Tag Archives: Alex Iwobi

Arsenal’s far left problems

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There is currently a massive problem at Arsenal Football Club. One that is being quietly spoken about amongst friends. It has not yet reared it’s ugly head on the terraces, but it is getting to a point where the crowd are on the verge of turning. Arsenal have a problem with their left hand side.

The weakness on our left hand side is becoming more and more problematic. It is simply not working. From both a defensive side and an attacking side.

In the summer, there were massive reports linking us to many a left back. From reports that we were set to trigger Ricardo Rodriguez’s minimum release clause to interest in Leicester youngster Ben Chilwell and Celtic’s Kieran Tierney. In the end, we stuck with what we had, Nacho Monreal and Kieran Gibbs.

Even reports that we were after a left sided centre back who could then cover full back failed to materialise as we ended up with Shkodran “I am still having to Google his first name” Mustafi – a right sided centre back.

So it left us exactly where we were last season. Two solid left backs of similar level.

Now it was easy in the summer to make a case of why we should not go for a new left back. A centre back, defensive midfielder, right winger / striker were more important. We signed one of each.

But 3 months after the window shutting, left back has now arguably become our weakest link.

I have been a massive fan of Nacho Monreal in an Arsenal shirt.

Not blessed with the extreme pace many a full back now has, he has always been more of a Bacary Sagna of the left. Or a Pablo Zabaleta. Someone who recognises their job is to defend, and understands how to go it. A strong defender, using positional and game awareness.

But this season he has had a bit of a shocker.

He has been beaten numerous times too easily on the outside. Average wingers seem to be blasting past him without much effort. And he seems to be diving into challenges with poor decision making. Perhaps a sign that he lacks confidence in himself. Committing early on to the challenge in the hope if he does not win the ball, at least he is being beat high up the pitch.

I do not know the stats, but I would hazard a guess a lot of our goals this season have come from our left hand side.

Of course, it is not just about the full back, you work in pairs, so some of the blame has to go to whoever has been ahead of Monreal for the season.

Against Manchester United, a game where their opener came from our left hand side, it was Aaron Ramsey. Not a natural left winger.

For the majority of the season, Monreal has played behind Alex Iwobi.

Iwobi offers little defensively. You rarely see him busting a gut to get back, chasing his opposing full back, leaving Monreal in a 2 on 1 situation too often.

Even when Iwobi get’s back, his lack of defensive positional awareness becomes exposed. He does not seem to know when to show a player outside or in, who to pick up, what run to follow, or where to stand to cut out the pass. He offers nothing.

Of course, he is just 20, so has a lot to learn, but with Monreal out of form, Iwobi needs to be helping his full back out more.

Football is all about partnerships. From centre backs, to midfielders, to strikers. Leicester City won the league last season because their team was greater than their individuals. Better players in other teams failed to link up with team mates as well as Leicester. We see that on Arsenal’s left hand side. Defensively, Monreal & Iwobi have no gelled.

Then we come to going forward.

Alex Iwobi has started 8 of 12 games in the Premier League for Arsenal this season, and 3 of the 5 Champions League games. Of those 11 games, he is still yet to scored, and has made just 3 goals.

Some would say he has gone backwards this season, that he has been ‘Wengered’ (what the hell does that even mean?), but the truth is expectation is now higher this season.

He has been a first team regular, and he has simply not done enough this season to justify his continual selection. He is not ready for week in week out at Arsenal’s level.

And as a partnership going forward, Monreal and Iwobi have not linked up.

Monreal is very different going forward to Hector Bellerin on the right. He makes shorter runs, hits the bye line, and gets dangerous balls in. He is also a very good passer, even in close situations. But Monreal has done little going forward this season. He has simply not been a threat.

Part of this might be due to his lack of confidence in his current defensive form, so he does not want to be caught out high up the pitch. But what this results in is the opposite of Iwobi not defending.

Monreal not attacking leaves Iwobi isolated. Often with the opposing full back and winger surrounding him. He cuts inside and has a central midfield in his face. 3 on 1. Normally, having dragged 3 players inside, he could flick the ball outside to Monreal in space. But Monreal is not there.

Nacho Monreal and Alexi Iwobi are not linking up. Not gelling. Not performing. They are playing like two individuals with no confidence. They are not a partnership.

And even when they have been rotated out, it is not much better. Kieran Gibbs has not done enough this season in his handful of appearances to usurp Monreal. But he does perhaps deserve a bit of a run in the team. Maybe start him against Bournemouth, mid-week against Southampton, and take it from there. It will then give him 3 games in a row, at least.

And then forward of Monreal, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain has been inconsistent, and the likes of Theo Walcott and Aaron Ramsey should not be considered on the left. So what options does this leave Arsene Wenger?

The most obvious one is move Alexis Sanchez back to the left hand side. He will give Monreal (or Gibbs) the cover they have missed. Also attack is the best form of defence. A full back will not be bombing forward when they are faced against Alexis Sanchez like they are against Alex Iwobi.

Of course, this then has implications upfront, where Sanchez has performed exceptionally so far. Return Olivier Giroud back to the forward line on a permanent basis.

The other option would be to give Oxlade-Chamberlain a chance on the left.

A new partnership of the Ox & Gibbs would be worth giving a go.

In the last few days, Arsenal have been heavily linked with Hull City’s teenage left back Josh Tymon and forever linked Julian Draxler.

Over the next 2 transfer windows, Arsenal need to sort out their hard left, before it plunges the club into crisis.

Note: This blog was written before the Bournemouth victory which saw us win 3-1 with Nacho Monreal crossing for one of the goals. He also gave away the penalty. We did however look a lot stronger with Monreal & Oxlade-Chamberlain.

Keenos

 

The 0-0, Tight at the top, Alex Iwobi, Nacho Monreal and Two DMs

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The 0-0

As we discussed yesterday, the weekends result was not a catastrophe. As Manchester City dropped points once more (now 5 games without a win in all competitions), it meant Arsenal did no lose any ground in the title race.

A result like this has been coming. We got lucky against Burnley, and Swansea were well worth a point.

The Premier League is the most competitive league in the world. The top end might not be as superior as the likes of Real Madrid, Barcelona and Bayern Munich, but no other league in Europe, or the world, has the depth that the Premier League has.

In the current top 10, only 2 sides picked up 3 points at the weekend – Chelsea & Liverpool. Everyone else dropped points.

We will drop more points this season, it is going to be a rollercoaster. It is tight at the top.

Tight at the top

ONE POINT.

That is what separates Manchester City at the top of the league and Tottenham in 5th (unbeaten yet 5th. AHAHAHA). The fact that 4 different sides could have topped the league at points this week, depending on goals scored, shows just how tight it is.

Spurs were the first to miss out, drawing 0-0 at Bournemouth. Arsenal then topped the league by a point after the goalless draw with Middlesbrough. A late consolation goal for WBA was all that stopped Liverpool going top, and then Man City came from behind against Southampton to snatch a point to finish the weekend how they started, top.

With Chelsea’s result over Man U, this league looks to be anyone’s for the taking. Except for Man U’.

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Alex Iwobi

The leagues breakthrough star. If he was English or played for Liverpool or Spurs, the hype around this kid would be ridiculous. Luckily for him he declared for Nigeria and he has at Arsenal. Who the media hate.

He has been superb this season, but he now needs to be taking out of the limelight a bit.

At the weekend, he started off brightly, but quickly faded, to a point where in the 2nd half, he saw barely any of the ball. We were carrying him. For the good of the team, for the good of himself, he needs a little break. Just a couple of games, nothing too much, let him re-charge the batteries, work on his game, and come back stronger.

Arsenal’s biggest weakness is down our left at the moment. And his lack of cover for Nacho Monreal is causing a few problems.

Nacho Monreal

On to Nacho Monreal. He had another poor game, beaten all too easy, time and again, by Adama Traore.

He could do with some help from the aforementioned Alex Iwobi, but the reality is he is getting beat fair to easily in one on ones.

Whilst Iwobi could do a better job tracking back, very rarely this season has Monreal been caught in a 2 on 1 situation on the left hand side. The majority of the time he has been beat, it has been in one on one situations where he has either got too tight and been turned, or not got tight enough and the winger has just pushed the ball past him and ran.

To keep improving as a side, every year your weakest link in the first 11 should be replaced. At the moment the weakest link in Nacho Monreal.

Two DMs

I have seen a lot of chatter since the Boro result about Arsene Wenger deciding to pair Francis Coquelin and Mohamed Elneny together in the middle of the park. Why did we start with two DMs? Was the question continually asked.

Well, Santi Cazorla was injured, Aaron Ramsey also out, and Jack Wilshire currently on loan at Bouremouth. We did not exactly have many other options.

We could have maybe put Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain in the middle of the park, but that would have been a bit of a risk. The majority of the time in his career he has played on the wing, and when he has been in the middle, it tends to be in the Number 10 role, behind a striker, further up the pitch.

Playing The Ox deeper would have been a risk, especially considering the poor form he has been in.

I think Wenger got the team right. Coquelin held, whilst Elneny got forward.

Elneny is not a pure defensive midfielder. He can play. He can create. He is box to box. He is a good player with exceptional passing.

What the weekend showed is how much influence Santi Cazorla has from deep. His two footedness opens up both sides of the pitch. And his passing – short and long – is superior to Elneny. But it is also superior to Oxlade-Chamberlain, Aaron Ramsey & Jack Wilshere.

The team we put out at the weekend should have been good enough to beat Boro, but they defended well, and the Premier League is ultra competitive, shown by only 2 sides in the top 10 winning.

On to Reading.

Keenos

Oxlade-Chamberlain – How close is he to leaving Arsenal?

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“Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain refuses to rule out move away from Arsenal”

That was the sensationalist head line that materialised from Oxlade-Chamberlain’s appearance with his dad on Goals on Sunday.

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Before we get into the meat of this blog, let’s deal with a little bit of veg. Here is what Oxlade-Chamberlain actually said;

“I’d be lying if I wasn’t going to sit here and say that it has crossed my mind that I need more game time,” Oxlade-Chamberlain told Sky Sports. “As a footballer, you want to play every game. Me being myself, I’m not happy when I’m not playing.

“There is going to come a time in my career, and I think I’m approaching that, when I do need to be getting more regular football. But my focus completely and utterly now is on playing for Arsenal and still trying to break into the team when I get the opportunity, and help out if I have to come off the bench.”

“My sole aim for now is to help Arsenal and keep pushing myself to play in this team, because I love being at Arsenal. It’s a great club, it’s a great team and I’ve got a lot of faith in the team,” he said. “So I just want to keep focusing on that.

“But there is that in my mind that I do want to get more game time. There comes a time in your career where you have to re-evaluate things and think, ‘Is that going to be here or elsewhere?’

“I’m not there at the moment, I’m fully focused on this season, playing my part in that. When you get to the end of the season, just like managers do where they re-evaluate their team, players re-evaluate their personal situation, and I’ll do that at the end of the season.”

What he has said, and shown, is that he is a mature young man who is focused on his career. He could easily sit on the bench for Arsenal for the next 5 years, picking up a big wage, living the easy life, going Faces, Nu-Bar or wherever these young footballers go these days when they are average players (usually at Spurs) and want to go on the smash and pick up easy girls.

Oxlade-Chamberlain wants to play football. He wants to become the best that he can. He has not refused to rule out a move from Arsenal, but instead refused to accept sitting on the bench. He is clearly happy at Arsenal, but not happy about not playing. So let’s not go OTT with the “Oxlade-Chamberlain says ‘play or me or lose me’” stuff.

But what actually now for the career of Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain?

He joined Arsenal for an initial payment of £12m from Southampton a few days short of his 18th birthday. He came with nearly as much hype as fellow Southampton academy prospect Theo Walcott. In fact, the rumours were he was better than Walcott.

In 2011, Walcott was under extreme pressure at Arsenal, from fans and media alike. He was 22 and struggling. As quick as he was, accusations were being thrown around that he lacked a football brain, could not cross, was poor technically, and his time at Arsenal was coming to an end.

A Southampton season ticket holder friend of mine described Oxlade-Chamberlain as “better technically than Walcott, not as much pace, but a better all round player”. And early evidence proved him to be correct.

A video posted to YouTube a few months after he had signed for Arsenal certainly gave a lot to be excited about.

March 2012, he put in his best performance in an Arsenal shirt to date. A fantastic performance in the Champions League against AC Milan, which saw Arsenal come so close to overturning a 4-0 deficit form the first leg. He was just 18.

Very much like Jack Wilshere, who’s best performance in an Arsenal shirt also came as a teenager in the Champions League, he has since gone on to disappoint. Unlike Wilshere, it is not just down to injury.

Now before you all start angrily replying on Facebook and Twitter “another youngster ruined by Le Fraud Wenger”, let’s stop chatting bollocks. Enough youngsters have come through over the years which show that Wenger does not ruin youngsters. It is merely a narrative created to suit an agenda of some very bitter people.

So what did go wrong with Oxlade-Chamberlain? Well he just did not progress.

He always struggled for fitness, always looking like he was puffing out of his arse after 60 minutes, always struggled to put a run of 5 starts together, the signs were there early on.

There was also always question marks over his best position. You get the feeling that he always felt he was better off playing in the middle, behind a striker, but with the likes of Aaron Ramsey, Santi Cazorla, Jack Wilshere and Mesut Ozil ahead of him, he usually found himself out wide. At which point he then drifted into the middle, getting in others way.

Oxlade-Chamberlain can beat a man for fun. It is what happens after he beats the man that causes the problem. He would then try and beat another. Then another. Until he gets to the point that he gets tackled. He would always try to beat one man too many.

Rather than beat the man, and play a simple pass to keep the play going, he would end up losing the ball, play breaking down. And it materialised that his crossing was no better than Theo Walcott, and his finishing worse.

He is in his 7th season at Arsenal. And has scored just 8 league goals in that time. The output from him is clearly not good enough.

Last season, he lost his place to Joel Campbell. This season we have seen the development of Alex Iwobi that is keeping him out of the first team.

What the development of these two has shown is just how average Oxlade-Chamberlain currently is. How little he has progressed.

Iwobi is just 20 years old, and is putting in more consistent performances, stringing together more games, than Oxlade-Chamberlain ever did.

He beats a man, plays a simple ball, before finding space to receive it once more. It is no surprise Iwobi is ahead of Oxlade-Chamberlain in the pecking order. He is a better, more effective player than Oxlade-Chamberlain.

Oxlade-Chamberlain can do with looking at Iwobi and Campbell. Work out why they got in the team ahead of him. Their selfless play, their fitness, their desire.

Over the summer Arsene Wenger showed a ruthless streak. Selling Serge Gnabry to Germany, loaning out Joel Campbell to Spain. Whilst Oxlade-Chamberlain might try and engineer his own way out of Arsenal at the end of the season, there is also a high chance that he might be pushed.

If Oxlade-Chamberlain really does want a future at Arsenal, it is down to him, and only him. He is the master of his own destiny. If he does not prove himself when given the chance, he will soon find himself at West Ham.

Of course, he has already showed his desire to play football. and if he finds himself still struggling to break through at the end of the season, maybe a move to West Ham or the like will do him good, will re-energise his career. Playing week in week out for 90 minutes allowing him to prove himself.

Oxlade-Chamberlain days at Arsenal look to be numbered.

Keenos