How Mikel Arteta Just Fixed Arsenal's Biggest Problem
Bukayo Saka's recent lack of goalmouth action was, in fact, down to a new role given to him by Mikel Arteta.
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00:00 [DING]
00:02 Alright, so Bukai Osaka, you already know this, he plays on the right of Arsenal's 4-3-3
00:07 and they never move him, they never attempt to put him on the other side, they never put him in the middle
00:11 and they never put him where I won the World Cup with England on Football Manager a few years ago
00:15 at left back, for some reason.
00:17 Now his job in this system is to provide the width, which stretches the opposition defence
00:22 which allows Martin Odegaard to play in that gap there and also whoever's on the left side
00:25 to play in that gap there and for Gabi Jesus to drop wherever he feels like.
00:29 Part of his job is space creation.
00:31 But he was also, crucially, Arsenal's top scorer in all competitions last season
00:36 so by extension, he's their most dangerous player in front of goal.
00:39 And so as part of Arsenal's system this season, Odegaard has decided to try and get him in front of goal
00:45 even more than he was last year.
00:47 And we can see that if we compare his two heat maps from last season and this season.
00:52 You'll see now he's so concentrated in this area of the pitch
00:55 and he also comes across into this area to the right-hand side of the goal quite a lot.
00:59 There's also a lot of time on the edge of the box when he gets into a shooting position.
01:03 He's just really, really forward thinking.
01:06 And that is quite the change from last season because if we just swap those out
01:09 you'll see that he's still really concentrated in this area because he's still playing in the same position
01:13 and he's still trying to stretch defences.
01:15 But he doesn't get into the goal area quite as much
01:18 and he does pop up seemingly everywhere across the pitch where he isn't doing that this season.
01:23 Like I'll just put them side by side for you here and the From Sofa score if you want to go and check them out yourself.
01:27 Those are two very different ways of playing that position.
01:31 Like obviously still all concentrated around here but having the licence to go and receive the ball pretty much anywhere else
01:37 and not having that this season.
01:39 And the thing is though, given that the idea was to help him score more goals
01:43 this just hasn't really worked.
01:45 Like in its simplest terms he's scored less goals by this point of the season than he had at this point last season
01:50 and he's on track to finish lower than he did last year.
01:53 But if we start looking at the really, really deep numbers you'll see that he's just not being as effective.
01:58 Like his total number of shots, they are slightly up but his number of goals are way, way down.
02:03 And that plays into this thing we've talked about with Arsenal before
02:06 that they do still create lots of chances but they struggle to create lots of good chances.
02:11 Now you're going to have to forgive me for just recycling some old footage here
02:14 but we did literally just talk about this with Arsenal like last week or the week before.
02:18 A major issue they're having in front of goal at the minute
02:21 is they're not getting the ball effectively from these five players to these five players.
02:26 Last season they were incisive, they were hitting these killer balls,
02:29 they were getting it through the lines, they were beating the press with it.
02:32 And this season, either by instruction because they're trying to retain the ball a little bit better,
02:36 they're trying to control games more, or just because the personnel have changed
02:40 and Declan Rice isn't doing that as much as say, Zinchenko or Thomas Party were,
02:44 it's just not happening for them.
02:46 Now, while in those examples we do mention Martin Oerdigaard,
02:49 the objective is just exactly the same.
02:51 It's to get these five players the ball while they are between the opposition's defensive lines,
02:56 either so they can receive it in space or so they can run into the space.
03:00 You normally need space to make goals and Arsenal have found that space much harder to come by this season
03:06 and one of the players that struggled the most as a result is Bakayo Saka.
03:10 And it does come at a cost, all of that by the way,
03:12 because while Bakayo Saka is undoubtedly good in front of goal,
03:15 he's good at a lot of things and if you push him to be more focused on the goal scoring,
03:20 you naturally take time and focus and attention and even minutes on the pitch away from doing the other stuff.
03:26 Like all these stats here I think are very important, like how well he carries the ball,
03:31 how often he breaks into the box, how often he runs into the final third,
03:34 how often he does this, how often he does that, and they are all down this season.
03:39 His number of shots are up, yes, he is doing what Arteta wants him to do technically,
03:44 but it's coming at a cost.
03:46 Teams will just sit so much deeper and so much more compact against Arsenal,
03:50 meaning it's very difficult for him to get the ball here because there's not as much space
03:53 and it's even harder for him now to go looking for the ball
03:56 because now that you've got a more attacking eight on this side,
03:59 it means that Martin Oerdegaard can't really float over there to find the space
04:02 and if he can't float to find the space, then Saka can't float into that space to find the space.
04:07 So there's a knock on across the entire pitch for him.
04:09 But what's this got to do with the Crystal Palace game?
04:12 I can hear you understandably asking and well, Arsenal have been away.
04:16 They went to Dubai, I think.
04:18 They've had time to refresh, to rejuvenate, to rejig things
04:22 and Arteta has obviously looked at the Saka situation while they've been away and said,
04:26 "It's not working. He's not working. He's not working. He's not."
04:31 I can't really do an Arteta. I can't really do an anybody, but it doesn't mean we stop trying.
04:35 So he changed it and he changed it in a way that, yes, took him away from the sort of areas
04:39 they think he should be playing in, but also got a lot more out of him
04:43 and was way more beneficial to the team as a whole.
04:46 And what he did was, well, I'll just show you.
04:48 So remember, this is Bakayo Saka's heat map for the season so far.
04:52 This is the areas he has been playing in. This is what he's been concentrating on doing.
04:56 This is his heat map for the Crystal Palace game.
04:59 That, my friends, is interesting, isn't it?
05:01 Against Crystal Palace, Bakayo Saka now had two very different, very effective jobs.
05:07 Job one was still to hold the width on the right-hand side for the team,
05:10 as we said before, to stretch the defence, to allow Erdegaard to play in there
05:14 and Hazes to play in there, the same thing he's always been doing,
05:17 but crucially, not all the time.
05:19 Saka was only going very high and very wide when Arsenal's build-up
05:24 was on the opposite side of the pitch.
05:26 Now, as you're no doubt aware with Arsenal, what they like to do in their build-up
05:29 is they shuffle across into more of a back three.
05:32 Sienko comes across and plays in the middle and they have one of these magic boxes everybody loves.
05:37 And when said magic box was more over to the left-hand side of the pitch,
05:41 that would give Crystal Palace a problem, because naturally,
05:43 they want to move out with them to stay compact, to stay nice and tight
05:47 so they haven't got room to play in, but if Saka stays there,
05:50 that gives your left-back hell of a headache.
05:53 The rest of the defence is all over there and you can't just leave a yawning chasm
05:57 in the back line, because what if somebody gets a ball through it?
06:00 You've got to stay over towards your centre-back, which means
06:03 you've just kind of got to leave Pakaio Saka in loads of room.
06:07 And when they did leave him in loads of room and they couldn't find a way through
06:10 on this side, Zinchenko, it normally was, was just getting his head up
06:14 and pinging it right the way across the pitch over to him here.
06:17 It was really effective.
06:18 But his other job, his far more interesting, his far more cleverer job,
06:22 was to not do this, in fact, and instead to come really, really short
06:27 and really, really deep to help them beat the press.
06:30 Now, as we discussed in the other video, this here is the pass Arsenal
06:34 have really, really struggled with. Other teams are quite happy to let
06:37 these six players knock it around while they sit really deep on these five
06:41 and getting it through that first line isn't happening.
06:44 Now, Declan Rice, who was in the clips we used, he gets a lot of criticism
06:48 for this because he's being perceived as being risk-averse.
06:52 Now, we don't know if that's an instruction from Arteta,
06:54 try and just retain the ball, don't play those passes unless you're convinced
06:57 you can get them off, or whether he's just naturally inclined
07:00 not to risk losing the ball. Doesn't matter what the reason is,
07:03 it's still not happening.
07:04 So what Arteta has instructed Saka to do is instead come really short
07:08 when they're struggling in these positions and provide a different angle
07:12 for them to hit these other players. Kind of similar to how Brighton
07:15 try and get out of defence when they're really, really deep,
07:17 with sort of like a bounce pass. A player basically makes a sacrificial run
07:21 so the ball can go straight off them and put somebody else into a bit of space.
07:25 And if we overlay his total pass map from that game, you can see
07:28 he was really, really effective at doing that.
07:30 Like, he wants to be receiving the ball here and doing dangerous things with it,
07:33 but if we look at this cluster of passes that he successfully made
07:37 in this part of the pitch, you can see they're all pretty much
07:40 back into the field or slightly across it.
07:42 Like, he's clearly got his back to goal when he's receiving this ball.
07:45 Here's a really, really good example of it.
07:47 Crystal Palace are squeezing Arsenal and knocking the ball around at the back,
07:50 and you can see they desperately want to get this ball out of the back line
07:54 into Martin Oedegaard, but the passing lanes are all blocked.
07:57 The individuals are all being marked.
07:59 Now, under normal circumstances here, either Ben White's just going to hump
08:02 that down the line, hope for the best, or he's going to turn around,
08:05 give it back to Dreyer, and they'll just start again and nothing will happen.
08:08 Instead, Saka then shows really short off the wing.
08:12 He drags his marker with him, but he shows really short.
08:15 He takes a touch, he holds him off, and now straight away you can see
08:18 that area of the pitch Arsenal desperately wanted to get the ball into
08:22 is now available to him because he's got a much better angle for that pass
08:26 even if he's not facing it himself.
08:28 Best bit is you can literally see Declan Wright pointing into that space now
08:31 because obviously they've been working on this.
08:33 Like, "Okay, we've done that bit. We've done the hard bit. Now release it."
08:36 And he does. He gets it all the way across to Havert in the centre,
08:38 who's able to drop it off for Oedegaard, and all of a sudden,
08:41 what are Arsenal doing? They've beat the press.
08:43 They're between the lines, and they're breaking into space.
08:46 There's also another fairly major advantage to having Bakayo Saka do this
08:50 as opposed to whoever's on the other side, and that is the kid has a motor
08:55 and an engine unlike so many other players in the division.
08:59 If we go back to that clip, you can see that he's not free to do this.
09:02 He's well-tracked by his defender. I want to say it's Tyric Mitchell.
09:05 He goes all the way with him into that space.
09:08 Now, they don't go back to Saka on this particular occasion.
09:10 They move the ball out to the left, but you can see as soon as Saka
09:13 takes that off, he spins him, and now he's got all of this space he can run into.
09:18 If one of the defenders has to then mop up for Mitchell and come across
09:21 to stop him getting in, that takes the defender away from Gabriel Jesus.
09:26 This still is literally just two or three seconds after Saka makes that initial pass.
09:31 He's completely unmarked at the back post. He has more space than he probably
09:35 would know what to do with, so it doesn't just help Arsenal get out.
09:39 It creates an opportunity in the final third as well.
09:42 Like we said at the start, it didn't get him a direct goal involvement or anything,
09:45 but across the course of that game, the amount of times he was able to break
09:49 into the space that his own movement had left by pulling the full-back
09:54 into the centre of the pitch, it was about two or three times he was really
09:57 unlucky not to actually create something.
09:59 It's even one bit in the first half where you can just tell Mitchell was like,
10:03 "Oh, we didn't plan for this. I don't know. Do I go? I don't know what to do."
10:07 Then in his indecision, Arsenal just put a ball in behind him,
10:10 and Saka just skinned him in a footrace.
10:12 And super secret added benefit number three, when Saka was dropping slightly deeper,
10:16 meant that Jesus was coming all the way out to the right-hand side,
10:19 so that when Arsenal would progress up the pitch, Saka wouldn't make his run
10:22 back up the right-hand side. He'd make it directly through the middle.
10:26 Again, they didn't get a goal out of it on this particular occasion,
10:29 but there were a number of times, as you can see here, where the setup is Saka
10:33 in the middle and Jesus out right. That's a better situation for both of them.
10:37 So it's a really, really small change, this one. Just don't do this all the time.
10:41 Come deep when we need you to be an extra body.
10:44 But it's one that just really did open up Arsenal's other attacking options.
10:50 He's taken a bit of a hit here. It is a sacrifice role, effectively,
10:53 given that he's so good in front of goal. But, I mean, if it works.
10:57 Now, yes, of course, we'll caveat all of this by saying it was only Crystal Palace.
11:01 No disrespect to Crystal Palace, but they're having a bit of a bad run at the minute,
11:04 and they did sort of collapse. But they're not a terrible side.
11:08 That is the kind of fixture you could have seen previously to this
11:12 being a potential banana skin for Arsenal. And they've come through it
11:16 just absolutely laughing. So anyway, yes, hope you did enjoy that.
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11:47 I've got a sneaking suspicion I'm holding that upside down,
11:50 but obviously it's important to maintain eye contact, so I can't check.
11:53 Oh well, that's a shame. But until next time, yes, Mikhail Saga, very good.
11:57 Mikhail Artera, salute you sir, well done Arsenal.
12:00 That's it. Yeah, that's it. Bye!