Why Arteta is making Arsenal bigger

[Music] has anyone else noticed how Arsenal have just got much bigger over the summer what do I mean by that well let's take a look at the starting 11 from the community Shield that Arsenal put out against Manchester City and there's a few things to notice here the first one is that Arsenal playing a backline of entirely center-backs they brought in durian Timber from I actually played as a center-back last year Ben White has been playing as a right-back for Arsenal for a few seasons but he's also played as a center-back at Brighton and Leeds as well and so what we're seeing here is something that we've seen from Pep Guardiola that is playing a lot of center-backs in your back line another thing to notice is that Michael artesa went with Thomas party and Declan rice alongside Mark nerdegor in that Midfield now as we know Thomas party has been playing as a six for Arsenal for a few seasons now Declan rice sign from West Ham has been playing as part of a two-man Midfield this is a very physically imposing midfield for Arsenal and then finally we have Kai habit signed from Chelsea this summer playing as a nine in this game but offering a very different physical profile to the usual number nines that Arsenal have been playing in Gabriel Jesus or Eddie and Katie yeah it's a bit more of a taller player he's going to win balls in the air more often as well and so what we're seeing here is actually quite a physically imposing Arsenal team and so the big question becomes why is it that arteta has made Arsenal physically bigger this summer and in order to answer that question we need to have a little think about tactics now the important thing to note about Michael Lotter is that like many other Elite coaches he likes his teams to impose themselves on every phase of play now that's easy to do when you're playing teams that are worse than you because in those games you're probably going to be dominating the ball and it's much easier to impose yourselves in those sorts of situations but there have been some games under Michael arteto Arsenal have struggled to impose themselves for example before this year's Community Shield Arsenal had lost eight straight times to Manchester City and in these games Arsenal are generally going to have less possession and that means it's harder to impose yourself on the game and so that brings us to the question of how you impose yourself on games out of possession now some teams out of possession are fairly happy to allow the opponents to just build the ball up around the back move the ball down the field up into a a point where they're around the halfway line at which point then they will start engaging in defensive actions that's a nice way of approaching the game because it allows you to be fairly structured out of possession you're not giving away too much space in behind so you're going to make the opposition work really hard to actually break you down to score but there are some downsides for example if you're not engaging the opponents until the halfway line you're just allowing them to dictate the play up until that point and you're giving them a huge amount of possession of the ball and also there is the risk that they can force your defensive block deeper and deeper and deeper and all you're doing the whole time then is defending you're not able to impose yourself on the game in possession at all now micheloteta doesn't want to do that because he wants to disrupt the opponent's build up much much earlier so what we'll see from Arsenal a lot of time in these out of possession phases is then pushing really high up the field often going player for player across the field to try and make it really hard for the opponents to build out but there are downsides to this approach as well for example by pushing up high you're leaving a load of space in behind the defense that can be unlocked through just one pass that's quite a dangerous way of playing but there's another downside here and that is that despite the fact that going play for player can be really good to disrupt the opposition it can also leave yourself exposed as well so in this situation let's imagine that Arsenal end up going player for player the center that pushes up here now if we look along that back line we can see that there's four situations where Arsenal players are in 1v1 match-ups against their opponent and so all it takes is for the opponent men to Target one of these 1v1 matchups they're probably going to go for the one with the weakest player of the opponent in and then you're just one pass again away from being in a dangerous situation that can result in a goal scoring opportunity and so rather than being constantly vulnerable to these sorts of turnovers getting in behind mikalotetto wants to have the best of both worlds in certain phases you're gonna have his team pushing up player for player in high areas to disrupt the opposition but if the Press is broken or if there's any threat of a ball in behind what you'll then see is Arsenal dropping out into a more zonal conservative block so Arsenal able to impose themselves out of possession at both ends of the pitch so how did this play out in the Community Shield well let's imagine here that Manchester City have a goal kick Arsenal are pushing up high they want to jump play for player in certain situations and so they're really nicely structured for this moment now there's a few things to notice here the first thing is is that Arsenal are blocking out the middle of the field they don't want to give Manchester City any space at all to build up through the middle because when they do that they're really dangerous so we have a lot of players in the central areas both of the wide players are actually quite narrow here so what they're doing here is allowing Manchester City space in the wide areas blocking out the middle the other thing to notice is that Arsenal are really going to try and force Manchester City to build up on this side of the field because this is the side of the field with Ds and a kanji on it rather than John stones and Carl Walker much better in the build-up phase and the way that they're going to do this is by using Kai habits to give him a bended run here so what he can do is he can actually close the line between Ortega and Stones that's going to force the ball into this part of the pitch the natural pass then becomes the pass to Ruben Diaz here once they force the ball onto this side of the pitch what Arsenal are going to try and do then is go play for player to make it really hard for Manchester City to build up and actually if we look at the structure that Arsenal have you can see all of their players are at pretty good distances to their counterparts so Saka is on a kanji but white and greenlish we've got Saliba on Holland but we've also got party doubling up on Holland because he is their most dangerous aerial threat and then across the pitch we can just see player for player all the way around the field just making it really hard for Manchester City to build up now there is obviously a weakness here because erdogo is responsible for marking two players and in this situation what he would be expected to do is to push up onto Diaz to put him under pressure now obviously this does leave coverage it's free in the middle but Arsenal have a really smart way of being able to deal with that and this is where Declan rice and Thomas Party come in because they play a really important role in this system a role that I like to call the in-between roll so we've got Declan rice here he's responsible for tracking rodri usually but he also has the ability to come across the kovic if odegard pushes forward onto Diaz now there will be some situations where rice won't be able to leave Roger because he's a passing option and in those situations what you'll see is Thomas party pushing up onto coverage to make sure there's no free player but again what we notice is that this leaves Arsenal in a situation where they've got 1v1s all the way across the back line and in those situations Arsenal are vulnerable to the balls in behind particularly when you have 1v1 matchups involving erling Holland but there is another potential problem here and that is that man city simply play around the Arsenal press and if they can do that well enough they could get their midfielders in these Open Spaces running at the opposition back line with the opportunity of playing all of these through balls through to these four players and it's these situations where Arsenal have to work really hard to get back into their low block like this with all of their players falling in hoping to get into a situation where they can stop this happening before Manchester City can get a good chance away let's have a look at a couple of examples from the game so here we can see Manchester city with the goalkeeper on the ball here's Kai habits he's going to make that curving run to force the ball onto this side we've got Declan Rice playing as a between player between the Manchester City pivots and then we have erdogo here as well ready to jump up onto Diaz if the ball is passed in that direction the ball is passed in that direction because that's the way that Arsenal want it to go goes to Diaz and as we can see already her the gore is pushing out two Diaz to go play for player Declan rice is moving across the Kobe chich to make sure he's not free and as you can see he's pointing back at rodri showing you now that there is a spare man in that Midfield now because of the speed of this jump from erdogor onto Diaz Diaz actually ends up playing the ball back to Ortega and we end up in this situation which is exactly the same structural thing erdog is going to drop back we can see Declan rice coming across onto rodery we can see habits pointing out the free man again just making sure that that pass isn't played so this is the structure of the high press but what happens when high pressure is broken well here we've got a situation where Ortega is able to find Diaz in space because Kobe chich has pulled erdogo across and this opens a huge amount of space up in the wide area here drcs that space and runs into it and as we can see all the Arsenal players are dropping back apart from Saka who's going to step up to Diaz to slow him down to help his teammates get into the defensive structure and here is that defensive structure we can see that 4-4-2 shape there really nice and compact not allowing any space to Manchester City and as we can see from the breaking of that High Press Arsenal have managed to get back into their low block without allowing a good chance but that's not to say that Manchester City didn't ever expose Arsenal's pressing so they've got a really nice example of that here now this is an interesting situation because Arsenal are between the high press phase and the lower block phase and because of this Manchester City are able to exploit the indecision that Arsenal are in so in this situation we've got John Stones on the ball he's pulling Kai habits forward if he does that he's leaving rodery free and that means that Declan rights has to jump up again you can see him pointing recognizing that this player is going to be free at the same time John stains is also threatening the past across the Diaz and if that happens as we know erdogo has to jump up onto Diaz that means he's leaving his player free and then Thomas party will have to jump up on him as well but there is one Manchester City player who recognizes the problems that Arsenal are going to face with Thomas party's stepping up and that is erling Holland who is now in a 1v1 battle with William Saliba and as you can see on the very edge of this screenshot you can see Holland recognizing that he can attack the space in behind he invites the long ball through from John stones and actually ends up in a really nice 1v1 situation against William saliva actually has a really good chance of getting a shot away but William saliva's brilliant defending allows him to get a foot in and stop this being exploited any further why is all of this interesting well because we've seen it all before we actually saw Arsenal play This Way against Manchester City in their most recent game before the community shield now they won the community shield on penalties the previous game they played the same defensive structure and they lost 4-1 so something has changed but let's take a look at that night so here's Arsenal in the high pressing phase and as you can see the basic structure is still the same we have a forward here she's going to try and close the passing Lane between the two center backs here we have Granite shacker playing the in-between roll between the two pivot players of Manchester City and then here's erdogo ready to jump up onto the center back when the ball arrives again because erdogor jumps forward the ball ends up going back across the field to Edison and as you can see Arsenal now pressing aggressively up onto this side of the pitch the ball's going to arrive at the feet of John stones and also have him under a huge amount of pressure here now Arsenal are actually pressing a lot more aggressively here than they did in the community Shield that's maybe something they've learned from it but it is still the same sort of principle Force the ball wide go play for player and make it hard for the opposition to build up the only option that John Stones has here is to go long he goes long and the ball ends up at the feet of none other than erling Holland who is now being tracked by Rob holding here man city now have three players up against four players of Arsenal but they're able to utilize the speed Holland plays the ball into the of Kevin De bruyne comes across the pitch gets around the Defenders and scores a fantastic goal from outside of the box and with only six minutes gone in the game Manchester City are able to exploit a weakness in the Arsenal pressing structure and so the question is what has changed in the few months between Arsenal losing 4-1 and then them coming out drawing against Manchester City in the community shield and then winning on penalties and the answer to that question is personnel and there are four players in particular that we need to focus on so we have Gabriel Jay-Z playing as the nine we have Granite Checker playing as one of the eights Rob holding has come in as a center-back and then we have zinchenko as a left back so that was Arsenal last season since then we've seen them sign some new players who featured in the community Shield so instead of Gabriel Jesus who was injured we saw Kai habits playing as the number nine rather than granite Shaka we saw Arsenal's record signing Declan rice coming in as an a into this sort of position zinchenko is replaced by Julian timber here and then William salibo is back and so he replaces Rob holding in the center-back position and this gives the Arsenal team a completely different physical profile so we've now got Kai habert who's a much more imposing Center forward than some of the other options he's taller than Gabriel Jesus he's taller than Eddie and kettia he's able to do a lot more of that hold up stuff and then Declan rice is a cheat code in terms of what he offers Arsenal out of possession not only is he a physical specimen but he's mobile and intelligent enough to be able to play this in between position he played it really well in the community shield and part of the reason why Manchester City struggled so much is because rice is so good in those sorts of areas but also rice offers a lot in terms of that lower block as well when you have a Midfield Duo a party and rice in your lower block you're going to be able to stop anyone coming through the middle and obviously William saliber is much better than Rob holding and he's going to offer a huge amount more in these 1v1 matchups against players like erling Holland and we've already seen it from the clips that in the situation where Rob holding was up against Sterling Holland it resulted in a goal when William Saliba was 1v1 against Holland he was able to stop him but during Timber as well offers a very different kind of profile to someone like zinchenko so obviously jinchenko is able to invert but sometimes he can be a little bit defensively deficient in these wide areas so if you're playing against a team like Manchester City he's just going to add a little bit more solidity in these wide areas if you end up in these 1v1 match-ups and so what we're seeing here is that by recruiting more physically imposing players mickelottet is actually making Arsenal able to compete in these games against Elite sides but it's not just asshole's out of possession profile that's changed this summer by making them bigger nikolotetes also changed aspects of their impossession profile as well obviously our tattoo wants Arsenal to be a possession-based side so what they're going to try and do is build up move the ball through the thirds and generate dangerous goal scoring chances but when you're playing against a team like Manchester City they're going to try and make it hard to do that they are also going to be pressing High going play for player and disrupting your build up and so there's going to be certain situations where Arsenal can actually try and exploit the same sort of weaknesses that Manchester City are trying to exploit in them that is playing the ball long and winning these 1v1 Jewels maybe winning first and second balls in order to retain possession further up the field in more dangerous situation and that's where this new profiler player comes in because now you have Kai habits who's able to play a more physically imposing game as a center forward you also have Declan rice you can engage in winning second balls as well he's a really good attacking defensive player as well winning those balls in turnover situations and because of this you can then use your goalkeeper maybe to go long in situations where you're under pressure to try and exploit the opposition in certain situations here's a nice example of that Arsenal are about to take a goal kick here's the Arsenal pivot players now you'd expect them to build up around the back and so you want your pivot players there to help out but at some point Declan rice realizes that Aaron ramsdale is going to go long and because of that he quickly moves himself forward so that he's going to be able to compete for second balls the ball goes long Kai habers is able to Win It ball bounces up into the air and lo and behold here you've got Declan rice competing with Bernardo silver for that second ball he actually wins a foul in this situation what we're seeing here is that Arsenal don't just simply need to build up from the back they can also go long compete for first and second balls and impose themselves much more physically in games like this against teams like Manchester City so why is Michael arteta making Arsenal bigger this season well it's pretty obvious isn't it because he wants his teams to be more competitive against the elite sides in the top competitions we've already seen him get a result against Manchester City but he's also going into the Champions League where they will come up against a lot of other Elite sides as well so by making them bigger Arsenal are now going to be much more competitive going forward if you like this video please consider subscribing to the channel the athletic is home to some of the world's best sports journalists including journalists dedicated to each Premier League team so every fan gets the coverage they deserve not just the big clubs and you can try it for free now for 30 days see the link in the description

Channel: Tifo IRL

Views: 191,367

Keywords: Tifo, tifo football, tifo irl, tifo in real life, football, irl, Arsenal, arsenal players, arsenal transfers, arsenal tactics, arteta, mikel arteta, rice arsenal, havertz arsenal, jurrien timber height, declan rice height, arsenal average height

Id: eui33uKqQew

Length: 15min 22sec (922 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 11 2023