Why Arsenal didn’t mind losing and where they’d be without VAR

 

 

• Newcastle v Arsenal No new players, so how about new tactics?
• Did Arsenal really have an inferiority complex

By Tony Attwood

With a referee clearly known for his home wins, this game was played out exactly as we could expect: a home win overseen by just about the most home-biased referees in the league. 

For although as fans we wanted a win, the game was hardly a matter of consequence to Arsenal for whom the League and the Champions League are much more important.  But for Newcastle, a club with so few triumphs, there is still a sense of wanting revenge for the FA Cup final of 1998 – something long forgotten by Arsenal, even though Arsenal won.

Thus for Arsenal, the prime concern was to avoid any more injuries, while to Newcastle United this was by far and away the most important game of the season. 

Newcastle are in fact just hanging on for a Europa place, but have lost two of their last three league games.   Arsenal feel secure about another season in the Champs League and besides they won the FA Cup in 2020.   The last trophy for Newcastle was 65 years ago. 

Indeed, since the Newcs last won anything, Arsenal have won the FA Cup 11 times, the top division six times and two of the cups played for in Europe.  Which is perhaps why, seeing they had a referee who primarily oversees home wins, they let it go.

Of course, one of the big problems that Arsenal have, other than being pitted against referees who have a particular bias, is VAR, and the Sun (not normally the home of statistics) recently produced a table of how the Premier League would look without VAR. 

Not much changed at the foot of the table, with Tottenham still just getting itself outside of the relegation zone, but at the top, after 24 Arsenal games they reckon that without VAR the table would read…

 

Pos	Club	W	D	L	F	A	Gd	Pts
1	Arsenal	24	17	6	2	51	22	56
2	Liverpool	23	17	4	2	57	22	55
3	Nottm F	24	14	5	5	42	28	47
4	Bournemouth	24	14	3	7	46	28	47
5	Chelsea	23	11	6	6	46	31	39
6	ManC	24	11	6	7	46	35	39

 

The Sun, of course, does not reveal its workings, so we can’t check these figures.   But the New York Times which publishes articles from the Athletic does go into great depths as with their piece on Arsenal tactics recently.

They pointed out for example that in the 5-1 victory over ManC, the win was primarily achieved by the combination of Trossard, Rice and Lewis-Skelly all down one wing.

Now the problem with this is that if Arsenal were to play like this all the time, future opponents would put in the heavy mob to cripple one or two of those players, rather as Saka was been treated with minimal protection from referees.  Which probably explains why Arsenal chose to go a different route last night.

Of course one of the big attraction for coming opponents could be that Newc made it look easy.  But I am sure our future opponents won’t take any notice of a mere blog like this, any more than PGMO or the media do, so there’s no problem pointing this out.

Certainly one of the problems Arsenal like to throw at teams, is who they should be tracking, and which approach Arsenal is going to take and watching the game on TV last night (and thus obviously at the mercy of Sky’s director of the programme), I really don’t think I saw as much of that movement last night as I did in the previous match.

Certainly the interchange of positions is central to the club’s games, and when it is reduced (as it seemed to be last night) the effectiveness of the team is, in my opinion, also reduced.   Rice turning up on the left wing is not what the opposition expect, but that’s what they can get.  The same is true with Lewis-Sklly suddenly going to play in central midfield.

Now I am going to admit I might have got this wrong, because I only watched the Newc match on TV and there the cameras follow the ball not the tactics, but it did look to me as if Arsenal knew they were going to get nothing from this ref.   Plus, with the deficit from the first game, with Newcastle having not won anything for a couple of generations, and with a referee who for whom only 15% of his matches end up as awa wins, (see Newcastle v Arsenal: the bias of the referee for more details), I think Arsenal decided their prime objective was to get through the match without any more injuries while accepting the inevitable criticism that would come their way from the media (which they always get anyway.

Of course, you may not see it that way, but given the home bias of the ref, plus the continuing challenge in Europe and the top of the Premier League, I think the prime objective was to get through the game, without injuries and without making it look as if the club was not interested.  It’s not what Untold foresaw, but in retrospect it makes sense.