Coombs wrote:
I think chance creation as a team stat is a bit of a red herring. It takes two to tango, and I think Vlahovic will hold up his end of the bargain. Auba hasn't for a while and Laca is always too far away from goal or reluctant to shoot. We also cross quite a bit, which he would thrive on. Saka, ESR, and Odegaard will all find someone who regularly shows for it, and he'll take the shot so it'll register as a chance.
In general yes, I agree that it's a team effort but honestly Auba was feeding off scraps for the whole of Arteta's time here. It just so happens he was clinical as hell during the FA Cup run and has struggled a bit with his finishing since then but throughout that time we've really struggled to create any chances. not for a lack of trying it must be added because he clearly has been busting a gut all season from the off, just struggled to finish a few presentable chances. Our lack of chances is not because the attack wasn't good enough either, we've got Saka, ESR, Ode, Pepe, Martinelli all who could create chances but our play in general was very slow, deliberate, side to side passing and teams were content to defend against that.
What we've seen last few weeks is more and more passing through the lines with Laca dropping deeper and pulling CBs towards him, we've been linking up with quick passed in and around zone 14, we've been a lot more direct with our running and attacks in general.
Coombs wrote:
I'm no longer very worried about his pressing - he presses. I am only concerned that Laca has basically helped pack the midfield because the midfield is inadequate, not because it's a good strategy. If we can solve that, we won't need a striker to drop so deep.
I agree. Totally. That will be important having reliable CMs who can get the ball forward and not slow us down.
If Vlahovic can do enough to not need to come deep, but still be able to quickly link with his fellow forwards, spin into space to get the return then I'm all for it. If we're playing balls around the sides of the defenders for him to run off the shoulders of the defenders it's also good.
I just don't want us going back to that slow, ""Control™"" style football passing side to side to eventually try get an overload on one wing so we can cross the ball into the box to barely one or two of our guys. The problem I have with overloading the wing is it ends up dragging a lot of our players wide and we have not enough bodies in and around the box for when the ball eventually gets played.
