Arteta’s 11 red flags : Page 4 - The Arsenal discussion community: One More in the Tolly

Arteta’s 11 red flags

Meatwad

and klopp then took over after another season started like shit for liverpool and it looked like the rot had firmly set in.

Clrnc

JazzG Absolutely spot on. The word is overcoached till it is pedestrian.

We have no invention and creativity. Even the pattern of play from Odegaard most of the times seems the same.

SimplyThePest

JazzG According to his book, Ancelotti's approach is generally one of pragmatism. He doesn't have a fixed way of playing. An anti-Guardiola or Klopp, of you will. Play to your players' strengths. Defence is about concentration and organisation. Attack, while following some general 'ideas', should be unpredictable and allow for players to be creative and improvise.

"In any case, I don't fall into any subcategory. The good coach is the one who adapts the game to the characteristics of the players. If I have Modric and Kroos I can't expect to do high pressing. I'd be an idiot if with a striker like Vinicius, who has a motor under his feet, I didn't rely on the counterattack. I'll give you one last example: if I have Ronaldo in front of me I study how to get the ball to him often, I don't ask him to exhaust himself by tracking back. It's the same with Ibra. There are two types of players: those who make a difference and those who have to run. Conte must have said that, and if he didn't it's fine too. I've never cultivated an ideology like Guardiolismo, Sarrismo. My creed is team identity."

I can't help but think of Martinelli when I read that.

Claudius

SimplyThePest
“I’m a hippie without a philosophy. I tell Ibra, Vinny, Ronaldo, Modric, and Kroos to do whatever they want. And hope that I might get something out of these barren players”

SimplyThePest

Claudius Jeez, lacking your usual nuance, Claude... 😛

Tam

Claudius
Clrnc

Couldn’t disagree more. We don’t have quality in depth. We have a strong, but not elite, first team. We may have more numbers than the Wenger era but as Big Willie points out it’s not a straightforward comparison due to number of facets of the game that have changed since then.

Have a look at some of the players who were playing off the bench in 2003/04. We only really had a core squad of about 16/17, but those not generally considered first teamers were the likes of Parlour, Edu, Wilford, Reyes and Kanu. That’s a marked difference in terms of trust, experience and/or quality to Nketiah, Vieira, Nelson, and Smith-Rowe.

Technically we’re not all that. We’ve done really well against City and Liverpool in the league, but in Europe our shortcomings are clear to see and the physically edge/domination we can exert in the Premier League just doesn’t work as well. Think it may have been Goon that referenced elsewhere our inability to be able to smother games with possession the way City do. We just don’t have enough technicians in the first team to be able to do that. We look blunt in Europe because Odegaard aside, we don’t have players of a high enough quality who can operate in tight spaces with any degree of effectiveness. Too easy for teams to sit back and neutralise us.

We are scoring for fun, we have been good to watch. I don’t think that’s necessarily a sign that this team and squad is as advanced as we think it is. Our physicality had a huge bearing on our (relative) success so far this season, but our over-reliance on that to the detriment of technical development in the team means we’ll likely struggle as teams see how to stop us and figure it out themselves.

We’ve had the warnings.

awooga83

Tam agree and in the fact we've scored lots of goals as well, yes we put some poor teams to the sword and scored plenty of goals that has helped boost the numbers but we've struggled in too many games as well where the tactics haven't worked and had no answer. So this isn't a great attacking side yet with the consistency of threat that the top teams require.

Claudius

Tam We’ve done really well against City and Liverpool in the league, but in Europe our shortcomings are clear to see and the physically edge/domination we can exert in the Premier League just doesn’t work as well.

Raya, White, Saliba, Gabriel, Tomi, Rice, Odegaard, Martinelli, Saka: what do these players have in common?

Bring Back Kerrea Gilbert

Tam indeed, and it feels like we've neglected high-level technique for many years. The neglect probably started as far back as 2011.

Prior to that we were always THE most technical team in England and one of the most in Europe.

Tam

Claudius could have just made your point.

flobaba

JazzG yep, this has always been my biggest criticism of control /Arteta ball. It has been working, and is effective, however it is just so rigid and prescribed, does not really encourage player flair and creativity outside of maybe what Odegaard shows. The rest just feels like duels and xGs and percentages.

Claudius

Clrnc Thanks for the post. Very well thought out. I agree overall that we need to find ways to rest players, particularly in specific positions - mainly players who are leading the press and doing most of the running, the 8s and the forwards.

That said, I would suggest that you look at a different time period for your Liverpool comparable. Simple reason is maturity of the respective projects. If I look at our top 10 players usage across League, Community Shield, League Cup, League, FA Cup and Champions League, I project out that they will have around 37 200 minutes of use for this season. This is Arteta's 4th full season as manager in his building project.

If we look at Klopp's 4th full season, that was 2019-20, where his top 10 players did 36 500 minutes in winning the title (2% less than Arteta). The year before that, the Liverpool players did 38 100 minutes in finishing 2nd to City. By 2021 this amount for top 10 players on the team was down to 35 000 minutes as they added players like Thiago and Jota to round out the team.

What is happening? Klopp quickly built a team of players he really really trusted. In each of 2018-19 and 2019-20, he had 7 players who played in at least 34 league games, players like Allison, van Dijk, Robinson, Mane, Salah, Firmino etc. This is really good squad building. He has focused early investment on players who could compete for the title, finished 2nd and 1st, and then started spending on depth around them. This is much better than spending early on players in the 11-15th bracket because at the end of the day, football games are about winning positional/zonal battles, and you can only do that with superior players.

In both of these seasons, he had barely used veterans like Sturridge, Lovren, Lallana, Xaqiri, etc., getting about 300 minutes each, the types of players who might be expected to get 1000 minutes, but he did not depend on them to drive his philosophy.

So if Arteta follows Klopp's squad building approach, he will add 2 more players like Thiago and Jota who can contribute significant minutes and substantial output.

Claudius

Tam 9/11 of our starters in their first champions league knockout stages. This is all new for them. Remember this is the 2nd or 3rd youngest team in the premier league.

Tam

Claudius It’s fair point but I don’t see the relevance to our technical level.

Gazza M

Claudius it's a fair point, and one I've made as well. it does draw into relief what an exceptional coach klopp is. the squad that ran to the 2018 CL final had virtually no CL experience, and the 2019 team that won it really only had the previous years experience. whatever experience gap the players had, klopp probably made up for with this CL coaching experience. ive somewhat benchmarked our progress against what klopps liverpool managed to do, and while we've made great strides it's probably time to accept their project just came together better/quicker than ours has, and that's ok

Claudius

Gazza M Klopp and Edwards will always be the benchmark for squad building. Maybe we should’ve gone as early as them into big tentpole investments like van Dijk and Allison. Beyond Salah, those are two hall of famers.

Claudius

Bring Back Kerrea Gilbert we have technical quality now. Think about the players we’ve replaced in the back like Kola, Tierney, Emi/Lehman, etc., the technical level wasn’t there. Important just because of how much the back half of the team is responsible for playmaking now.

Our issue is specific. We need to upgrade the left hand side of the field. Whether it’s left 8, left back, left wing, or striker. We have games where 60% of attack goes down the right. We never have the opposite. Bayern literally just put 4 men in that right pod and our offense died.

Now imagine if Martinelli had a Musiala or Wirtz next to him. We’d immediately upgrade both positions. Martinelli didn’t suddenly get bad. He’s playing with zero partnerships on the left.

Bring Back Kerrea Gilbert

Claudius yes, our defence is now quite technical. The midfield and attack are not at the top technical tier aside from Odegaard, Partey (but he's gone) and maybe Jesus (in terms of first touch and manipulating the ball in tight areas).

Tam

Claudius We aren't unlocking defences by upgrading Kolasinac and Martinez with Tomiyasu and Raya.

Martinelli, as much as I love him, isn't a top end technical player. Nor is Havertz. Jesus - great dribbling, good touch, great fight - not elite. Rice, not elite. Odegaard, Saka - proper top end stuff - but we don't have enough players supporting them on their level. Partey and Jorginho, both great technically but with massive drawbacks in other aspects of their game - largely fitness for different reasons and unreliable as a result. It makes it too easy to crowd us out of games.

So yeah, we've got a great, and enviable, level of technical skill in the back line but Gabriel and Saliba aren't picking apart deep defences. It's great against 80% of the league and is a huge foundation in getting us to this point, but to make the difference at the top end we're going to have to add a bit more guile and craft to that, and almost as importantly, have conviction in that ability.

Claudius

Bring Back Kerrea Gilbert you saw the Bayern guys in these areas. I’ll do a longer post earlier on how Bayern beat us. Spent time looking at the numbers and some videos. It’s quite obvious, and I actually think our hands were a bit tied. We fucked up after that first 20 minutes in London. Should’ve taken our 1 goal lead and squeezed the life out of these guys

Mirth

Claudius . We fucked up after that first 20 minutes in London

honestly the analysis of this tie should come down to this.

Yeah, we weren't great in Munich but it was still a C/L quarter final away from home - it's always a difficult ask regardless of how Bayern were performing domestically.

However the fact that we let in two sloppy goals in the first tie is where the inquisition should be. Even going to the Allianz with a 1 goal advantage may have been enough

Qwiss

Mirth Yeah, we weren't great in Munich but it was still a C/L quarter final away from home - it's always a difficult ask regardless of how Bayern were performing domestically.

This is one of the reasons I was so upset we didn't get that penalty. Going to Bayern with a lead would have made things very different. When you don't win at home these things are much, much tougher. Always felt we were only an outside shot after that.

flobaba Getting some Jose Mourinho in Porto vibes from some of these posts. As much as I want to win, I don't want to do it by consistently, deliberately setting out to play defensively. I don't want that to be our identity. Because I feel like that's what will happen eventually.

TBH I thought we were too much in that vein this week. Reluctant to take risks and too static. I think you need to go an impose yourself in these games. This isn't the early 00's. Just look at the reaction from Real when they beat City, as shit as this weeks been for the PL they are the teams everyone fears. And they feel like its a big deal beating PL teams. We are elite now, we need to act like it.

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