"The journey continues" - Mikel signs extension until 2025: Page 66 - The Arsenal discussion community: One More in the Tolly

"The journey continues" - Mikel signs extension until 2025

Burnwinter

Coombs I agree, it's not a great or decisive article—just a rapid fire summary of some numbers and names. I'm not sure it would become more substantial if the analysis went deeper or did thorough comparisons of clubs, or eras at Arsenal. The point I took from it was modest, part of my sense of our direction and outcomes so far this season. To quote myself above:

Burnwinter the low numbers are arguably symptomatic of an overall sclerosis with our selection practices that could be improved on.

Claudius

Burnwinter it’s a completely insane article.
When you are a midtable team, it is easy to put Saka, Martinelli, ESR, AMN, Nketiah, and Willock in the team and give them significant minutes. 1- the stakes are low. 2-the gap between them and one of youe starters is low. If we now go and get an 18 year old academy kid and ask him to replace one of our starters, the drop off will be substantial, and the risk in terms of the prizes we are chasing is also substantial. We cannot afford to just play kids when at the same time we get on this forum and it’s full of complaints about how Arteta has blown the budget and hasn’t bought well enough. The time for kids has passed. Any kid who wants to come in now needs to be Fabregas levels of special

Burnwinter

Claudius If we now go and get an 18 year old academy kid and ask him to replace one of our starters, the drop off will be substantial, and the risk in terms of the prizes we are chasing is also substantial

This is grave concern trolling if one considers the dead rubber against PSV, when we still didn't give a single youngster even a whiff of freshly cut grass … there was zero direct risk to any prize then.

It's obvious we've had many, many chances to double or triple our minutes for fringe and development players this season, which have been absurdly scanty. Reiss Nelson is getting 10 minutes for each substitute appearance, for example. It has gotten rather silly and can be improved on.

QuincyAbeyie

The only difference between now and 21/22 is that we're two points ahead of Tottenham in fifth, while back then they came two points ahead of us in fifth.

Coombs

I think the only way to see more youngsters is to have better youngsters.

Claudius

Coombs exactly.

Two thing contextually about that Lens game where we should’ve played the “kids”. One, we were dealing with some indifferent play at the time, and were trying to reintegrate Odegaard and Jesus who had both been injured. Was a great opportunity to see the whole team together finally after continuous, forced shuffling in previous weeks. In fact, the team had been turning over a lot early in the season despite complaints that Arteta didn’t use his squad.

Two - a lot of these so called best alternatives are either injured and unfit (Partey, Vieira, Timber, ESR etc), or loaned out (Biereth, Norton-Cuffy, Patino, Butler-Oyedeji etc). So what exactly are Mikel’s degrees of freedom here?

Claudius

Hey guys, just found this analysis that actually helps tie a few of the different discussions we are having
1) that the team has actually very small, specific needs - improve the chance generation and conversion. Defense and match control are fine
2) that it was helpful to use that Lens game to reintegrate Odegaard (versus using it for some benchwarmers).

I worry that at times we risk throwing out the baby with the bath water. The recruitment is wrong, the coaching is all wrong, we are regressing, etc., when data consistently shows very clear specific things we need to address.

flobaba

And those specific things could be addressed with better recruitment, and improved coaching.
😁

RocktheCasbah

flobaba Fulham was a really terrible performance, but we didn't lose to West Ham, or Newcastle or Villa, because of substandard coaching.

Claudius

RocktheCasbah seriously, both the Villa and West Ham games were statistical aberrations. We overwhelmed Villa right after they did the same to City. And they nicked a goal and called it a day. And I must repeat - the types of performance we put against West Ham often results in a comfortable drubbing for us. But we didn’t execute. They executed their few chances. And won. We set attacking records that day and achieved new lows for attacking bluntness. Those two games left me completely unworried about our season.

It’s the Fulham game that was a concern - but that had completely different dynamics and issues to these two games. The team was tired and disconnected after two big changes. What I worry about is seeing people writing big theses about Arteta that unify these 3 games when there isn’t actually a through line amongst them other than we lost. It’s like someone getting into 3 accidents and immediately assuming they’re a bad driver without actually assessing the accident scene.

QuincyAbeyie

Claudius It’s like someone getting into 3 accidents and immediately assuming they’re a bad driver without actually assessing the accident scene.

If you keep crashing into a wall where a driver has a 0,9 xNotCrash, you aren't necessarily unlucky.

If you caused the accidents, you're a bad driver. We weren't fucked over, we did it ourselves.

Bring Back Kerrea Gilbert

So are keepers just doing freakishly well against our shots? Is it a combination of that and poor, rushed, off-target finishing?

Claudius

Bring Back Kerrea Gilbert it appears to be a combination of bad shot selection and bad finishing. For a start, we are not taking as many shots as, say Liverpool and City. When we do take shots, we are getting very few on target.

It comes back to what I have said before about our dribbling and movement issues. We have high territory and defenses are set like a phalanx again us, so we end up taking a lot of low percentage shots under pressure. We need to find ways to move these defenders. And that requires us move more of our men but also do more take ons and execute those take ons.

Think about when Salah took on Zinchenko and was past. The rest of the defense was scrambling. Who is doing that consistently on our team?

Bring Back Kerrea Gilbert

Claudius good post, you're absolutely right. We just don't have tight enough dribblers in our squad, and not enough vertical, brave off the ball movement to cut through the buses.

Not related to the above, but I just watched Saka's hit-the-post effort against West Ham. The problem was his first touch (after an exquisite Odegaard flick) which put the ball straight in front of him, when he should have put the ball to his left so he could take a shot earlier and work an angle for that curling shot to the far post.

Also that Martinelli effort that didn't even go on target, was fucking criminal.

RocktheCasbah

QuincyAbeyie this is not an unfair point, but I believe the last week has also been exacerbated by both Fulham and West Ham extracting the maximum out of their shots on target. I think we've conceded 4 goals from 7 shots on target in those games. Over the same period, Spurs have made 6 points up on us, despite giving up 12 shots on target (and 24 shots total v Bournemouth) as they've only conceded 2 goals from those 12 shots.

I realise this tells you nothing about the quality of those shots, but I heard on the ArsenalVision pod that 10 of the chances we had against West Ham had a higher xG than the Mavropanos header that he couldn't have placed any better with his hand. Yes, we could be doing things (finishing) a little better, but I don't know how anyone could watch the West Ham game and say that, objectively, we weren't a little unfortunate.

Claudius

This is why I’m not sold on the idea of just getting a striker in. We have an incredible finisher in Eddie. He’s also completely rubbish at integrative play, and our issues are starkest when he’s in the middle. As things stand, we aren’t creating open chances for him. We had this issue with Lacazette as well. part of the problem we have this season is Odegaard has fallen deeper to facilitate play, leaving less of the quick fire interchanges with him, Jesus and Saka to create movement before defence settles.

Don Pacifico

Claudius We have an incredible finisher in Eddie.

Not really related to the rest of your post but I heartily disagree with this comment. It's a narrative that's drawn from the fact Eddie was a bit of a poacher earlier in his career but his actual goal conversion was marginally worse than Jesus last time I checked.

QuincyAbeyie

RocktheCasbah I don't know how anyone could watch the West Ham game and say that, objectively, we weren't a little unfortunate.

Depends on how you look at our chances. In terms of finishing, I'd say it's unfortunate for us when the opposing GK saves shots he usually doesn't. If we generate a high xG, but finish badly, that's not unfortunate. In our case, I think it's the latter.

You could say it's unfortunate that West Ham scored two, but even if they scored two less we'd still only walk away with a point, which isn't good enough.

Clrnc

Scoring from little shots on target doesn't mean much if the chance created is massive. We have tons of xG and possession and even shots but none of them was even threatening or forced any decent save from the goalie. People say we play that another 9 times and will win 9 times but I beg to differ.

I rewatched those games and we are genuinely insipid and create low value chances that's hard to finish. We have alot of touches in the box but was generally powderpuff. The chances opponents had was hard to miss. That's the difference. It wasn't bad finishing, we just didn't play well at all and brought it ourselves.

I agree about the Villa match but that doesn't apply to the West Ham match at home.

RocktheCasbah

Clrnc The chances opponents had was hard to miss. That's the difference. It wasn't bad finishing, we just didn't play well at all and brought it ourselves.

If you say so Clarence.

Claudius

RocktheCasbah Clrnc xG is a very simple concept. If we played that match 10 times, we would score 27 goals and West Ham 15 (and West Ham’s xG includes that 0,75 from the penalty). We far bettered West Ham. The West Ham game is not the game to use to say we are insipid, lacklustre etc. It is simply a case of one team creating a lot and finishing badly(a December trend for us) and another team getting lucky with its shots and getting a late penalty.

JazzG

RocktheCasbah The result and performance against Fulham was a disgrace and needs to be called out but against West Ham was pure bad luck. They probably got away with their first goal due to a player blocking the camera and then we missed some great chances. I think they had 3 shots on target the whole game and one was the missed penalty!

Clrnc

RocktheCasbah Which chance did we create that you think we should have scored but had an incredible bad/average finish in the West Ham game?

Or that Areola was super human and shouldn't have saved a particular chance?

RocktheCasbah

QuincyAbeyie If we generate a high xG, but finish badly, that's not unfortunate. In our case, I think it's the latter

Just so I'm clear, is there a threshold for what qualifies as "high"?

From where I'm standing (sitting), whilst I accept and agree with the notion we'd all like the xG differential to be greater, I don't think xG scores of 2.73 v 1.52 are going to result in a 2-0 defeat for the 2.73 team very often. That's what I mean by "unfortunate".

RocktheCasbah

Claudius I'd forgotten about the pen, probably because they missed it - so we lost 2-0 to a team that created effectively, 0.77 xG?

Blaaaaady hell....

Qwiss

Claudius xG is a very simple concept. If we played that match 10 times, we would score 27 goals and West Ham 15

Thats not entirely true. The xG doesn't take into account the finishing ability of the player with the chance. If Haaland gets a shot 2 yards left of the penalty spot with one defender in front of him and Jesus has the same chance the xG is equal. In reality if you take that shot 100 times I think we all know who scores it more often.

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