Man Utd - on the bus. The deep block still a blocker
Arsenal has drawn away against Man United, continuing two unimpressive runs - in the Premier League, as well as in general at Old Trafford.
The transformation miracle after PSV didn’t happen. Amorim very predictably rolled out a deep block, even though they played at home. And this deep block was good enough to restrict Arsenal only to half chances, despite all the possession and pressing efforts. Amorim at this stage urgently needs to show some hopeful results so the ugly football is only bad for the crowd.
In the first half Arsenal have restricted Man United to almost zero threat. Only Garnacho and Fernandes were showing the bursts of creative power. Unfortunately, it was enough for us to concede. Trossard lost the ball in his own half (although it was not given to him comfortably) the defensive midfielders weren’t there to block Garnacho’s run, logical foul and a brilliant free kick by Fernandes.
The wall was truly far away, but still Raya’s reaction was quite slow, considering that Bruno was always gonna shoot in the corner, however the ball went quite at a low height. Raya has redeemed himself with all the brilliant saves in the second half. What I always admired about him - is that he tries to make a save in every situation, however, hopeless it is. And it definitely pays off in games!
The game started quite well for Arsenal. It was especially pleasing to see Odegaard flowing on the pitch, dribbling around opponents trying to find the delicate passes. I felt that without Odegaard’s good form we can’t really have a strong finish this season. Unfortunately it lasted for around 25 minutes and then United started to push him deeper away from the goal.
In general, Premier League teams have found the key to minimize Arsenal's threat, especially without Saka. The PSV game was an exception, because the Dutch have neither individual qualities nor the experience to execute a well-structured deep block. This enabled them to unload a big truck of goals into their net. Unfortunately, there won’t be many such teams starting from the Champions League quarterfinal.
Anti-Arsenal solution
Man United, Forest, West Ham, Newcastle and a couple of teams before that follow the similar recipe. They align in a 5-4-1 or 5-3-2 shape in a defensive phase of the game. The key is back 5. This allows them to shift an extra player to wings and help close down our most dangerous individuals.
Yesterday, it was done to close up Nwaneri. Ethan had a pretty blank game, but I think this is totally normal. He doesn't have experience to play against compact defences of such individual quality. To be fair, even Saka at times truffles to create any threat, as, for example, happened against Bayern Munich away last season. So for a 17-year old, having his first senior season it’s not a surprise. He needs more games, more analysis and more tricks up his sleeve to deal with minimal space left to him. As said before, our captain is also struggling this season. His solution is to drop deeper where he has space to turn around with the ball and assess the situation. But somebody should be occupying these spaces on the edge of the box.
The problem of Arsenal’s system is that it has not really evolved since last year. We rely on the same patterns of play. However, the opponents had time to collectively adjust to that and find a solution that works. Our game is pretty unbalanced - most of the attacks go through the right wing, where our two most creative players, as well as the overlapping fullback. I’ve made this sketch from “Rick and Morty” depicting our squad.
On the left side, however, we don’t have neither an overlapping fullback, nor the player who can open up the defence through passes. Zinchenko got a lot of criticism for his few big defensive errors. However, he had the ability to open up the defence from the left side. Neither Calafiori, nor Lewis-Skelly don’t have the same ability.
Basically our only hope from the left side is that Declan will bully his way into the box and cause some chaos there. Which he did to some extent, but he doesn’t have the technical ability to work with the ball, as, for example, Trossard has. In the first 60 minutes he produced a couple of bad passes in the delicate moments. It’s not a criticism of his performance - when moved to number 6 he continued to roam around the large amount of pitch grass and was rewarded with a goal and produced a result changing tackle in the box.
However, that’s not enough. If Odegaard drops deep we either need a threat from the left side or two players doing late runs into the box. With the current system, the opponent ships an extra defender on the right side, as well as personal attention to Odegaard which is already enough to close us up. Merino at 9 looks to be a poor man’s Havertz - his main strength is assisting others with their runs, but he’s moving slower and covers less ground than Kai. In the last 20 minutes he was outpaced time and time again by Man United players and I would rather see MLS or Zinchenko in his position instead.
Arteta needs to change our playing routines every year, either by introducing new players or by adapting a system so that the opponents don’t have enough examples to keep up.
It was great to see Martinelli back on the pitch. Despite not scoring or assisting, we finally had an option from the bench that can create some threat. Hopefully we are past the old good times of seeing Sterling actively warm up on the side line.
I also always get amazed how good Tierney’s crosses are. He’s not the most versatile player, but when he’s on that left side in 90% of the cases he finds someone with a cross. If only we could use these chances!
I also don’t fully get why Ben White was not given time on the pitch today. Arteta’s again playing the same set of players over and over until they are exhausted. And if one of them gets injured we don’t have a substitution that can hit the ground running. Why is Calafiori never tried instead of Gabriel? Why doesn't he give either Timber or Saliba (with Timber shifting to CB) a rest? I hope he will learn to rotate at some point but it isn’t the case so far. Maybe Andrea Berta can finally influence that?
New Sporting Director
Arsenal is signing a very strong figure for the position vacant after Edu’s leave. Whether he’s good or not is a different question. The most important thing now is that Berta is a strong figure with his own opinions. He worked with a very strong character in Diego Simeone and I don’t think it would be harder to work with Arteta. We don’t need Arteta getting all the football power in the club, because he doesn’t have a track record of winning titles and has the team play deficiencies to focus on.
Berta has contributed to Atletico winning two La Liga titles despite never being favorites as well as reaching CL final. This is something Arsenal would definitely empathize with. The most inspiring thing is that our ownership is not going with the cheapest path of internal promotion, but actually searching for the ways to move the club forward.
Post-match burst out
While writing this post I came across Arteta’s burst out during the post-match interview. The journalist asked about the title race and Arteta stormed away. I don’t know why this question triggered him. This was a pretty expected question. I guess Arteta doesn't want to be publicly accepting that the title race is over, but he would look stupid saying we are still there. But for whom is he keeping the mask on?
The players and fans have their own eyes and can see both the Premier League table and the struggles the team is having on the pitch. I think almost everybody made their peace with the fact that the PL title is gone. I would say that’s even unhealthy pushing players to the limit for the lost cause. And the way the game played out yesterday, I think the players are aware of the situation.
If Arteta wants to keep motivation high, then it should be done for Champions League, the only trophy we can actually fight for this season. I’d personally give 1% chance that we win it, given what happened in the previous weeks, but from a manager's perspective it’s correct to publicly say we are fighting for it until the last minute. Which is actually true - the beauty of cup competition is that you have chances to win it while you still have games to play.
How things stand
Arsenal record at Old Trafford in the last 20 years. 3 victories, 1-0 each.
While our record at Old Trafford didn’t improve, we are still in the TOP-4 fight and the away draw is by no means a bad result. None of our competitors look stable enough to have a great run. Forest, who beat Man City on Saturday, don't have the bench to go unscarred through April and May. The rest look vulnerable as well. Next week we have a crucial home clash against Chelsea. And if we win it - our CL place will be all but secured.
The PSV game this week is luckily a formality after our 6-goal win. I think we finally need to see some rotation - Ben White, Jorginho, Zinchenko. Maybe try a different CB pairing - I would like to see Calafiori at LCB. It’s also a good game for Martinelli to get back into shape.
Unfortunately, the true test awaits us in Madrid and we don’t look ready yet! I am not sure what of the teams I fancy more in the quarterfinal. Atleti will roll out the deep block of unseen quality and the Real team has the confidence that we are not prepared to match. Still exciting though!
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