By Tony Attwood
Yesterday’s match was very depressing; you don’t need me to tell you that. A game which had all the signals in advance of being an easy Arsenal home win was lost 0-1 and thus deeply affected the club’s chance of catching Liverpool. The problem is scoring goals of course, Except, except, league tables are not built on goal scoring.
I tried a little test yesterday with some guys around me just before the match, asking them which teams were the top scorers in the league at the moment. No one got it right – and that I guess is because is it possible to do well in the league without being one of the top scoring clubs, and equally it is possible to be a top scoring club and not do well.
Everyone knew or guessed that Liverpool were the top scoring team but otherwise… opinions were varied. In fact the table this morning based on goal scoring would be Liverpool first as we all know (62 goals), Tottenham second (!) Manchester City third and Arsenal fourth. Arsenal are one goal behind ManC and two goals behind Tottenham. We are now 11 goals behind Liverpool.
But my concern is how buying another striker will affect the balance and work of those who do score for Arsenal when the club is not constantly disrupted by injuries, and whether a change will weaken the system that has made the club the most effective defensive outfit in the league.
Arteta has evolved and developed a system in which the goals didn’t come from a single player but were spread around players. It was and remains an incredibly effective way of building a team, as defences have no idea how the defend against a team with Saka getting 16, Havertz 13, Trossard 12, Odegaard eight, Rice seven and Martinelli six.
The defences Arsenal play literally had no idea where the next goal was coming from – and neither did those of us in the crowd.
The record number of goals (for modern times) scored last season and the season before by Arsenal revealed the system works, and to tear up that blueprint seems to me to be wrong – when the blueprint has only failed because of an unprecedented number of injuries to forward for modern times.
But of course, many do not see a change in the system as the way forard. Indeed there is a comment on Untold “Don’t think we have played well in more than two games this season.”
So the proposition is that a club that is second in the table and six points clear of the club in third place has played badly in 24 out of 26 games this season. The implication of this is that in fact every team in the league except Liverpool is also playing dreadfully through the season, and needs another manager.
Which in turn raises the question, how can a league exist in which 95% of the managers are dreadful? And put it another way, where on earth would Arsenal find another manager who is simply not dreadful when 9% of the managers in the league are awful?
And after that we must ask, is there a manager in another league in Europe who wants to come to club that is dreadful all season? After all if Arsenal has been dreadful all season, that means a huge amount of money needs to be spent on new players who would presumably be working on a different system of playing.
It is indeed not just depressing to consider that every team in the League is “dreadful” other than Liverpool, but to consider which manager could be brought in to reform this. And let us not forget that the manager would be left with the current squad, and a club has been the third-highest-spending club in the Premier League.
Arteta as we know failed to bring in the new player/s he wanted in the winter transfer window, and obviously saw it as being more productive not to buy anyone now and wait for the summer. But a summer under a new manager would probably mean undoing much of Arteta’s ground work and starting again.
The alternative approach says that this season has been the worst any of us can remember for injuries, and such an injury-ridden season is unlikely to happen again. So unless one is saying that the injuries are Arteta’s fault, or that a brilliant centre forward would have been able to enter the team when the injuries hit, having been happy not to be there all along, or that he could have played in the team all season without reducing the impact of other players before they were injured, it won’t work.
Of course, another player could have made all the difference – but that difference could have been fewer goals than everyone else, as much as it could have meant the same number of goals, with that new players scoring some, without getting injured. Which then implies that PGMO would change their tune too.
It might have worked. Or it might not – especially when we remember this is not just a case of Arsenal saying “We want player X at this price.” The club currently with the player might not want to sell. The player might look at the way the media and supporters have responded to this and the previous two seasons, and thought, “Do I want to play for a club where the fans and media en masse think coming second is a reason for sacking the manager?” And he might well find the answer to be “no.”
Whilst a different horse on a different course may have given less goals it may have given more important ones .In games like yesterday where teams get one up and drop deep we can pass the ball sideways , back and forth and look for the slide rule pass for eternity when sometimes a more direct method may have borne fruit.
There is a predictability about us which teams have learned to combat . Sometimes springing a surprise unsettles teams .
After the game Arteta said that we were not at the required level, the quality of our play was not good enough. Basically we had an off day.
However I think it fair to say that we have had too many off days this season and we cannot offer up the injury situation as being the sole reason.
As far as I can see most of our ‘off days’ occur when we play teams who use a low block and pack there defensive third of the pitch. We seem to be bereft of ideas on how to break these tactics down. Scoring early obviously helps but this season for some reason we have been unable to do this often enough. I am sure the training staff are constantly working on how to deal with these types of defensive situations but with constantly playing matches twice a week there is not much time left to actually get any work done on the training pitch.
It seems from all the reports I have read that Arteta definitely wants to buy a striker but any addition must be able to adapt to the system we currently use much like Havertz does. Maybe a Giraud type player, I do wish we had never sold him. His preferred targets were obviously not available in January, and Mikel rightly was not prepared to buy just anyone who may have been available.
So I think we are just going to have to sweat it out for the remainder of the season, do our best and I am sure that come summer Arteta will implement some changes to improve the quality and versatility of our squad.
COYG
Having now seen the MLS sending off, I believe that it’s further evidence of the PGMOL agenda against Arsenal. First his “offence” was only worth yellow, as would have been the decision affecting the players of any other team. Regardless of where Raya was, I do not accept that over 50 yards from goal is a clear scoring opportunity. However, more decisively, it is clear that MLS was dispossessed by the WH player’s foul, which itself looked worth a yellow card (or at least a look by VAR) for an apparent elbow to the head.
Even the Mirror has published an article stating that Arsenal have lost 3 points as a result of VAR mistakes, based on the artificially low number actually admitted by the PGMOL after the event. My own estimate is that 10 points would be closer to the truth, but at least the fact that the principle of injustice to Arsenal has now been acknowledged in part of the media.
Whether or not the team plays well, there is abundant evidence that Arsenal are routinely cheated by referees.,
Losing two attackers after the end of the transfer period was something nobody could have foreseen. Talking with hindsight is always easy. The team that won 5-1 against $ity included Havertz and Martinelli. Losing twose two players in one week with long term injuries will probably cost us the title on top of the injuries to Saka and Jesus. But with Havertz and Martinelli fit we could win from any team (apart Newcastle it seems) but they are injured so we are down to the bare bones. Given all the injuries and all the unique referee decisions we have suffered we cannot and are not allowed to win the league this season. A top 4 spot should be the target for this season. And with some players now having a long rest we might benefit from this next season. And who knows the forward target will be found this summer….
On the MLS sending off. I now have seen it from an angle where you can clearly see the WHU player hitting MLS on the back of his head. So that was the first foul which resulted in the outcome as we know it. Why didn’t VAR check on that? We all know why…
John L
You make two very good points .One yesterday and one today, both of which drive me nuts.
“I can’t help thinking that this was another “letter of the law” case, that only arises for Arsenal players……..In addition, I believe that recent fairly obvious red card offences by Van Dyck and Konate have been ignored by referees, with no VAR intervention.
Spot on. I have said many times, that due to the massively subjective nature of so many decisions the referee has to make, in each and every case, someone, somewhere, will agree with the call, to greater or lesser degrees. As such, ‘to the letter of the law’, every single decision we have had against us, and I mean EVERY decision, can be justified, IF YOU WANT IT TO BE, and boy doesn’t everyone want them to be. So that’s their point. We have no argument. Every yellow, every red, is deserved.
Fine, I could live with that, IF every other team was held to the SAME letter of the law, but they clearly are not. And as if that isn’t bad enough, when they are not, either nothing is said, a la Van Dyke or Kanute the other night who could of received at least 3 yellows, or some perverse, bend over backwards excuse is made so as to justify the referees and VAR’s inaction. The media default to such incidents is more often than not to say nothing and just let it slip under the radar. Only fans like us, who feel and see this bias week in week out, mention it, and when we do we are called paranoid. There’s nothing to see here and there’s certainly no agenda.
But there is. As we have noted, even a couple of non Arsenal bloggs accept there is, or at least accept there is a bias against us.
“Whether or not the team plays well, there is abundant evidence that Arsenal are routinely cheated by referees”
And that is the other point. Whether we play well or not is irrelevant. As far as these decisions are concerned, whether we play good bad or indifferent has no bearing on it at all. How we played is a separate issue, but often as not it is used as a reason to simply ignore any decisions that go against us, no matter how ridiculous they may be.
One final thought.
Does anyone really believe that VAR would of intervened if that was Liverpool yesterday?
I very much doubt it. And what’s more nothing would of been said. Nothing to see here. On and on it goes.
We were robbed of this title in the first couple of months. We should of had enough points in the bag to have a real off day like yesterday. It happens. We have been playing catch up ever since, with absolutely ZERO room for error, and that is almost impossible.
Remember, last season we dropped just 5 points in the entire second half of the season and that still wasn’t enough.
I’m certainly not moaning because we had an off day. In fact I am more sick and tired of the fans that are. The usual suspects out there whinging and whining. They make me sick
They should open their eyes. There is only one team in the Premier League being held to the letter of the law on a weekly basis, and that is us. It is a joke.
Watching the Man City Liverpool match. It’s currently 0 – 2 to Liverpool. Obviously we need Man City to do us a favour. Despite Liverpool scoring the 2 goals Man City have been doing all the pressing, and were still pressing to the end of the half.
But here’s the thing, the referees just cannot help erring towards Liverpool can they. Konate is again allowed to do as he wishes without a word.
But this is the thing.
Mac Allister went down injured on the half hour. He needed treatment. Liverpool were one up at the time. Taylor actually pointed at his watch to let us all know he was adding on the time. I checked the time it took to restart the match. Two and a half minutes. 2 goals were scored. Both restarts took well over the allowed 30 seconds for the restart Both took over a minute. So lets say plus 1mini 30 secs for the 2.
That’s a total of at least 4 minutes to be added without anything else.
Taylor added just 2 minutes.
Now of course it’s small. Of course nobody says anything. But when the Letter Of The Law is so important when it comes to us you notice these things. So, how come Anthony Taylor cant even manage to add the correct time at the end of a half.
As I say, that one injury to Mac Allister was 2 and a half minutes. Taylor made a point of indicating he was taking note of the delay time, which was 2 and a half minutes, yet he added just 2?
That is a deliberate act of cheating Man city.
Liverpool player just fouled a Man City player around the penalty box and he gives a foul to Liverpool.
Small things but it’s that ’tilt’ we have often talked about and it is crucial.