Open play chances
They might be VV
Even if he's not sold, Jesus getting any minutes at all after January should be a sackable offence.
We should just go full Özil on Jesus and buy up his contract. Eat the loss and move on. He'll do more damage taking up a squad place and getting on the pitch.
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When two of the front three are shit (Martinelli and Havertz), you're going to struggle from open play. Zero guile.
You have to add Rice, Merino and (current) Odegaard to that as well.
Five midfield and forward players started today who offer no goal threat and don't assist either. We're entirely reliant on Saka and set pieces. It's a sorry state because glimpses of this were evident last season.
Odegaard's form is obviously a slump but even at his best he lacks composure in front of goal and fluffs a lot of chances. I wonder if it could be traced back to his horror miss at Villa Park two seasons ago? He used to have a good shot on him.
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Really don't like seeing Merino and Rice on the pitch at the same time.. they are to similar and level of quality on the ball in the centre becomes average, makes this too slow and predictable... Martenilli has stalled big time, was hoping it was a phase that he could push through and find his place but his general play has been ineffective, especially that he hasn't developed his dribbling so has been found out a bit, doesn't help that the left 8 is always a 'functional' player.. Would like to see what Nwaneri could do out there, has that unpredictability and don't see Arteta starting him and Martin together anytime soon.
it's my my concern with Arteta and the squad building process also, too much power and dominance and not enough focus of players with quality on the ball
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Dom odes finishing was sound last season. this reputation he's suddenly developed as an inefficient wastrel is misguided imo. he's going through a goalscoring slump, which is permissible in his position. it's only attracting the spotlight because we have such limited goal threat elsewhere.
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We have zero presence up front because we play without a centre forward. Has Havertz been on the pitch the last 2 league games? Apparently he started them according to the lineups.
Can't remember him playing CF. I do remember his pitiful run down the right
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invisibleman18 we are in the middle of December, he has yet to score away from home in the PL
Biggest mistake since Arteta took over has been buying Havertz, without any doubt. He is not good enough as a CM, nor as a striker, he is either the highest earner or the second highest in the squad, good luck moving him on. He blocked us from buying big and improving 2 main areas. Now it looks like we do not have the money to do it, and seeing as Arteta loves him, probably don't even want to...it's bad
HomeSteak Tbh in terms of strikers in the league, I would take Haaland, Jackson and Isak over Havertz. For some, arguably Cunha and Watkins are better strikers too. So he's probably around the 6th best option around.
Even people like Wissa, Duran and Delap has a better scoring ratio than him ffs. I think in an ideal world Havertz will be a very good rotational striker, but not when you have fucking Jesus to rotate with.
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Clrnc ok, rotation...but, we are going to sell our 50 mil striker Jesus(more like give away for free, he is on huge wages as well and finished with football), so we can go and get a 70 - 100 mil new striker(standard price for a decent striker) that will bench our 65 mil striker, on huge wages. Then fix the rest of the squad while not breaking FFP rules? No way, it's fucked bad.
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I thought the value proposition behind having a team of volume giants was so that we'd have a ridiculously high aggressive press that would generate chances for us. that's what worked so well last season. i remember even swamping and swarming liverpool at anfield for a whole half of football, and my pool supporting mate texting me about how spooked he was.
right now, I can't tell if some of our boys have physically dropped which is hurting this part of our game, or if teams have sussed it and are taking less chances to try building from the back against us. based on my cursory eye test, we're catching teams out with our press way less than last season, which is leaving us with the tessellating horseshoe as the only source of chance creation
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I think the press is fine for the most part. But the speed of attacks when we win it back is off. Feels like centre backs have 5-10 mins to take a breather between each attack while we pass it around, it needs to feel relentless.
With the amount of ball and territory domination we had we should have had 20-30 shots on goal, not 13.
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tetball at its heart has always lacked a real attacking ethos. it can offset its worst instincts of inherent structural conservatism by having as much individual quality in attack as possible, but we've remained short on that required quality every season. it's always been the major red flag at the heart of this rebuild project since its inception. we regress to stale moyesian archetypes too often. I don't how much mindshare or urgency arteta puts into resolving this obvious flaw in this system. as others have pointed out, there has been some appetite to bolster our attack, but the greater appetite has always seemed been for collecting defenders or costly impulse buys like havertz. we rarely miss out on burning budget on targets that should be ancillary, but the obsession is now costing us a generational opportunity for silverware. a day late and a buck short was on wengers inscribed on epitath, and we're somehow repeating those mistakes but this time with a far larger budget
On one hand, I agree we're allocating resources in a way that reduces our chance to win at times.
On the other, I disagree our recruiting emphasis on centre halves and fullbacks proves we're not interested in offence.
We spend big on ball-playing defenders because they let us play a front 5 or 6 with security, leading to the hallmarks of our game model: aggressive pressing and territorial domination.
Spending big on defenders does mean we're not shelling out that cash on ball striking unicorn wingers and strikers. It doesn't mean we're not interested in offence. As the story goes, we're scoring more goals than ever before, yada yada.
The weakness in our game isn't that we struggle to mount attacks in open play. The weakness is that we struggle for the highest peak of unstoppability against defences comparable to our own for talent and organisation.
With our recruitment we've sacrificed that sharpest possible cutting edge and invested in domination and control everywhere on the pitch. We destroy on stats-nerd artefacts like "field tilt" or "final third touches" without always getting three points to match.
If just one of Martinelli, Jesus, Trossard and Havertz was in any sort of scoring form we might not even be noticing the goal problem. Just one of the four. Unfortunately those four names are now respectively a developmental crisis, parasite, passenger and enigma that regularly go onto the team sheet.
We need a "Rice" up front or on the left, preferably both. I would put any of these four on the market to get in these signings if we have to, but I'd probably flog Jesus, Martinelli, Trossard then Havertz for priority.
Burnwinter The weakness is that we struggle for the highest peak of unstoppability against defences comparable to our own for talent and organisation.
I agree with much of your post, but not really this bit as our most recent EPL results show we are also struggling to score against teams with relatively poor defences. I don't think anyone could say that Everton or Fulham's defence are comparable to our own in terms of talent or organisation.
Daz not really this bit as our most recent EPL results show we are also struggling to score against teams with relatively poor defences
It's true, but thinking about the Project™ not just the past few weeks, the heated claims about our attack being neglected under Arteta don't stand up to the fact we've scored 88 and 91 goals in our past two seasons.
We haven't neglected attack. We've given up beaucoup cash we might've used to recruit star forwards to push an offence based on ball-playing defenders and two ball-playing keepers—enjoying considerable success with that approach.
You can't look at this squad and say we shouldn't have signed Timber, Rice, White, Kiwior, Calafiori, Raya, etc. Take most of these players out and we'd have suffered for months at some stage, they've all been successes.
The forward signings meanwhile are suspect. Jesus is shit, Trossard is not a 90 minute athlete, Martinelli has lost his touch, and Havertz is stylistically frustrating and offering us patchy form.
It's more the case that if we had one more can-opener level, Saka level forward who could come in from the left of our attack, that player would be a huge multiplier for both left and right. The challenge is not to add to our tally of big names who aren't delivering.
Burnwinter the thing about the goals though are they aren't evenly distributed we've racked up some massive wins against really poor sides yet still failed to score in many games. I think we had ?5 last season and we are on 3 so far this season.
Last season that number got picked up because the number of games we failed to score was very high and not normally what a title winning side do. It shows the be we don't have reliable distribution of goals.. When we are flowing and playing well at can dispatch teams but we had a number of games where we weren't quite on it and it's those games we couldn't affect. We have a real problem scoring or being an effective attacking side when things aren't perfect and this is something that's being recurring with Arteta.
So I don't think the scoring most goals etc totally tells the story of what's going on or where we are at because inevitably you will have quite a few matches where your not functioning like you hope but if you blank in them that's enough to derail a title charge.
Mirth that's what I'm saying about Odegaard. So lame.
awooga83 Yeah but you're really just rehearsing the same points I've made but in a different tone of voice.
To be perfectly clear, it is preposterous and embarrassing when people suggest that a two point difference last season between a City team regarded as the best of this era and this Arsenal is a sign of us having a terrible squad that's terribly managed.
We're talking about missing one or two elite forwards and feeling the consequences. We're not discussing the abject failure of a years long project to reinvent the club, nor a criminal neglect of the need to win matches and score goals.
People should be proportionate because otherwise they sound hysterical.
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Burnwinter for what it's worth, I think you can both be right here. I don't think either post negates the other.
Probably more precise articulations of it but in essence, my summation would be: "We are a good team (as primarily evidenced by the last two seasons) but there are also some gaps that need to be addressed to make us even better (as primarily evidenced by this season)."
Burnwinter I wasn't trying to suggest we haven't been a good team. But my thought is last season I think we were running hot pretty much at our peak and our average level might be a bit below that when, as more often happens, things don't quite go as we want. In which case even near our peak we aren't quite good enough to win the title. That also included a home defeat to villa where we failed to score and that trait of blanking when we aren't quite flowing is a big issue for this team. Last season it's impact is less visible because we for the most part maintained a very high level in the second half of the season with results. But if we don't have that it might be a bit more obvious.
Ultimately Arteta has pulled us back into that top 4 grouping and run us close. But the next step is to win the trophies and I think it's fair to question is he the manager that can take us on that next step. If it is to be him he needs to be willing to compromise some of his football style in my view and the question is can he do that, I'm not yet sure.
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awooga83 I think it's fair to question is he the manager that can take us on that next step. If it is to be him he needs to be willing to compromise some of his football style in my view and the question is can he do that, I'm not yet sure.
Absolutely fair to question. But I think it’s important to zoom out a little when asking those questions.
We were having the same discussions last season and after Jan we had no problems scoring and it wasn’t because of set pieces. By May there were no questions.
The other side to recognise is that we are probably the most tactically astute and defensively tight team around. It’s not as glamorous as scoring and didn’t help us beat Everton, and it probably means we may need better quality forwards than another manager might, but either way I think it’s worth taking it all in and looking at our weaknesses and failures with some perspective.
From my point of view, a little tweak could make us the best team in Europe.
Burnwinter Squires is great - love his stuff.
Asterix Been a tiny bit hit and miss lately (I've come to expect brilliance) but that one was great.
Don Pacifico I don't think either post negates the other.
Yeah, I mean I think we all agree because the facts are relatively clear? We have clearly been doing very well in general, but we are clearly not in pole position to win the league this season, and we are clearly short of at least one elite forward.
awooga83 But my thought is last season I think we were running hot pretty much at our peak and our average level might be a bit below that
Contra that, the form we're in now is a carbon copy of the form we were in leading up to Christmas last season (remember the "finishing crisis"?). Our results are slightly worse, but we got lucky many times last season and that hasn't happened lately.
If I had to make a wager I'd say a superb back half of 23–24 might have reduced the urgency around signing forwards last summer.
goon We were having the same discussions last season and after Jan we had no problems scoring and it wasn’t because of set pieces. By May there were no questions.
To be fair, I think there were quite a few people who really wanted us to sign a top forward over summer, which didn't happen. I was personally more keen on getting in a brilliant younger deep-lying playmaker or pivot, a Henry-esque left winger was my second preference.
goon From my point of view, a little tweak could make us the best team in Europe.
If we bring in a left winger even eight tenths as good as Saka it'll be game over for these motherfuckers. We talked about this a lot last summer but all of Saka, Øde and Havertz would have a field day with the extra 1–2 yards of space a true left-sided threat would produce for them.
Burnwinter If I had to make a wager I'd say a superb back half of 23–24 might have reduced the urgency around signing forwards last summer.
Fully agree with this, we had an exceptional back end to the season which is not normal and allowed us to fall into the trap of maybe we don't need to address the attacking side of our game as urgently because look at the goals we got.
Can’t take my eyes off this goal
Claudius didn't realize in real-time how much of a blatant penalty that was. 