There's a lot of blame on our players in the individual threads which I felt was harsh. Many of them are clearly knackered and can't run. Odegaard was carrying an injury, Saka obviously is not match fit. These 2 in particular was very obvious. I was surprised they were not taken off. If at say 50% fitness Vieira and ESR still can't replace them for the final 30 minutes there's really no point to them at Arsenal. We overplayed Rice, Odegaard and Saka in particular when they have able subs on the bench. Martinelli looked more fresh because he was injured, but if he wasn't you can guarantee we would have played him into the ground too.
The fitness theme is evident, and the main reason why we keep failing in April. I kept mentioning we will regret playing all these key players for 90 minutes even when we are a few goals up in easy matches and it has happened again. These minutes always comes up to bite us later on. And it's not just minutes, the intensity required for all our attackers to do their defensive duties is unlike other clubs. They work harder than usual here which is also why we are so good defensively.
I keep hearing this argument every april that the squad is not good enough and we need an upheaval. I really don't think that's true. Every time Arteta don't trust the players on the bench, we automatically think they are not good enough, when the very fact in every summer is that people are very happy with our transfer dealings and every summer they say our squad is the strongest it has ever been. We don't rotate enough, we don't use our options enough, we play first teamers for 90 minutes in many games that is already won, we play first teamers in dead rubbers or cup matches. The balance has never been right and it always costs us yearly. We can continue to spend way over our limit, but if new players we buy becomes the players we play to the ground and the previous first teamers rots on the bench, the issue is the same.
There are other problems that I see under Arteta that we need to resolve
1) Firstly we are still not good at coming back at games. Since September the only game we came back to win was United at home. It's been buried because we don't really concede and often take the lead but this is clearly an issue. Once we fall behind, we seldom threaten afterwards. We had half an hour to come back and barely made a dent.
2) We have no progressive midfielders that can complete take ons. This is not that big of an issue 80% of the time, but in the 20% of big matches especially against teams on our level or better than us (City) we badly need someone to be able to carry the ball forward, be it on the wings or centrally. Musiala was a huge stand out yesterday because of his ability to carry the ball at pace but also fending of all our central midfielders. We need someone like this centrally. Sudakov, Barella that is good at tight spaces will be very helpful. Rice stood out like sore thumb because of his lack of technical ability in europe. Almost every 2 touches is followed by a heavy touch that needs to be tackled.
3) Don't think we should over analyse about Kai or singular problems because of the match yesterday, but one thing for sure is we still need a proper CF. Kai is not the permanent solution up there. It's important to have options there. Jesus can't stay fit and is extremely unprolific, Nketiah needs to be sold. A top winger is also needed if we are to move up another level, think @Claudius mentioned this in the other thread which I fully agreed.
4) Defence is not an issue. Cut out stupid nervous mistakes aside, I felt we were very solid and hardly troubled by them over 2 legs. Tomiyasu is clearly our best LB for now till Timber is back, he was one of our best players yesterday although that's not saying much, whole team was poor. But the 2 superb interceptions made by him created our 2 best openings. I think we can still cope with what we have defensively and might not need to spend here.
5) We are still way too conservatively setup in Europe. Arteta philosophy is not to lose, which is not wrong, but the key theme these days in the UCL is going for it. We have seen 7 teams really going for it and attempting shots, attempting crosses and really testing defences and goalies which we did not do consistently over the past 2 legs. I think our tactics need tweaking, which we can only hope he will learn after so many failed KO ties in all the european competitions. The way we setup is way too easy to be countered, even by lesser teams which till now we have no invention for.
