Rotation can make Arsenal less predictable for Everton visit

Morning all.

It’s a big one today, they’re all big ones at this stage to be fair, when Everton come to visit. The team news from Mikel Arteta was that there were no new issues from the midweek game against Bayer Leverkusen, with a ‘Let’s see’ about the availability of Leandro Trossard and Martin Odegaard. I suspect if one of them makes it, it’s much more likely to be the former than the latter.

As I said yesterday, there’s so little time between games, there’s no real chance for the manager to work on anything especially new, but I do wonder if there’s a little room for rotation today. The temptation is to stick with what’s working, but I also think it didn’t really work on Wednesday, and while Everton won’t play with a straight-up back five like Leverkusen did, their defensive approach is likely to be quite similar. We all know how a David Moyes team can make life difficult for us, they’ll be dogged, disciplined and physical, and as we saw from their game against Man Utd a couple of weeks ago, set-pieces are going to be a nightmare when these two teams go at it against each other.

So, is there scope to change something in the full-back positions? I don’t think either of Ben White or Riccardo Calafiori make Arsenal hugely less effective defensive, but both could offer something a bit different in the opposition half. White likes to overlap more than Jurrien Timber, Calafiori is definitely more dynamic from an attacking perspective than Piero Hincapie. And the two they’d replace have played a lot of late, so resting them and using fresh legs might be handy.

Mikel Arteta, despite publicly reiterating his trust in Bukayo Saka (and rightly so, in my opinion), might still feel that Noni Madueke’s impactful cameo in midweek might need to be rewarded with a start. If Trossard doesn’t make it, that possible front three with him, Viktor Gyokeres and Gabriel Martinelli on the left isn’t one that has worked effectively, and lacks the technical security and craft you need against a team who will be defensively disciplined. Could that mean Madueke on the left, perhaps? We saw it in flashes at the start of the season, and not much since, but having him and Saka starting would be interesting.

Another option might be to play Kai Havertz in midfield, and shift Eberechi Eze out to the left where he hasn’t been selected since that game against Aston Villa. It does seem a bit mad to me that one lapse has seemingly rendered that option unusable for the manager, but he has played there plenty and could easily do a job. Maybe too Havertz up front ahead of Gyokeres gives us a different kind of player there, someone who more successfully links play with those around him, and I would be quite curious to see how he and Eze (who would then start in midfield), connect in the final third.

So, I think there are ways Arteta can do something a bit different and make the team just a little less predictable. Or, at least, change the side sufficiently from the one Everton’s manager and analysts might predict for today. The draw in Germany wasn’t a bad result per se, but there’s no doubt there’s room for improvement in terms of performance. So let’s hope that today, back at home, we can produce that as well as taking the 3 points that would, temporarily at least, put us 10 points clear of Man City who play after us this evening.

—

Meanwhile, I thought Arteta was really interesting in his press conference yesterday when fielding questions about how the game has developed in the Premier League, with so much focus on set-pieces etc. The video is below, this stuff starts around 5’50 when he’s asked if style of play matters more than winning at this point of the season.

Arteta said:

I was watching the Champions League game between Newcastle and Barcelona. For me, Barcelona are the most exciting team in Europe in many moments the way they play, and they face one of the Premier League teams, Newcastle, who are exceptional in their intensity and the high pressure, everything man-to-man, a huge amount of tools, a really good team in transition and we saw a completely different game I’ve never seen Barcelona play and that’s a huge credit to Newcastle, but this is the league that we are playing in. Have you seen the Barcelona 1,000 passes that does it every week in Spain? No. It was a very different kind of game.

This is the reality and if you don’t want to see it, it’s because probably we have to change the glasses on the perspective that we see the game because this is the reality of our league right now.

We saw Leverkusen make our game much more like a Premier League game than a European one, and the main factor, according to Arteta is how teams set-up:

The biggest issue is the man-to-man, believe me. If all the managers have to agree: you cannot defend man-to-man – tomorrow you’re going to have a different league, I guarantee you. A different league.

Which is why, as Lewis pointed out in our preview podcast on Patreon, the focus on teams scoring from set-pieces fails to take into account how scoring goals from open play has become much more difficult. Changing the rules for corners or throw-ins won’t change that. This season only 6 games have been won by 4 goals or more, last season it was in the 20s. That tells you something, but let’s not forget that 2 of that 6 this time around were our wins over Leeds home and away.

I absolutely understand how people look at this Arsenal team and think we’re not quite at the attacking level we need to be. Individually players aren’t producing as much as we expected and lack consistency in their performances. Collectively there are issues too, but we are the joint highest scorers in the Premier League, and the difficulties that exist in our games are not unique to us. They apply to almost every team this season, and if we happen to be the best at maximising set-pieces, it’s not because we’ve just decided that’s how we want to play, it’s what any smart team needs to do.

—

Right, I’ll leave it there for now. As ever you can join us for live blog coverage, as well as the report, player ratings, reaction, and all the rest on Arseblog News. There’s also the preview podcast on Patreon to listen to in the meantime as well.

For now, have a good one, and come on you reds!