Morning all.
The players were back to training yesterday after a couple of days off, and after some frank exchanges between them were reported after the Wolves game, I’m sure they’ll be working hard this week to prepare for Everton on Saturday evening.
As I said the other day, I really have no issue at all with players being demonstrably unhappy with a performance. I prefer that to passive acceptance, which is what we were served up too often in the past. Sometimes you need a moment like this to clear the air, and to press the reset button before you go again. Doing so after a win, as unconvincing as it was, isn’t always the way you get to do it either.
Typically you’ve dropped points, a draw or a defeat leads to the ‘We’ll pick ourselves up and go again’ conversations. Remember those days when poor old Johan Djourou was wheeled out to do the interview on arsenal.com? This time Arsenal can use this as a marker, a kind of low-tide of performance for this season, and work to ensure it doesn’t happen again.
Then again, it was only a couple of weeks ago that we’d convincingly won the North London derby and beaten Bayern Munich at home and everything felt a lot better than it did after Wolves. I’ve said it before, and it’s worth repeating, that I felt this title race was going to be one with some twists and turns along the way. We’ve twisted and turned this week and it’s not a lot of fun.
Did you ever see one of those videos online where it’s a funfair or a theme park or something, and there are people strapped into a roller-coaster or one of those rides which catapult you into the sky? There’s a camera focused on the people on the ride, and when it starts they immediately freak out, and start shrieking and screaming in terror as they’re launched upward or upside-down around a loopy bit. That’s kinda what the reaction to the Wolves game felt like. We’re back on solid ground now, and we have the chance to put that behind us at Everton on Saturday.
I wonder if, for many, the sense that we have crumbled a bit defensively is the major worry. It wasn’t long ago the opposition couldn’t even muster a shot on target, now we’re inviting late pressure and conceding late goals. Twist. Turn. I don’t think it’s entirely down to the injury situation, but the absences have played a part. No Gabriel makes you weaker, and the fact his replacement has been a player (Piero Hincapie) who is still coming to terms with the English game is a factor that perhaps doesn’t get as much focus as it should. He’s not inexperienced, but just five league starts isn’t a lot of time to get accustomed to a league like this one.
For me though, it’s really about the other end of the pitch, and I found Mikel Arteta’s assessment of the game last weekend quite interesting. The ‘horrible defensive habits’ line got a lot of traction, but the part where he bemoaned a ‘lack of precision’ inside the opposition box not so much. In every interview he did, he mentioned the Gabriel Martinelli chance at the back post which really should have been a goal, and despite the fact we didn’t play that well, I think if we score in the first half from some very presentable chances, this is a game that takes on an entirely different complexion.
When you only score once, you leave yourself open to the late sucker-punch, which is what happened against Wolves and against Aston Villa the week before. So, I’m curious to see how the manager looks to remedy that this weekend. I suspect that Martinelli will lose his place in the starting line-up to Leandro Trossard, our most productive player in terms of goals + assists this season, and on the far side Bukayo Saka looks to me like a player finding some real rhythm in his game.
Then the question is who starts up front. Here’s an interesting graphic from Sky Sports (via r/gunners):
There’s a decision to be made between Viktor Gyokeres and Gabriel Jesus now, and hopefully in the not too distant future, Kai Havertz inserts himself into that equation. Is it the time for an arm around the shoulder for the summer signing, to show him faith and restore some fairly obvious lost confidence, or is it about demonstrating how ruthless you have to be at this level and say ‘You’ve had chances, it’s someone else’s turn’?
Personally, I lean a little more to the latter than the former, but I recognise there have been some issues for the Swede with injuries of late. Nevertheless, Arteta talked about him needing to ‘convert his chances’ before Wolves, which suggests to me that he’s challenging him to deliver. I thought his second half was better last weekend, and in Trossard he had a player outside him who looked to be more on his wavelength than Martinelli, so perhaps that’s something the manager needs to look at before changing things up too much.
Gabriel Jesus looks like a man determined to make up for lost time, and I don’t think we’ve entirely seen the last of Mikel Merino in that position even if we have other options available to us. I’ve looked at the shot stats in the Premier League, and Gyokeres is joint 5th with Trossard on 20, with Bukayo Saka (29), Eberechi Eze (25), Riccardo Calafiori (22), and Declan Rice (21), ahead of him. Saka, Gyokeres, Eze and Trossard have the same number of league goals (4), which I guess you can draw your own conclusions from.
Where I think there is an improvement he can make though, is with the ball at his feet aside from taking shots. He’s our least accurate passer of the ball with just 60% pass completion, and while I know that’s not something you’re laser-focused on when it comes to your centre-forward, bringing others into play better can also improve the chances he gets to score. To be fair, the next three lowest are Noni Madueke (62.4%), Martinelli (67.4%) and Trossard (70%), and then David Raya, so it isn’t uncommon for the forward players to be down that list, but I do think that’s an area where, if things do improve, he might benefit in terms of the stat everyone judges strikers by.
Anyhow, plenty for the manager to think about and to consider ahead of Saturday, and the festive period ahead. Right, I’ll leave it there for today, have a good one and I’ll be back tomorrow with more and an Arsecast.
Until then.
