We play football tonight(Tuesday). Away to Lens, 20:00 UK Time. : Page 15 - The Arsenal discussion community: One More in the Tolly

We play football tonight(Tuesday). Away to Lens, 20:00 UK Time.

goon

It's definitely not by design.

Put it this way, if the point of safe passing is to simply keep the ball, then it doesn't work because time and again we end up boxing ourselves in at the back, hit it long and give the ball away anyway. We also risk it all to try and play out the back, then become conservative as we get the ball into space up the pitch? It's too contradictory to be by design.

In nights like yesterday you need great movement and to be on the same wavelength. The passing is safe because there's no real movement to get away from the aggressive pressing and marking, passes need to be made early, they need to be crisp and sharp, all of that was missing. Look how many loose touches, poorly weighted and poorly guided passes we had. We stood no chance.

The only thing I'm not sure about is Gabriel. He's so much more conservative with his passing this year that I'm wondering if it's by design or if it's because there's no Xhaka. But it's been driving me mad how he just defaults to passing to Saliba.

Burnwinter

Mirth qually not bringing on ESR and Nelson compounds the issue too

It's become very circular. Fringe player sceptics—or those swearing blind we should keep running Saka into the ground until he's literally hobbling off the pitch—will claim a player like Nelson's useless with little evidence because he rarely features, then claim they were proven right when he features for ten minutes and doesn't make an impact.

The apparent solution is to start fringe players in less important matches and secondary competitions, and give players proper half hour sub appearances. That's not super hard to grasp. I guess there are probably some downsides but they seem outweighed by the positives.

RocktheCasbah

Burnwinter Fringe player sceptics—or those swearing blind we should keep running Saka into the ground until he's literally hobbling off the pitch—will claim a player like Nelson's useless with little evidence because he rarely features, then claim they were proven right when he features for ten minutes and doesn't make an impact.

Yeah, I mean last night I thought Reiss was particularly poor, but again, Arteta waits till we've gone a goal behind and are now facing an even more massed defence than we had been previously to send him on, what chance did he have really? It was the 10-15 minutes that led up to the winning goal where we would have seen the best of Nelson as the game had opened up into something a bit more basketbally - and there was space to drive into. And then Lens scored.

Qwiss

RocktheCasbah Reiss was poor but so was Vieira, Havertz, Zinchenko, Tomi, Rice, Raya, Trossard, etc Jesus was absolutely useless for 10 minute spells too. We shouldn't judge Nelson (not saying you are BTW) on a bad 10 minute spell any more than he should be hyped up because he scored that winner against Bournemouth. He needs consistent minutes to show where he's at. Same as any other player. I just hope a bad cameo here doesn't mean Nelson isn't given those opportunities.

daredevil

So far this season, I only count one match which meets the criteria of less important or a secondary competition. In which game all of the fringe players started.

Burnwinter

daredevil It's a reasonable point but it's hard to deny some of the subs are made very late, and that's been particularly the case for the fringe forwards.

awooga83

Fully agree with the points about the squad. Most of the time we bring them in when the game state is pretty poor. Either we are behind and in a bit of a panic or the game is done and there is limited wider team quality. Then it's seems to be well I gave them 10 minutes in that defeat when we were down and that means they don't cut it. But as referenced above this is in the context of the majority of first teamers being poor.

You have to give those players chances to play in more positive conditions and in games where it matters. Arteta's default seems to be my first team if they don't deliver I refuse to find an alternative strategy but that just isn't a viable option for success. Maybe in some outlier situations but not for the most part and a top coach has to be able to impact the teams performance during a match because things will come about that was not anticipated. Including your top players having an off day. It's part of Arteta's management that I remain to be convinced on and have not seen much effort to address.

flobaba

RocktheCasbah I don't like how we play.

Bring Back Kerrea Gilbert

flobaba coached to death and zero independent creative thought on the pitch.

Clrnc

flobaba We are basically winning because of our players quality and some moments of brilliance, not because we are a coherently coached team that is superior tactically to the teams around.

And that's why when we lose one or two players, everything goes to shite. Newcastle can lose Willock, Botman, Barnes, Joelinton, Wilson and still play exactly the same way for example.

Big Willie

RocktheCasbah for me the problem isn't that we lost, it's how passively we play - I mentioned sterile domination at the weekend and there's a lot of that going around

That was my issue with how we've been playing this season and why, although I was happy about the results that went our way this weekend, including ours, I wasn't happy with what I was seeing on the pitch because it looks more of the same despite the win.

We've gone from a team that has attacking verve last season, even towards the end when we were dropping points through a leaky defence, to one that's reminiscent of our 20/21 and part of 21/22 season. We can't keep hoping for Saka, Martinelli and Odegaard to keep bailing us out in spite of our poor set up. Eventually it'll catch up to us, though you could argue there are signs there that it's already begun to catch up to us.

Not sure what Arteta will do to make us better but I hope he can figure it out before its too late as this horseshoe of death is one of the main reasons I hated our football during Arteta's reign prior to last season.

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