PSG - on the bus. Levels of preparation

Overly prepared PSG exposes Arsenal and Arteta weaknesses.

Confidence injection

First, I’d like to admit that Luis Enrique is a great coach, because PSG came prepared for everything we have in our locker:

• They knew they needed to double up on Saka to reduce our threat.

• They knew Martinelli would curve it in the far corner, so Donnarumma was ready to dive there for a save.

• They knew that if they cover man-to-man our defenders and midfielders, Raya would have to go long and our front line won’t win any aerial duels. 

• They knew our midfield duo is not very fast on their feet and that we defend 4-4-2 out of possession, so they deployed three quick midfielders who controlled the ball completely in the first 25 minutes.

• They knew that Martinelli drops deep in defence so Hakimi was usually joining the attack efforts and leaving tons of spaces behind untouched.

• They knew about Ben White trickery during corners, so Donnarumma fell at the first contact.

Apart from that, Luis Enrique has motivated their team properly at the start. Despite them never winning the Champions League (the same as us), they didn’t feel a single beat shaky. They came out of the dressing room extremely confident in their success. And that’s the first weaker side of Arteta. The team is well prepared technically, but they don’t come out full of confidence from the dressing room before the big occasion.

Now, I’m not having this "we were nervous" chat. We were nervous in the beginning of the Real Madrid game, when we gifted them two real chances, like it was Christmas (which luckily they didn’t use). Yesterday we started under immense pressure from PSG. They have allocated three central midfielders against our two, they swarmed us, especially down our right. And in the fourth minute we paid the price of an unusual midfield partnership - Rice moved to help Timber and no one moved in his position. This is the function Rice is usually doing himself, but there’s only one Declan Rice, not a whole blooming army of them. All the parts of PSG plan are demonstrated by this gif (follow the link here if it doesn’t load):

Kvaratshkelia is the actual player that Perez tries to PR out of Vinicius Jr (and probably Vinicius thinks of himself). He was explosive for the starting 25 minutes, he was tearing Timber apart and he also dropped deeper to double up on Saka. He matched all the standards Arteta demands from his players. How we didn’t even try to sign him in January? With all our struggles on the left side, how didn’t we look at him and decide he’s a great investment? I saw the games for Georgia, where he singlehandedly carried their attack. It’s very hard to do in a low individual quality team - look at Erling Humbland in Norway, but Kvicha was doing it. It was the first time we saw Timber struggling in the Arsenal shirt after he already faced Salah, Vinicius and City wingers this season.

Shape flexibility

One of the things we need to improve is the defensive shape variety. For now we aren’t flexible, defend 4-4-2 with the fastest players dropping deep on the wings. We never practice a 4-3-3 defence with wingers staying up higher, the same way Liverpool often defends. There was space behind Hakimi who was always joining the attack, but we didn’t use it. We could also predict this kind of pressure and deploy Martinelli at false nine and Trossard on the left for this initial period.

Even with the exact same players we can employ two different shapes and tactical approaches inside one game - one plan for their period of pressure, the other plan when we get more possession. There were several games this year, where we dropped deep into our half without offering any real counter threat. We were predictable and Enrique exploited it. It is quite strange that we weren’t prepared for this pressure, since the exact same thing happened against Aston Villa. They were 2 goals up in the first 20 minutes of the game in Birmingham.

Arsenal has slowly grown into the game - which is another sign of not matching dressing room atmosphere. The team knows how to play but we aren’t shining with confidence when we start the game. The same happened against Madrid when we became better as the game went. Arteta shared on the post-presser that we fixed some specific issue after 15-20 minutes and it probably did help. What I noticed - was again the emergence of unbelievable Myles Lewis-Skelly who for the millionth time demonstrated bravery and just unique mentality level. He started to take back the ball in midfield, surf through the pitch with players on his shoulders and created the best chance of the first half for Gabriel Martinelli.

And while Martinelli's shot wasn’t bad, even Donnarumma’s nan could have told you where that was going. He should have either buried it with a cannon or do something less predictable. He could do a near-post blast or a fake shot followed by a cheeky chip (just as the one that Courtois cries about on the lonely nights under the blanket) or a pass to a lurking Trossard in the box. The effect of surprise is what currently lacks in his game. I can share a similar observation about Trossard - his shot was decent, but "decent" doesn’t cut it at this level. We need true excellence - the one that Rice, Merino or Saka delivered against Madrid.

Saka himself was not really as clinical - he had an outburst of footballing pride in the end of first half after the booking, but he didn’t sustain this deep into the second half. Probably the emotion that was fueling this cooled down in the dressing room and he wasn’t fired up even more by the coaching staff (coming back to the earlier point).

The worst on the pitch was Martin Odegaard. Our captain was again lost in the very intense game. He completely failed the first half, the same way as at the Bernabeu. As soon as intensity dropped - he became much better and that already forms quite a clear pattern. I truly don’t think he can be a helper if we want to set up the team that fights for the Champions League title constantly, because the intensity would be unmatched on such stages, whether we face PSG or any other team. IMHO, he shouldn’t be starting next Wednesday, because PSG will pull the same pressure trick in the first half. Less intense second half - that’s where he might be more useful.

The captain is supposed to lead the team by example. He’s supposed to fuel the self-belief of everyone around and he’s doing the exact opposite. I remember hearing one of the Invincibles saying (don’t remember who specifically): “we knew that in every tough situation we could give the ball to either Henry or Vieira and they would keep it”. How far off is Odegaard from that? I can think of two better names for a captain right now - Declan Rice and Gabriel.

Many Arsenal fans (including me) now believe that we actually need to upgrade him to a better player. I don’t take all this talk about him being good at pressing. Bruno Fernandes, when played against us in the FA Cup, dropped into central midfielder position, defended most of the game and still showed up to score the brilliant goal. That’s the type of performance we need to see from our creative leader. At the bare minimum, we need a real alternative option that can be used for stretches of games. And we need the option that Arteta actually uses, which brings us to the next weakness.

Conservatism and stubbornness

Arsenal was doing quite well between 30 and 65th - there was a lot of pressure on PSG, chances were created and PSG didn’t respond much in this stretch. What happened next - Enrique introduced four fresh players, while all what Arteta did - was change the right back like-to-like in the 80th minute. That left the players on the pitch absolutely clueless. The team was all over the place, because they lost belief that they could change the result and we started conceding big chances. Because what we were doing wasn’t working, and the legs were going.

One of things that could happen in such a moment - there are 2-3 new players introduced to keep the intensity of pressure up and take away some of the attacking initiative on them. Instead, it was the 80th minute on the clock when Zinchenko was just chatting with Nwaneri on the sideline. Those two could be the ones to bring in new energy and other sets of skills on the pitch. Apart from that, Merino could have been moved up top to better occupy their central defenders with MLS moving into midfield and Tierney slotting in at left back. Bear in mind that all the PSG threat came before the Odegaard sub and not after.

But Arteta doesn't do that. The team was trying to do the same thing even when it stopped working. And when it stops working the belief levels are going down. Arteta doesn’t lean on the larger pool of players. By doing this, he has also made a decent chunk of the fan base believing that these players are not good enough. But that’s not true. PSG made their changes, their individual quality might have dipped, but their intensity went up and that helped them leave our stadium with the win.

We don’t have to go far back and just look at Kiwior - one month ago Kiwior wasn’t deemed good enough by the fan base until he was slotted right into the CL play-offs, where he pulled already a third decent performance in a row. As in the quarterfinal, I can’t recall any major error from him yesterday. Why are there doubts in other players warming the bench?

These last 15-20 minutes had the vibes of Bayern away last year written all over it - same one goal deficit and same inability to bring in something new to trouble the opponent defence. Arteta has drilled the team tactically very well, but if the plan A prepared before the game isn’t working well, we need to have a plan B - at least for the players themselves to believe they still have something up their sleeve. 

That said, the tie is not over - PSG has its vulnerabilities, but we need to be much better prepared in the second half. 

• We need to be prepared to survive the initial storm without conceding. 

• We need to be prepared for Kvaratshkelia to attack one of our wings and potentially sacrifice our usual ball control and playing patterns for an additional cover from the winger. 

• We need to be prepared to change the approach mid game. 

• We need to be prepared to change players who fail to perform in the long stretches of the game. 

• We need to produce moments of the same magnitude, as Rice’s famous free kicks. 

I don’t like putting both the blame and hopes into Thomas Partey, because they will expect Partey at six and Merino at nine in Paris. They will adjust their tactics accordingly and we must be ready for that. I already mentioned that I’d leave Odegaard on the bench and have Saka play at 10 and Nwaneri at RW in the first half in Paris. That would definitely be a bit of a surprise for Enrique.

Bournemouth comes to town

Now we move to Bournemouth on Saturday and I plan to see this game live (finally) - thanks to a top LG reader. I doubt the team would get their focus fully on the game. The good part is that Bournemouth also have their league campaign finished - they are 10 points behind the CL spot and 7 points behind any possible European spot, so I am not sure they will be trying too hard. The only thing I’d like to see is Ethan Nwaneri starting in whatever role he can play. There’s a talent that Arteta needs to develop and that only comes with more games. At this point I have already doubts he can actually do that, but that’s a topic of another post.

For now, let’s cook some sauce against Bournemouth and serve it later on in Paris!

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