Coombs he also combines well with others. Doesn’t get the credit for that though as he makes it look simple
Brentford vs Arsenal. Saturday 17:30 UK time.
lorddulaarsenal yep, he immediately made us better in the middle third, and while he is still too conservative, a lot of his simple passing is only possible because he's there to do it in the first place.
lorddulaarsenal Amen.
Talk less of one who is fresh and fit and sharp.
Just a mediocre player for me. Hope we dump him soon - if we are going to be elite then Arsenal deserves better. He'll definitely have suitors we can recoup a major portion of the Kai Havertz transfer fee from.
Also was thinking. With the way we play what would an Ivan Toney offer us?
Toney? Well he is physical so can occupy defences, he is good in the air and can link well with others so he’d be a good target man. Also carries a legit goal threat and gives us a different option up top.
Probs not my first choice but he’d certainly improve us.
Has a spikey determined attitude too.
Nketiah’s Ramsdale moment
lorddulaarsenal so common for him. One of the most Tunnel vision player ever. The anti Joel Campbell
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lorddulaarsenal seeing that today made me just as angry as it made me last night. I legit would have subbed him off for that. Just basic stuff man...and then the "shot" he took. For me, Eddie should be 4th choice behind Jesus, Trossard & Havertz. Hell if all the above are out, I would probably play Nelson on the wing and Martinelli as a 9 before playing him
Kel Varnsen I hate this positional play style. There is no improvisation, flexibility or individual originality up front. Players just run to their designated spot and wait. We have to keep a certain amount of players in each channel and each zone and blablabla.. arteta is a fraud.
Hate the way we play. Ugly and rigid football. An example. When Martinelli gets the ball out wide, and unless he has an outstanding match, he'll nearly always pass the ball to Zinchenko. Positioned 10 metres further in and 5 metres further back. Zinchenko will then pass the ball back to Martinelli, 10 metres further in and 5 metres further back to Rice, or 15 metres further back to Gabriel. I get the idea. Wide angle triangular intersections. Connecting vertices (or effective tesselation) and cover most space most efficiently (shortest passes). But it is predictable and easy to defend. Why don't Zinchenko just sometimes leave his position and try to improvise something with Martinelli? Be more flexible and let players express themselves. Arteta has taken a good principle and absolutely destroyed it.
Don't think I have seen an opposition manager praise us so much before. Almost every match we play against Brentford Thomas Frank is in awe.
Clrnc he wants to stay in Josh's good books, just in case.
Arteta's 22/23 and 23/24 teams are amongst the best 20 xGa since this stat came in 2017
I don’t think they are told to be that rigid in the final third. Saka and Martinelli just have immature movement and positional sense. There were several occasions where Saka was doing exactly as you suggest, he came inside to escape being doubled up on, but picked up some really poor positions and half the time just stood on Odegaards toes.
I guarantee you there’s nothing stopping Martinelli from trying a give and go with Zinchenko, but the instinct to make a run is much harder to come by against a deep block.
The opposition has basically figured out 90% of our threat comes from the wide boys so a deep block that doubles up on them is what they’re going for.
We just need to get better at exploiting the space it leaves in other areas and swing in crosses relentlessly, so they realise it’s a bad idea.
Kel Varnsen We are extremely well trained, or in fact too well trained and too prepared. Everything is structured to a tee. Very little freedom encouraged.
That's a result of the constant micro management from the touchline. I mean if we are already doing this in matches, imagine all the instructions in training.
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I don't really buy that the players are to blame. We were better at overloading areas just last year (at least before the world cup). Partey, Ødegaard, Saka, and White were fairly regularly able to overload our right side, creating chaos and unbalance in the opposition back four. Xhaka and Jesus often helped out Martinelli on the other side. This year, we look disgusting going forward, and I think it is largely Arteta's fault.
Open play xG this year: 1.25 per game
Open play xG last year: 1.68 per game
That's a big difference.
Edit: a few other teams' open play xG this season
Spurs: 1.76
Liverpool: 1.77
City: 1.63
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Clrnc Ancelotti touches on this in an interview I saw recently. Basically there is such a thing as too much instruction, and this has the effect of stifling player creativity. Our boys don't really try to figure things out if they can't win their duels or find space. They just try the same thing over and over again as described by Kel. That's why you hardly see give and goes and third man combinations. Too risky. The preference is the safe, "control" option. We bore the opposition until they make a mistake and we are able to capitalize.
Kel Varnsen yup. That's a stark drop that can't be explained away by "Xhaka". This is absolutely by design and it's horrible football.
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Things change.
Injuries and form aside, the idea that the opposition will just let you keep doing what you’re very good at is naive. We started seeing it at times last season, speaking of which, what was our open play xG from the second half of last season?
‘They were causing havoc’ - what were they doing then that they are not doing now? Saka still held the width mostly, White’s overlaps were still restrained, Ode still held that same pocket of space he does now, and Partey wasn’t injured.
All of this is hard to prove either way. But here’s my prediction, feel free to bookmark it. At some point we will start to see the fluidity return to our football this season and our xG will increase to expected levels. The assumption on here will be that Arteta realised the error of his ways and taken off the hand break. The truth will be closer to a combination of us adapting to our new environment and the return of form and fitness of our best players.
And before you all pay me to tell your futures, I’m just predicting that was was said the season before last, and then last season when the football improved, will just repeat itself.