Arsenal - Newcastle, today at 20:00 UK Time, for some reason.: Page 11 - The Arsenal discussion community: One More in the Tolly

Arsenal - Newcastle, today at 20:00 UK Time, for some reason.

Claudius

Big Willie one thing you miss - by having to invert White, you need to push Saliba from being the central centre back to being our right centre back. With Gabriel more central.
I love Gabi, but I would always rather have Saliba as my central centre back and at the heart of play making. These are all Kiwior - related adjustments.

Credit to Arteta. He tried to play Kiwior as an inverting fullback against Fulham. Kiwior put in probably our worst performance of any player this season and was removed at halftime. Arteta adjusted half the team to make it work. Really good management.

That said Arteta/Edu need to think about how many injured / injury prone left backs we have right now, and how we fix it. We have 3 with us and 1 in Spain.

Big Willie

Claudius one thing you miss - by having to invert White, you need to push Saliba from being the central centre back to being our right centre back. With Gabriel more central.
I love Gabi, but I would always rather have Saliba as my central centre back and at the heart of play making. These are all Kiwior - related adjustments

That may be, but we're better off defensively, and Gabriel is no slouch when it comes to building up the play. I also don't see much difference in the amlint of the ball that Saliba gets currently compared to before because White doesn't hold onto the ball nearly as much as White does, meaning the ball gets recycled back to the CBs in any case.

Claudius Credit to Arteta. He tried to play Kiwior as an inverting fullback against Fulham. Kiwior put in probably our worst performance of any player this season and was removed at halftime. Arteta adjusted half the team to make it work. Really good management

That is a credit to Arteta, but many were calling for this going back to even last season whenever Zinchenko was out and we'd end up with Tierney/Kiwior being forced into uncomforta ly playing the Zinchenko role when we had White.

Clrnc

Claudius one thing you miss - by having to invert White, you need to push Saliba from being the central centre back to being our right centre back. With Gabriel more central.
I love Gabi, but I would always rather have Saliba as my central centre back and at the heart of play making. These are all Kiwior - related adjustments.

We have been far more solid doing it this way. When you don't concede stupid goals you can concentrate on attack fully. Our xG for the past 7 games is like 1.2 or something, the next best is City on 6.7. It's huge

Big Willie

DiabyKungFu There are many ways to skin a cat and I don't think we should necessarily be completely married to any specific notion of how our defenders should play, but I will point out that John Stones stepped into the Cancelo/Zinchenko role in a fairly like-for-like way.

But doing it whilst having the ability to cover better than Zinchenko usually did. Similar to how White is doing now.

Big Willie

In any case, I'm really enjoying the way we've been setting up since the winter break whether it's with Trossaed and Havertz or whether it's Rice and Jorginho. Both setups seem to fit the personnel we have and it's working depending on the opposition we face. I just wouldn't want to see Zinchenko walk right back in and disrupt that balance.

Claudius

Big Willie I’m also enjoying games. I 1) don’t think that we are playing better because Zin is out, it’s tactical. And 2) I also think that we were playing much better in November and December than many fans gave credit for, apart from that dastardly Fulham game when the team just looked wiped.

Qwiss

Claudius he a progressive passer because he's passing from deep. It's a stupid use of statistics to compare him to our midfielders who are passing from more advanced positions. It's just a reflection of our tactical approach rather than his own quality. And it's more beneficial overall to have Ode, Jorge, etc dictating the game.

Claudius

Qwiss it really isn’t. Notice I differentiated by saying he does high value passing. So Rice is a big progressive passer, for example, but he’s a lower risk and lower value passer than Zinchenko - which is why I mentioned that data. Why do you think Odegaard spends so much time in the 6 position? It’s to improve the speed with which we get the ball to the forwards, because this is not Rice’s forte. Other big help is Jorginho who is the highest value passer on the team and amongst all of Europe. Again, taking the ball out of Rice’s feet.

The main thing you’re seeing is Arteta understands players’ strengths and weaknesses and is adjusting to make us play better.

Qwiss

Claudius definitely don’t outgrow a player of that unique ability. His play making ability is unique. Basically only Trent and cancelo can create at that level from fullback.

But he doesn't create like those 2. Not close. Trent is on another planet compared to Zinchenko.

goon

Ode said there was no difference between our approach today and against Porto.

Whatever tactical and personal tweaks there have been, most of our improvement is down to confidence, particularly when progressing the ball from the back. We were fizzing it onto the feet of players through the lines, everything else blossoms from there.

Qwiss

goon genuinely think it was mostly nerves against Porto. Our approach was same as usual but the passes and touch were just off.

Qwiss

Big Willie this. We are better with White inverting because he's less important to the build up. When Zinny played we were going through him way too much and it limited us. We are far more fluid with this set up.

goon

Qwiss

I said that Zinny was annoying me more on the ball than anything else. He’s been too slow, too ponderous and trying too hard to be the man.

Zinny still has a role to play, but long term his days are numbered imo.

goon

That first half performance was unreal. This team has a very, very high ceiling.

lorddulaarsenal

goon great to see that psychotic press back. Not seen it that turbo charged since we strangled Chelsea in pre season a year or so back

QuincyAbeyie

Qwiss Porto also played more like how Newcastle want to. The current Newcastle are quite terrible and have lost their pressing ability (or are too tired/injury-ridden to do so at a high level).

Gunner89

Qwiss

We were poor but not as bad as the ref

Qwiss

goon I'd like to see him moved on this summer. Should still fetch a decent fee and I don't think we'd miss him much overall.

Big Willie

Claudius Other big help is Jorginho who is the highest value passer on the team and amongst all of Europe. Again, taking the ball out of Rice’s feet.

That's why we are much better with Jorginho in there supported by Rice (with his high press) and White inverting with Odegaard further up the pitch closer to the box and Kiwior in the traditional fullback role than with Zinchenko being given that responsibility. Jorginho passes the ball much quicker and controlls the tempo much better. He knows when there is a pass on to break the lines and when their isn't he quickly moves it along to help us start again.

daredevil

Claudius

Jorginho has been key since the restart and has single handedly replaced both Partey and Zinchenko's importance. I'm hoping he continues to grow in his thirties, because he's still playing at a high level, and there's absolutely no reason why we should be looking to replace him with a younger, and more likely inferior player at the moment.

Claudius

One thing that has really impressed me in the last few months is how we have changed how we press. We now press with much more ferocity and take more risk. Part of why you see White so high up so often. We are willing to leave opposition forwards unmarked just so we can quickly close down defenders when they have the ball. I have rarely seen a press that aggressive

est

Claudius And going forward we're less rigid in our positioning. Before we were way too worried about keeping our shape(for mostly defensive and possession retention purposes), but now we have a much better balance between keeping our shape and passing it around when teams try to press us vs moving the fullbacks high up to overlap/create overloads and having the wide played make more direct and even diagonal runs into the box and even all the way across the pitch instead of just hugging their touchline. Some really nice link up play from the likes of Havertz and Rice(who I'm told by many on here is a DM and we should play him just as one) in between the lines has made Odegaards life so much easier as well.

All in all, big props to Arteta and the coaching staff for making the required tweaks. Looking much better now. If only we could be just a touch more clinical in our final ball and finishing...

Claudius

QuincyAbeyie Porto also had an absolute bog of a field where we could barely pass. And a referee who was eager to indulge their play acting. Those two things worked against us. We will kill these guys in London.

Gunner89

QuincyAbeyie

Lot of injuries

Claudius

daredevil Jorginho is a playmaking wizard. It’s why it was surprising to see so many fans down on his arrival last winter.
We should keep going back to Chelsea. They have a lot of misused players.

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