• The Arsenal

  • Manchester United v Arsenal - Sunday May 12th - 1630 PM GMT

what I've noticed is our attack doesn't have the oomph to do jose-stype sucker punch counters when we're sitting deep. we lack the efficiency/clinicality to play that way. our guys look indecisive and sloppy when trying to break out of a deep block. our goals come when we're engaged in a high press and making a high volume of actions around box. we need 1 cheat code forward/winger to give us a pressure release when we're defending deep

https://www.thesun.co.uk/sport/27880140/erik-ten-hag-man-utd-arsenal-saka/

The usually playful Sun nails it. Ten Hag neutralised Saka / Odegaard. Exact same thing that Tuchel and Conceicao did. Just look for the average positions of opponents in both of those games and you see 5 players on Ode and Saka. We have a consistent problem of not being able to punish teams on the left when they do this. It should be an easy switch. This summer we should be prepared to rethink everyone out left

    Claudius In my opinion, we should:

    • get that 6/8 (Guimarães or De Jong thanks)
    • solve left back either with Timber, or a Ben White level player
    • get in a world class young talent (touch, athleticism, intelligence, goal-scoring) for the left wing

    The new winger doesn't need to be a £100m man. A generational talent ready to have some fun in the spaces out there if we face this right-side shutdown is enough. But the player can't be short on any key attributes, so it's a tough one.

        Burnwinter yeah. I like all of that. Trossard has been a phenomenal scorer but he’s as shit as Theo Walcott in build up. So how do we balance that?
        I’d even think of bringing Rice back, getting a left back, and then getting an 8 who can play like Musiala.

            For the left I’m getting drawn to Nico Williams - he can stand up defenders, feint to go left or right, go round then on the outside or inside and has a decent finish on him.

            Claudius Trossard has been a phenomenal scorer but he’s as shit as Theo Walcott in build up.

            Trossard only plays for an hour, I think the club believes he lacks the athleticism to go at that job hard enough over ninety minutes. They put Jesus and Martinelli on the same roster, none of them every plays ninety because the role is too demanding.

            Thing is, if you get a more dangerous, comprehensive talent out there the running, which is often thankless work to create width for our right side fetish, would actually reduce if anything.

              I reckon timber will go a long way to resolving the lack of danger from the left side, but a fast, hard-running bomba of a left winger to pair with timber would be good too

              Agree that we are very predictable with our distribution with Ode and Saka always sucked to the right and opponents can crowd that quite well. It was crying out for us to move across but we haven't yet got the set up for that it seems. Also agree that we need a counter attacking out, when we attack it's always slowed down and we miss a lot of the moments Liverpool utilised at their best to kill a team that was having a good moment and getting at them when they haven't organised.

              Claudius The concentration of Odegaard, Saka and White, and even Rice and Saliba at times, draws in so many opposition players at times and we're very slow to move away from it. The space is there across the other two thirds of the park but we move it with short passes to nearest man. Arteta will have his reasons for not switching it quicker but I get frustrated when I see the space and our indifference at trying to use it quickly.

                  Tam Was it White or who that said Arteta don't encourages diagonals and switching of play?

                  EDIT: Oh it was Rice.

                      Clrnc tbf he said Arteta doesn't like diagonals if there's no advantage to it.

                      Which is kind of a sentence completely devoid of information because nobody likes anything unless they think there's an advantage to it.

                        Diagonal passes that are floated across are of no use.

                        Cross field passes that are pinged across with pace like Alonso used to are incredible

                          Mirth Exactly that, and with Odegaard and Saka being left footed there's no reason we can't be switching more directly instead of the slow and laboured short passing route through the defence.

                              Ben White has issues dealing with tricky wingers 1v1, not the first time this has happened. Thought yesterday was one of his worst performances in recent months.

                                Mirth it also depends how you play. We have our full backs tucked, it means a switch of wings like that is less useful. If you play the "Scholes pass" and you have full backs and wingers who stay wide like Scholes had and you actually use a lot of wing play it makes sense.

                                  Tam I do find it annoying at times that we have men in acres of space on the opposite side of the pitch and the ball will come from Saka back to midfield and instead of moving it and stretching the defence we more often than not just pass back into the congested area and ask Saka and Odegaard to find a way through.