Arsenal have conceded a whopping 20 goals in 14 games. From the outset that is a damning statistic leaving Arsenal tie with Leicester for the second to worst goal difference in the top half of the league. How can that be from a club with the 4th most clean sheets (6) so far.
Score lines like those against City and Liverpool have not helped and without them Arsenal would have a more respectable number of goals against, even if we had lost both those games by a goal or two a piece.
Arsenal finished last season with the 3rd least amount of goals conceded and only conceded 4 goals between the City and Liverpool games this year, so it’s hard to accuse Arteta of not knowing how to defend.
Football fans have insisted that Arsenal shouldn’t take pride in managing to keep out “relegation fodder”. In the hardest league of all, there’s no reason Arsenal shouldn’t be proud of their defensive record under Arteta. However there is a point to be made that the majority of teams we’ve played so far make up the bottom 10 teams for Expected Goals per 90. Based on these statistics alone, Leicester should have trounced us away from home, yet it was Arsenal that bagged the goals and came away with a clean sheet if not for some die hard defending and Aaron Ramsdale.
Despite not doing enough to create clear cut scoring opportunities, what else could Arsenal be doing better in defence when coming up against the clubs in the top half the Expected Goals chart?
For a long time Arsenal’s best form of defence has been to retain the ball and attack. Possession is certainly an area under Arteta, Arsenal have regressed. There is a correlation between tackles and interceptions and how well a team retains the ball. On one hand you have teams like Leeds and Brighton who with their high volume of ball winning numbers are able to enjoy on average 56-57% of the possession. Then there’s teams like Everton and West Ham who have to rely on their ability to win back the ball to make up for their less than 50% average possession a game.
There’s also style of play to consider. A team that sets up to counter will likely concede possession in an attempt to win the ball back deep and strike hard and fast, the perfect example being Claudio Ranieri’s Premier League winning Leicester City side. As we know all to well, possession doesn’t always lead to goals, which is where Brighton and Leeds find themselves at the moment, despite having the majority of the ball and much more of it than Arsenal, they are still struggling to create even as many chances as the Gunners and are getting punished for it.
Let’s take a look at Gerrard’s first game in charge of Aston Villa. For all of Brighton’s high pressing and possession they just could not breakdown the deep lying Villa defence, managing only 2 shots on target, whilst with just 37% of the possession, Villa broke on the counter enough times for the clinical Ollie Watkins to seal the win with an epic long range finish. Finally we land at player quality. Unlike Gerrard who had fellow Gooner Ollie Watkins at his dispense, Graham Potter was without a recognised striker for the majority of the game.
Arteta is stuck trying to find harmony between the two styles. Especially when facing quality opposition, as we saw in our FA Cup winning run, Arteta is happy to park the bus and try to counter. Against lesser opposition Arteta’s side are still inclined to drop deep into their defensive shape to crowd out the oppositions advances and either counter or win the ball and quickly find our shape to pass out from the back.
At the other end of the pitch, like so many other high possession teams Arteta has also opted for a high pressing attack. Playing out from the back, countering and high pressing should all be very familiar to an Arsenal side that were doing just that under Unai Emery. Where Arteta has outdone his predecessor is choosing the right personnel and better drilling them at playing out from the back. Arteta leans much more on the side of caution, Arteta’s adoption of a deeper defensive line, means Arsenal are less inclined to be caught on the counter than we previously were under Emery.
It has certainly been the main reason Arsenal are conceding less, but it is also causing Arsenal problems against sides that are making use of possession we are allowing them have. Conceding possession to the likes of City and Liverpool on purpose is a high risk tactic that’s paid off for Arteta in the FA Cup and Community Shield but Klopp and Pep now wise to Arteta’s tactics are now taking advantage of Arsenal’s defensive block.
Old Trafford is never a place to travel to expecting 3 points, but if there was ever a time to attack the Red Devils head on, it would be now. A win would have seen Arsenal leap frog West Ham into fourth and put further distance between us, United and Conte’s Spurs side.
We all know how the game depressingly unfolded. After snatching one of the oddest goals I’ve ever seen, Arsenal shrunk into their defensive shape and allowed Man United to get forward in numbers. As bad as United have been, allowing the likes of Ronaldo and Fernandes into your penalty area unmarked is just plain dumb.
That’s exactly what Arsenal did. For United’s first goal, Partey and Elneny were so deep they might as well have been playing in the backline, whilst Odegaard failed to track Fred as he left his side to make the run into the box.
It’s difficult to say whether the players retreating so deep is down to Arteta, or the players being too comfortable at defending in numbers at the back rather than gonging man to man. It’s certainly not always comfortable to watch. It causes some amount of anxiety watching our players running backwards while our opponents dribblers edge closer and closer to our penalty area. I find myself too often screaming at the TV for someone to put a tackle in.
Although Arsenal should be in the same category I touched upon earlier as Leeds and Brighton, we are becoming dangerously closer to Everton and West Ham, but without the high output of tackles and interceptions. For tackles and interceptions, statistically Arsenal are in the same area as Man City and Liverpool, where we have no right to be. Man City and Liverpool don’t need to win to ball back that often because on average they dominate 60%+ of the possession.
Of the 5 teams averaging 45-50% of the possession, West Ham, Wolves, Southampton and Brentford, Arsenal are making the least attempts to win back the ball, with 42 tackles and interceptions less than the closest to team to us in this category (West Ham).
As well as humiliating score lines against City and Liverpool, humiliating possession stats are also the reason our average is down, but on the whole Arsenal have had the majority of possession in just of over half all our games so far.
Liverpool and City are the only two teams in the League to be making more tackles in the middle third than in their defensive third. Their dominance in the middle of the park is a huge factor in the success they’ve been enjoying under Pep and Klopp. Arsenal fall into the other category of teams that are making most of their tackles in their own defensive third. United are the only team in the league winning the ball back less than Arsenal in the middle.
Between the high press and dropping deep, Arsenal aren’t doing enough in between. Partey, Lokonga, Maitland Niles and Granit Xhaka do not me strike as player who are afraid to put in a tackle, but watching Arsenal play they are clearly allowing teams to drive them back to the edge of our own penalty area. It happens so often I have no option but to believe that is what Arteta is asking of them.
If Arteta wants his team to find that extra level to go get the 3rd and even 4th goal, he needs to allow his players to take their own initiative in attack and in defence. If a player has the opportunity to break out from the line to get the ball back he shouldn’t feel hesitant to do so, in fear he’s cost Arteta his structured low block.
This stand off approach Arteta has adopted is making us appear a light touch, it is time for this team to find some aggression and show some muscle in the middle. As poor as Partey was against United there were moments I cheered as he clattered players to win the ball back.
You might get away with style of football in Serie A, but not in the Premier League. That is certainly what Conte learned from his time at Chelsea which he stated in a Sky interview with Thierry Henry. Henry also isn’t a fan of the setup, stating that Arsenal look as if they are set up as the underdog in most of our games. He’s not wrong, with our inability to kill off games, Arsenal are making do with closing out games once we take the lead, many fans and pundits claiming that’s what it looked like Arsenal tried to do against United.
Having recently watched the new Arsene Wenger Invincible documentary, it is clear one of the greatest attributes of the Arsenal team Wenger adopted was their aggression and physicality, claiming that “They were not always easy, but on Saturday, you could walk out with them, you knew they were up for a fight”.
It is that fight that is missing from this Arsenal side, but not because the players aren’t capable of going to that level, but because they are not being asked to. If Arsenal were to play more man to man in the middle of the park players might not be tiring early from the constant running from one end of the pitch to the other. Then they also might be more inclined to track runs better than they are doing now too.
I’m not sure I can hear anymore about Arsenal’s lessons learned from Arteta, this is one area I haven’t seen Arsenal getting better and they need to before a gruelling winter fixture list derails all the other progress the club has made.