Morning all. I have some thoughts about stuff today. Here they are in random order. With a kind of headline for each one.
Not handbrake off, but accelerator down …
I think part of what frustrates me about our football is how often we recycle possession. On the one hand, I get it. It provides a measure of control. Go back, start again, see if you can pull the opposition from one side to another to try and fashion an opening. For us though, it seems to be the default, to a fault at times.
Whether that’s an absolute edict from Mikel Arteta, or players cautious about making a mistake and paying the price for it, I don’t know, but it’s got to come from the top first and foremost. Here’s an example from Sunday. In the 25th minute we have the ball high up the pitch on the left, but go all the way back to David Raya. He then plays a pass into Declan Rice …
.. who then finds Piero Hincapie on the left wing. We’ve bypassed United’s ‘press’ very quickly. We then have a situation where if he drives forward, it’s 5 on 4 with Trossard, Jesus, Odegaard, and Saka all in support. United have men chasing back.
But the Ecuadorian delays, and a couple of seconds later, they now have 8 men behind the ball, we’re outnumbered, and he chooses to go back to Rice, and eventually a William Saliba pass to Saka is intercepted.
Which isn’t to say that moment should have resulted in a goal, but it was an opportunity to really stretch the opposition that we didn’t take. The counter-point to this might be that if we lose possession we have too many men ahead of the ball, but I really feel like this team needs to put its foot on the accelerator in moments like this. If we wonder why it feels so hard to break teams down and create chances, it’s aligned to this. Control is great, and if you can exert that with maximum efficiency, you can do what you need to do, but sometimes you need a little chaos.
There is a risk/reward balance, but there’s no reward with no risk in the first place.
Why is Saliba here?
Let me be clear, I think William Saliba is an outstanding footballer, a superb defender, and somebody who can provide the team with forward thrust. Look at his excellent run which provided a chance for Noni Madueke a chance to put a ball into the United box just before they scored their third goal.
But I’ve noticed in recent weeks that we’re seeing him in positions high up the pitch that I think we need a different profile of player in. Here, in the 75th minute, as we’re pushing for an equaliser, we have a central defender in a position I want a creative midfielder to be.
Is Saliba good enough on the ball to make something happen? Probably. Sometimes. But I think there’s something wrong with your structure, even playing against a team that is sitting as deep as United are in this image, if it’s a centre-half trying to provide the craft in the final third.
We have Saka out on the right, with Ben White playing as an inside-right forward. Jurrien Timber could potentially help stretch play on the left if he was closer to Trossard, but he’s where you might expect an attacking midfielder to be, and it all gets very narrow, very condensed, and thus more complicated for us to pull the opposition around to find space for chances.
Again, I love Saliba, and perhaps it’s due to the fact Martin Odegaard’s form has been poor, and Eberechi Eze has struggled to have consistent impact, but if we play football that requires a defender to thread eye of the needle passes to make something happen, something’s not quite right.
Arsenal fans need to …
I’ve seen a lot of articles and think-pieces about what Arsenal fans need to do right now. Which is all well and good if you have no skin in the game, but if you do, they can come across as a bit patronising. Some people are more anxious than others, some are better able to say ‘these are the twists and turns of a title race and I’m on board for the ride’. There’s a reason why some glasses are half full, and others are half empty.
Human nature.
So, let people do what works for them. Don’t tell them how to feel or react or behave. As long as we’re not talking about extreme stuff, I think whatever gets you through is perfectly fine. If letting off steam online is your coping mechanism, there’s nothing wrong with that. If switching off completely until the next game works for you, great. Lucky you, I say!
Obviously there are lines not to cross. If stuff is gets abusive or personal towards players and manager, we all know that’s not a healthy way to express yourself or to conduct yourself. But for the most part, at least here on Arseblog and our various comment sections, discussion platforms, that’s not the case. There’s a range of opinion from positive and optimistic all the way through the polar opposite, but again, that’s what you get with a large collection of people.
I will admit I’m someone who is generally predisposed to look at things in a positive way, or at the very least in a balanced way. Which I think is reflected in what I write here, and say on the various podcasts. But this season is causing me a greater level of anxiety than I had expected. It’s probably the three successive second place finishes, coming so close makes you desperate for success. But it’s also the 21 years since our last title. It’s the 2007-08 season when we looked like potential champions but fell away for reasons we all understand. It’s 2016 when every other big team fell apart and we still couldn’t get over the line. It’s the hunger to see a team I really like, full of good players and good lads enjoy the success I think they deserve, and the desire to share it with my Arsenal supporting friends around the world.
If you have a headache, someone telling you ‘Just stop having a headache’ isn’t very helpful. Come May, I hope I can look back at it as a season to remember for all the right reasons, but at this moment in time I’m living with tension and expectation and worry and hope and plethora of other emotions that fluctuate every time we play a game. That’s mine to experience or endure, however you want to put it, without someone else telling me how it should be.
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Right, I’ll leave it there for this morning. A big thanks to you all of you who come every day to read and take part in this community. The Arsecast Extra is below if you haven’t had a chance to listen yet, and we’ll bring you updates from Mikel Arteta’s press conference later on Arseblog News.
