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.

Clrnc

Rice is consistent at his safe passing, very good at covering (you can tell he was a CB previously) but really isn't worth 105m. Market is so fucked.

I think if Partey comes back, we push Rice to 8 our structure will be much better

Kel Varnsen

Rice is conservative with his passing, but so is Gabriel, Saliba, Zinchenko, White and pretty much everyone else except for maybe Ødegaard. Seems to me the whole team is playing too safe by design or by accident. Either way I'd put the blame on Arteta.

Bring Back Kerrea Gilbert

Kel Varnsen don't think Odegaard is an exception.

goon

Kel Varnsen

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.

Tam

Ricky1985 you should be worrying now. I am. Arteta doesn’t have a good record of coping without his preferred first team and making use of the wider squad. All well and good saying these issues aren’t present when Saka and Martinelli are there but we’ll go nowhere if we can’t function without the first XI every week.

I was saying the same about Zinchenko and Partey last year, and our ability to cope with a system without key individuals who really make it function. This year we are a handful of games in and it’s already Saka and Martinelli we’re talking about.

HomeSteak

Tam I agree, that is the one thing that scares me about Arteta. His team and his system stop working if one players is out. And in todays football, with the sheer number of games we play, someone will be injured pretty often.

Kel Varnsen

Bring Back Kerrea Gilbert

I didn't include him because he does try the occasional heel flick or through ball.

Don Pacifico

Seen that Arteta suggested our problems lay in the boxes (not clinical enough up front, sloppy at the back). Was I the only one who thought the opposite in that the problem was in midfield and how ineffective we were at pressing the opposition and progressing the ball?

goon

Don Pacifico

We had a couple of big chances that we missed and they were clinical with theirs, which is what he means.

He did also say we didn’t create enough and didn’t make use of the spaces too.

Gazza M

Don Pacifico

absolutely. the midfield has quietly been the root cause of our problems this season imo

Don Pacifico

goon the way I read it was that our issues in the boxes superceded everything else, which I disagree with. If we're more effective in midfield, I think we win yesterday despite the errors at either end of the pitch. Only started to look vaguely functional in the last ten minutes of the game.

RocktheCasbah

Not saying that I'm overly affected by Arsenal games, but I woke up from a dream where I narrowly avoided being crushed by the Eiffel Tower coming down in front of me...

I was, as you know, prepared to give Havertz time to come good, but whilst I don't want to scapegoat him for all our issues, if you haven't got a functioning midfield you haven't got anything. And this guy is a passenger at the moment. I'd love to know how much time Arteta is prepared to give him, because the difference between him and a front footed player like, er, Emile Smith Rowe is night & day. And you could make the argument Smith Rowe is coming on and running at a tired defence - but last night it was also a massed defence, with Lens having just gone in front.

I do think this game is a game that, on another night with the same chances going to both teams, we could have won three zip, but as I said immediately afterwards 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. If it's by design, then I assume Havertz will get a little bit longer, but in doing so Arteta risks throwing 2 years of progress away.

flobaba

RocktheCasbah I don't like how we play.

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.

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.

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.

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