Tag Archives: Arsenal

The man who could save Arsenal millions

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In recent weeks Bukayo Saka has put in some superb performances at left back that has left some calling for him to get an England call up.

The 18-year-old is exciting. And it will be even more exciting when he is played further forward on the left wing.

Saka is a winger. He is an attacker. A goal scorer. A creator. He is not a left back.

Whilst he can be commended for his performances at full back – and his time there will make him a  much more rounded players, anyone that thinks he will do an “Ashley Cole” and move from winger needs to remove those thoughts from their mind.

Arsenal lack wingers – the only senior natural winger in the squad is Nicolas Pepe. Saka and Reiss Nelson are both huge talents.

This lack of wide man has led Mikel Arteta to play Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang out wide.

Whilst Aubameyang is a goal threat, he does not really create much. Playing on the left wing he is currently averaging less than 1 chance created per 90 minutes (0.7). That is not good enough.

Gabriel Martinelli has also played a little bit on the left wing. But like Aubameyang he does not really crate much – 0.3 chances created per 90 minutes.

Meanwhile Saka has 8 assists this season, which is more than Martinelli and Aubameyang combined.

Some have made the point that Arteta could keep Saka at left back and play either Martinelli or Aubameyang ahead of him, in an ultra attacking left hand side. But Saka at left back is not as effective going forward as Saka on the wing.

At left back, Saka creates 0.8 chances per 90 minutes. That nearly trebles to 2.3 chances created when he is played in a more forward position on the left hand side.

The statistics show that he is easily our most creative player on the left wing.

You then have Kieran Tierney.

Tierney is the best crosser of the ball at the club. He has shown in his few games this season that he is a threat going forward similar to that of Trent Alexander-Arnold at Liverpool.

Tierney averages 1.1 chances created per 90minutes.

So in Tierney, we have a left back that creates more chances than Saka. And in Saka we have a winger who creates more chances than Aubameyang and Martinelli.

https://twitter.com/KeenosAFC/status/1229368016309227520

It is a simple equation. The more chances you create the more chances you have to score.

Saka and Tierney on the left will create 3+ chances a game between them. Any other combination does not even create 2 chances a game.

By pushing Saka forward on the wing, it also forces Aubamayang back into the middle. He is out best striker. He should play down the middle.

With Hector Bellerin and Nicolas Pepe beginning to build a relationship on the right hand side, it would make a lot of sense for Arteta to play Tierney / Saka on the left until the end of the season. Saka could save us millions!

It is clear that Saka and Tierney are our most creative duo. It will be exciting when they are together.

Keenos

A 4-0 win built of defensive solidity

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When analysing a 4-0 win it is simplistic to say that it was due to Arsenal’s miss-firing forwards finally getting it together. But the truth is Arsenal’s biggest win of the season was built on weeks of defensive improvement.

Mikel Arteta’s first job at the club was to improve us defensively.

In Unai Emery’s last 10 games, Arsenal had conceded 18 goals. We were a mess defensively. Individual errors and no collective structure, it is impossible to expect to be able to win games if you are conceding at a rate of nearly 2 a game.

Arsenal improved defensively from the first game under Arteta – and the team have now conceded just 8 goals under his mangerialship. But these improved defensive performances came at a cost as the midfield and forward struggled to create enough chances to score.

A big problem for Arsenal was transitioning the ball from defence through midfield. A midfield of Granit Xhaka and Lucas Torreira was solid, but also provided very little going forward. A lot of safe, sideways and backwards passes. It meant the forwards were starved of the ball.

But this set up was needed to stop Arsenal leaking goals. You can have the best forwards in the world on the pitch, but it is pointless if you are conceding 2 goals a game.

What we saw against Newcastle was Arteta make a change in midfield based on the confidence he now had in his defence.

Even though the back line contained the much criticised Shkodran Mustafi (who has been excellent under Arteta) and a teenage left winger in Bukayo Saka at left back, Arteta was able to play a less defensive midfield.

This saw Dani Ceballos come in for Torreira.

It slightly weakened us defensively in the middle of the park, but Arteta was confident his new defensive structure would be able to cope. What it did though was massively improve us moving the ball forward.

No player played more forward passes than Ceballos – 69. He went off after 82 minutes.

Ceballos also played more forward passes against Newcastle than any player in other game under Arteta – and more than any Arsenal player this year.

What is impressive is so often the player who plays the most forward passes is often a central defender, with the majority of those passes being short passes into the midfield. With Ceballos leading the way, it meant we were getting the ball forward to our forwards more. And in more advanced positions.

Without our improved defensive displays, Arteta would not have had the confidence to play the more progressive Ceballos, and we probably would not have won 4-0.

With Matteo Guendouzi, Xhaka and Torreira in the squad offering us a defensive option, maybe we need to be focusing more on a box to box midfielder rather than a defensive one this summer.

Someone who can do better at linking the defence to the forwards (think Santi Cazorla or Jack Wilshere) rather someone who can break up play.

Hopefully Arteta’s confidence in defence continues and we see more results like the 4-0 win over Newcastle.

Keenos

Match Report: Arsenal 4 – 0 Newcastle

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Arsenal (0) 4 Newcastle United (0) 0
Premier League
Emirates Stadium, Drayton Park, London N5 1BU
Sunday, 16th February 2020. Kick-off time: 4.30pm

(4-2-3-1) Bernd Leno; Hector Bellerin, Shkodran Mustafi, David Luiz, Bukayo Saka; Dani Ceballos, Granit Xhaka; Nicolas Pépé, Mesut Özil, Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang; Eddie Nketiah.
Substitutes: Sokratis Papastathopoulos, Alexandre Lacazette, Lucas Torreira, Emiliano Martínez, Joe Willock, Sead Kolašinac, Gabriel Martinelli.
Scorers: Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang (54 mins), Nicolas Pépé (56 mins), Mesut Özil (89 mins), Alexandre Lacazette (94 mins)
Yellow Cards: Granit Xhaka, Bukayo Saka
Arsenal Possession Percentage: 67%
Referee: Lee Mason
Attendance: circa 60,000

For our first competitive match in eighteen days, we welcome old adversaries Newcastle United, who are a place below us in the Premier League table at the time of writing, but unfortunately share the same points as us; both sides desperately need a victory at The Emirates this afternoon, which by rights, should lead to a fiercely competitive match. The big news of the day is that young and exciting Eddie Nketiah has earned a place in the starting eleven ahead of Alexandre Lacazette; could this surprising decision be a glimpse of the future?

A wild and thunderous beginning to the match which saw Granit Xhaka picking up the first booking of the game with less than ten minutes on the clock due to a reckless challenge; however, as a team, we started to push the ball around fairly confidently and were unlucky not to open the scoring when an impressive attack broke down in the Magpies’ penalty area. Incredibly, goalie Bernd Leno pulled off a miraculous save when a shot from Sean Longstaff ricocheted off Dani Ceballos’ leg which was destined for the back of our net, when somehow our goalkeeper twisted himself around to turn the ball around the post for a corner. A close shave indeed. Despite the team struggling to gain rhythm and control in the first quarter of the game, Bukayo Saka was unlucky not to score after twenty minutes when a looping shot from outside the box narrowly missed the opponents’ goal. Worryingly, Newcastle United seemed to catch us cold with fast smash’n’grab tactics, and it has to be said that it was some kind of miracle that many of their attacks did not end up with the visitors taking the lead. Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang claimed our first shot on target just after the half-hour mark when a Mesut Özil inch-perfect pass found our Gabon striker just inside the box, but his left-footed shot was easily saved by Martin Dúbravka in the visitors’ goal. Now we started to wake up, with a series of intelligent movements both on and off the ball; it was one of these attacks on the visitors’ goal that led to a superb shot from Eddie Nketiah that by rights, on any other day, would have been a goal had it not been for an excellent save from the Magpies’ goalie, who just before half-time also athletically tipped a Nicolas Pépé free-kick over the bar.

Half-time came and went, with the second half starting pretty much as the first one ended, with Arsenal gaining control and passing the ball around looking for a way through the Magpies’ midfield. Eddie Nketiah hit the crossbar from close range after some sterling work by Nicolas Pépé on the byline, jinking in and out of defenders seemingly at will. At last, after fifty-four minutes, a Nicolas Pépé cross into the visitors’ area found the head of Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, who wasted no time in opening the scoring for us, and incredibly, just two minutes’ later, Bukayo Saka twisted and turned two Newcastle defenders inside out on the left wing, then passed the ball low and true for Nicolas Pépé, who scored our second goal of the day with his sweet left foot. Fortunately for us, Ciaran Clark missed an open goal just after the hour mark, and we somehow appeared to just reboot and start again with hardly a blink. Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang bounced the ball off the crossbar after a Mesut Özil assist, and by now, our confidence became obvious to all and sundry as the match wore on. Allan Saint-Maximin hit the post with an clever shot with a quarter of an hour remaining, and although we were shaken, we were certainly not stirred. After Bukayo Saka pointlessly received a yellow card for an unfortunate collision, Lucas Torreira replaced Dani Ceballos with ten minutes of the match remaining, and so with the game ebbing away, Eddie Nketiah was substituted for Alexandre Lacazette; seeing fresh legs on the pitch, the team were off and running again. Literally, with a minute to go on the clock, Nicolas Pépé managed to pass a simple ball to Alexandre Lacazette, who, as he was falling down, got the ball to the advancing Mesut Özil, who easily put the ball into the back of the net for our third of the match (and his first goal for ten months as well). Joe Willock replaced goalscorer Mesut Özil in injury time, and despite the massive advantage, we still came forward looking for more goals to be added to our tally; and we did! Alexandre Lacazette got our fourth and final goal from close range in the fourth minute of injury time to make it a satisfying afternoon’s work for everyone involved with Arsenal Football Club.

Well, just how good was that win today? Overall, we played very well, and there were so many good things to take away from this match. Just how impressive was Bukayo Saka out on the left? It was great to see Nicolas Pépé becoming the player that we all know he can be, and Mesut Özil played like a man possessed at times, spraying passes hither and thither. There couldn’t have been an Arsenal fan in the stadium who wanted to run on the pitch and give Alexandre Lacazette a hug of relief  when he scored the winner in injury time. We needed this victory so much after everything the fans, players and this club has been through in the past few months. Let us savour the win, and hope it gives us renewed confidence for the rest of the season, starting with the Europa League game at Olympiacos on Thursday. At last. Remember everyone, keep the faith, get behind the team and the manager, as this season is going to be crucial for our future success in all competitions. Stick with the winners. Our next match: Olympiacos at Georgios Karaiskakis Stadium, Piraeus, Greece on Thursday 20th February at 8.00pm (Europa League). Be there, if you can. Victoria Concordia Crescit.

Steve

Too Dearly Loved To Be Forgotten: Arsenal v Racing Club de Paris 1930-1962 by Steve Ingless (Rangemore Publications, ISBN 978-1-5272-0135-4) is now available on Amazon.