"The journey continues" - Mikel signs extension until 2025: Page 67 - The Arsenal discussion community: One More in the Tolly

"The journey continues" - Mikel signs extension until 2025

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.

QuincyAbeyie

RocktheCasbah what "high means isn't really relevant to my point. Higher xG in this case would be any number higher than the amount of goals we scored.

The point is that it's not unfortunate that we score few goals on many bad shots. High xG just means that we should've done better with those chances, but the rest is up to us as well. Rare =/= unfortunate. It's unfortunate if the opposing GK has an unusually good day and save shots that usually go in.

FEBravo

@Claudius Yes but assuming average finishing. That's part of the point: Jesus is a poor finishing and Martinelli has been finishing incredibly poorly this season so far. I do think we were unlucky about West Ham to a certain degree, and that's how we would expect to lose matches or drop points against lower teams. That happens. Fulham was just abject performance-wise.

Claudius

FEBravo yes. Assuming average finishing. The thing with finishing is that people tend to finish around a small range over time. What is most useful to teams over time is chance generation. When we were in the complete doldrums when Arteta first arrived, we were barely generating chances.

That’s why I said the team finishing issue is a minor problem. That’s a December dip. We will come back up. Chance generation though needs to go up a few percent overall, including getting more shots on target.

Claudius

RocktheCasbah yeah. The West Ham game is a complete anomaly. The issue is that it was in the middle of other tough results and that indifferent Fulham performance - where funnily enough we still out xG’d the Cottagers.

Big Willie

RocktheCasbah 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....

I remember you trying to tell me, very dismissively by the way, that you can't deduct xG for penaties that time we won 2 penalties against Bournemouth.

Coombs

Claudius see I think this is a very wrong-headed conclusion to draw. The best strikers are the ones who get a lot of chances and convert them. Getting chances isn't the product of some mysterious "chance generation", it comes from players trying to score goals by, get this, taking up scoring positions and shooting the ball toward the net.

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