who has 3 defenders crowding him into a corner. Look at how many players are around Martinelli.
We just forced ourselves to play to our default tactic of trying to overload the wings instead of seeing the space we had in the middle and the Newcastle defence already knew thats where we were headed.. There were a few moments where Odegaard, Tavares and Saka tried to force things through the middle but you can see the rest of the players either falling back or standing wide waiting for the ball instead as that's what we have been doing under Arteta and Emery.
Our football is played the way we have seen by design. When you see goals like Saka against Newcastle in the FA Cup last season, or today you realise these team goals that come from quick 1 touch pass and move football that exploits and unstabilises the defence through zone 14 are the exceptions to the rule rather than what they are being coached to do on a daily basis. Otherwise we'd see a lot more attempts at this, whether the end result is successful or otherwise. Give credit to Arteta if you want, for me this more an improvisation that deviates from our programmed method of attack and as such a bit of individual brilliance. But to each, his own.
