Our performances suffer somewhat from the compound, and compounding effects of Mikel Arteta's preference for a fixed system and selection, and his reluctance to rotate and make tactical variations.
I've fired off a few posts over the past couple of days, after thinking through the disappointments of our post Christmas slip-ups against West Ham and Fulham. Think it's worth a slightly fuller discussion so here goes.
To my mind 23–24 has been a bit confounding for us. Both by the numbers and to the eye, Arsenal has developed a dominant, highly organised tactical system and has a squad built and prepared to match it. Against West Ham, we generated a record number of touches in the opposition penalty area … for a team that subsequently lost, that is.
Things are very far from awful. We're 5 points off the top of the table, and so we're still in the title race, even if we've drifted alarmingly. But Arsenal is experiencing a malaise.
The Malaise
Words like "ineffective", "toothless", "predictable", "disjointed", and "incoherent" have been tossed around, rightly or wrongly. More of our goals now come from set pieces than any other Premier League side. We are finding our first goal in matches later on. When we need to find a winning goal, we are often frustrated.
There are a number of popular theories about all this, such as:
- Partey and Xhaka's absences
- A new midfield that will come good (optimistic view) or can't (Havertz sucks)
- Unfit or out of form forwards who will return to their best (optimistic view) or need upgrading (Jesus, Nketiah and Martinelli suck)
- A greater emphasis on defence impacting our forward play
So much for those, they've all been talked about a lot. But I currently think "The Persistence of Arteta" is the most satisfying explanation why we're sliding backwards.
The Persistence
The Persistence of Arteta rests on simple foundations: a love of control, and a hatred of risk. These foundations are not wrong. The Persistence manifests across many aspects of our decision-making:
- Low rotation of the XI
- Fixed system and roles within the XI
- Later and later substitutions on match day
- Low use of fringe and development players
- Prepared roles and squad hierarchy emphasised over form and quality when making substitutions, or covering for injuries and suspension
Along with its benefits, which include stability, detailed tactical instruction, refined collective understanding across the team, and so on, the Persistence of Arteta brings with it many negative impacts, and these seem to me to be increasing with time:
- Greater attention to executing the system than winning matches (Nketiah comes on instead of Trossard)
- Reduced internal competition (Saka is completely without a challenger for his position)
- Greater fatigue and exposure to injury for starters (Saka, Martinelli, White, others all jaded)
- Lower condition, match sharpness and motivation for fringe and development players (Nelson has 9 appearances for 100 minutes this season—why is he here?)
- Habitual, and therefore more absent-minded performances from starters (Martinelli and Ødegaard no longer "close")
- More refined and effective counter-tactics for other clubs (right side of our attack is shut down much more often)
While each of these negative aspects is relatively marginal—things definitely aren't that bad—in aggregate, it's all becoming more and more damaging, and it can still get worse.
The Prescription
The good news is, all this can be fixed tomorrow. All Arteta would need to do: sign another credible player for the front six, give Trossard, Nelson and Smith Rowe more minutes and starts from now on, give the likes of Saka and Havertz revised roles at kickoff and during matches, drop Martinelli if he's out of form, make his subs after 70 minutes not 85 minutes, bring players into the XI based on merit (less of Eddie please, he's been crap), and blood a few youngsters. If he did these things, I believe we'd see an instant bounce.
