⚽️ Europa League | Arsenal vs Sporting | Thu, 20:00: Page 20 - The Arsenal discussion community: One More in the Tolly

⚽️ Europa League | Arsenal vs Sporting | Thu, 20:00

goon

Claudius for sure the others don't help, but we had the same issue in the league when he was playing, just less pronounced because we had more control in possession. But teams had a bit more joy on the break with him in there.

Rohit

It was always going to be this trade off with Jorginho. We need to get the balance right when he plays especially against physical and athletic opposition. Zinchenko's defending isn't under the scanner because he is another one that is incredible on the ball and is protected by Xhaka and Gabriel's brilliance but if Jorginho, Zinchenko and Vieira are all on the pitch together we are bound to give away a lot of chances.

Clrnc

RocktheCasbah Yep, as per above. Some absolutely terrible teams out there too.

Would agree with JazzG, the inverted Fullback is exploited way too easily in Europe.

Don Pacifico

Personally, I don't think the issue is necessarily with Europe or cup competitions, I think the problem lies with Arteta's resistance to regular rotation. Our fluency comes from our first teamers playing lots of matches together and therefore intuiting where each other will be on the pitch. The subs don't have that fluency yet and it disrupts the whole team, particularly when we make too many changes in midfield.

Arteta needs to get better at regular rotation and has to learn in time for next season as we need to be playing a strong team in the CL.

Claudius

Don Pacifico
The flip side of this as you say is we would not be as fluid in the league. And maybe not top. Right now that’s a trade off I am happy to take.

Folks were marvelling at the season that Liverpool were at 79 points at this stage of the season. Most of their big players started over 35 games that season. The team was very fixed. Same starters, long minutes. That’s why they had the rhythm to hit 99 points.

Bring Back Kerrea Gilbert

Don Pacifico the only way we could rotate regularly and maintain our impressive form is by buying more Odegaard etc level players to rotate in.

It's clear Vieira is nowhere near that level, hence the lack of rotation.

Don Pacifico

Claudius The flip side of this as you say is we would not be as fluid in the league. And maybe not top. Right now that’s a trade off I am happy to take.

There's definitely a trade-off. We probably would have dropped a few more points in the first part of the season. But I guess my concern is that we may need to rely more on our squad depth for the run-in and drop points because our reserves haven't built up that fluency. I think we've seen this to a certain degree since the turn of the year where there have been a few games where we've been really off.

As I said, we need to find a way to make rotation work better as next season, we won't be able to field our reserves in Europe (seemingly we we weren't really able to do that this season either...it's been a pretty poor Europa campaign from start to finish, despite relatively ordinary opposition by European standards).

Clrnc

Not a valid excuse, yesterday was basically almost the full first team.

Don Pacifico

Vieira and Jorginho started in midfield, so I'd disagree with that.

Qwiss

Don Pacifico and they were both poor. If we'd started with Partey and Odegaard we'd certainly have won.

Clrnc

Don Pacifico so now 2 players meant its understandable we couldn't match a a very young Sporting team missing also a bunch of key players at home?

I really disagree with that. It was a very strong team put out there, and also ended very strong

Kel Varnsen

Sporting is a good team. Really fast on the break, and pressed (at times) really high up the pitch.

Vieira and Jorginho were simply not good enough to replace Ødegaard and Partey yesterday. Of course, Sporting tired as the game progressed, but we looked much better as soon as Partey came on. We improved even more when Ødegaard came on. I'm not too upset about being knocked out, but it is a little worrying how much worse we are when key players are out. The biggest worry for me was how disjointed we looked. At times there seemed to be a massive gap between our front four and the rest of the team.

Don Pacifico

Bring Back Kerrea Gilbert I don't think the answer can always be that we need to buy players. I do think we need an upgrade on Xhaka (that's not new) but Vieira is clearly rated by Arteta, he just isn't able to contribute consistently. Jorginho is also brand new to the club and we haven't found a way to conclusively overcome the differences in his game with respect to Partey yet (which given he's been here for just over a month, isn't that surprising).

Long story short, I think we should be able to get more from the options available.

Qwiss

Bring Back Kerrea Gilbert Trossard is not at Odegaards level but he's come in and been very good. We need more of that level in the team to rotate with the starters. The drop off doesn't need to be as big as it is from Ode to Vieira. TBF I can't imagine Arteta didn't expect more from Vieira by now given the fee we paid for him.

Kel Varnsen

Don Pacifico

Arteta seems to have a very particular set of ideas of what kind of patterns he wants to see on the pitch. Given how long it took for him to get the team to perform at this level, it probably takes some players a little bit longer to fully grasp those ideas and feel comfortable in his system. On the other hand, some players are probably not good enough. I thought Vieira had shown some promise earlier, but he was terrible yesterday..

goon

Kel Varnsen

Vieira is a good example of what you're talking about. Odegaard often makes certain runs to make space for Saka by dragging defenders away. Vieira was trying to do the same thing but his timing was off and all that he really achieved was to leave Nelson isolated without an option.

Burnwinter

goon Vieira was trying to do the same thing but his timing was off

Yeah, he's not quite there yet. Might be going a bit backwards in order to go forwards currently. I feel pretty confident that any young player with the quality and attitude will move ahead training with the crop we've got. Everything we hear about Vieira is that he has plenty of self belief, and he's not being asked to do anything the guys he eats breakfast with can't do.

QuincyAbeyie

Sporting are the fourth best team in Portugal while we're supposed to be the best in England. Saying that we went out to a good team sounds wrong to me - relatively to us they aren't.

Vieira was one of the most productive players in Portugal and now we're blaming our loss partly on him and Jorginho playing instead of our first choices. They'd walk into their team. It was simply not good enough from us, not that I massively mind being out of it.

goon

QuincyAbeyie 'not good enough' isn't really an explanation for why we lost though, so what's your theory?

I've always hated the 'no excuses' line of thinking because it basically shuts down any analytical view as to what went wrong.

Don Pacifico

Clrnc
No, that's not what I was saying.

Simply put:

Our structure works on an inter-personal understanding of what teammates are doing and where they'll be on the pitch etc.
Two thirds of our midfield were not first XI regulars and therefore don't have that understanding yet.
Our midfield yesterday was subsequently dysfunctional and probably the main area of the pitch where we lost the game given how laboured we were in our build-up (not to mention shielding of the defence).

There were more nuances to our poor performance but from my perspective, the above was the core reason.

HomeSteak

Sporting got Juve, and then the winner of United and Sevilla. For our title bid, it's a blessing we went out, make no mistake about it. Thursday - weekend is a killer combo.

Clrnc

Don Pacifico I understand all that, in fact I was probably in the minority when there were many saying we don't miss Partey on Jorginho's first start and I thought there was a huge drop off when Jorginho was playing. I just disagree with the thought that we made too many changes yesterday and thus lost the match.

I think all of those are not valid given that

-we have performed way better even in the league with Jorginho playing (a signing most praised as raising the bottom)
-we are at home
-not the first time this happened in europe
-Sporting too is missing key players and has an even younger/inexperienced team out there
-Them being dominant was more due to their tactical setup and not any singular players of us. In fact many of the first teamers performed worse than those 2 you mentioned out there

We definitely didn't make too many changes yesterday. If anything we made too little. It was a very strong team, a team good enough to also beat most teams in the PL.

goon

Burnwinter it takes time to learn the role for sure. Ode himself had some doubters as recently as pre-season.

Only way to learn is through game time though.

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