Arteta’s 11 red flags : Page 5 - The Arsenal discussion community: One More in the Tolly

Arteta’s 11 red flags

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.

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.

That is a choice we can make. We know we can be good locking things down. We have to get better upfront. That has to be the goal, not becoming ultra conservative in our approach.

Gazza M

flobaba we're more rafas liverpool. Jose's teams were defensive, but also crazy efficient on counter attacks and had ruthless finishers in the forward positions.

awooga83

Yep the set up is risk off just try not to concede and maybe you can shade it. The problem is we are so reliant on this system with everybody pretty much having to be a near perfect performance and when we are even a little off and the game goes against us we just don't have any plan or response. It's a bit too one dimensional and on Wednesday when that goal went in it just felt like we were done game plan out the window and we didn't know what to do

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

Tam I agree with this. These guys are important for enabling us to play a high line. In any possession team, the defenders and DM are the highest touch players. So we need them to be elite passers - it’s why Pep and Arteta are obsessed with defenders btw. They also need to have foot speed. So this is a hygiene issue for our football.

But to move the ball the final 30 yards, you need more Saka’s and Odegaards. That’s the gap you call out.

Claudius

Gazza M we are more Pep. We’ve just ever had the front half quality he’s always enjoyed throughout his career. We make up for it by using our press more like Klopp than Pep.

Gazza M

when we execute well, we're not far off peps teams. however the dark side of tetball is rafa-esque conservatism

Claudius

Gazza M. You know how the world has 1% who live well, but within that group there is the 1% who might as well live on Mars. I think the rest of the football world from an attacking standpoint (ie, the bottom 17% in the league) look at us like the rich. We typically put up anywhere from 20-80% more shots than the rest of the league. It’s night and day.

City put up 10% more shots than us. Pool put up 20% more shots than us. We are a very attacking team. Pool are just elite at generating shots. The ultra rich. What sets them apart from us and city is directness - ball moves with fewer passes and greater vertical speed to goal. Arsenal and City have slowest build ups in the league, but make up for it by having the most technical players and pressing, so retain the ball the most

Clrnc

Claudius Arsenal and City have slowest build ups in the league, but make up for it by having the most technical players and pressing, so retain the ball the most

We are only the 5th most possession based team in the league so your statement is wrong.

We also have the 6th most touches of the ball, so it's even behind Pool

Claudius

Clrnc
This is the latest data I have - please take a look. Our attack speed is now 3rd slowest after City and Brighton. And then you can see that we are one of the 3 pressiest teams along with Spurs and Pool. You have to look at all this data together. Just looking at touches of the ball doesn’t tell you what a team is doing with the ball. Combined with this data, you can see that retain the ball, and recover it quickly when we lose. Hence why I said we needed really good-on the-ball defenders first and foremost to play this style.

Clrnc

Claudius this only shows the style of play, but doesn't have any data who retain possession or have the most possession tbh.

Liverpool style is more direct and faster than us but they also have more possession and passes than us.

Claudius

Btw, I really hate the data they show during the games. A lot of it is not very helpful. Possession and passing data without attack speed or field tilt doesn’t tell you what a team is actually doing with the ball.

Qwiss

Clrnc we are far less possession based than Wengers sides. All you to look at to know that is individual passing numbers. Plus under Wenger the full backs and midfielders passed the most, under Arteta its the centre halves so our possession tends to in different areas too.

Claudius

Clrnc there isn’t a god stat that I know of that captures style of play. Obviously we watch the games, but we have to combine different pieces of data that explain how we think about football, exactly as you are saying - how much of the ball do you have, where do you have it, what are you doing with it, how effectively are you doing it? These are different numbers.

awooga83 also right. The biggest charlatans are those that use 1 or 2 numbers and try to explain the entire game. I had a free sub to Scott’s medium. He will typically do about 6 or 7 different charts to explain what was happening in a game. Not one or 2 numbers.

And xG is a summarising stat. It doesn’t predict for you if you have 0,4xG chance what someone will do with it. What it tells you is that from 100,000s of shots in a dataset, looking at shots with these characteristics, this is what we would expect on average. There is no 0,4 of a goal. Only 0 or 1. You score or you don’t.

Claudius

Qwiss 100%. We are playing very different football from Wenger. And so are City.

awooga83

Yeah I disagree quite strongly with Scott's full reliance on his data analysis to explain everything. It's how he approached the xG debate even when it was clear our attack was malfunctioning but his approach is xG is good so there is no issue but that's far too simplistic an approach. Data can be helpful to add some understanding but it is never useful on it's own and requires context. For xG for example a chance may statically be expected to result in a goal but if you have poor finisher, as we have found this season, you will miss many of those so there is still a problem there and refering to the xG won't explain that fully.

Qwiss

awooga83 For xG for example a chance may statically be expected to result in a goal but if you have poor finisher, as we have found this season, you will miss many of those so there is still a problem there and refering to the xG won't explain that fully.

We are actually outscoring out xG. Our problem isn't the finishing its not taking the shots.

Clrnc

Claudius I know, but I am just pointing out that the statement "City and Arsenal retain the ball the most" is false.

Claudius

Clrnc yes. We are 5th or 6th on that measure. But again, I caution people that that specific stat doesn’t say what people are doing with the ball and how they create threat. That was the point. Thanks for pointing out

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