How Arteta's Genius Change Saved The Tie
Arsenal go to Bayern Munich next with their Champions League Quarter-Final hanging in the balance. But, after their German opponents had turned around an early Bukayo Saka goal to lead 1-2, Arsenal managed to rescue the tie through Leandro Trossard.
The reason? Mikel Arteta's brilliant in-game changes that allowed his side to dominate, then salvage, this huge game.
The reason? Mikel Arteta's brilliant in-game changes that allowed his side to dominate, then salvage, this huge game.
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00:00 All right then my pedigree chums, this was how Arsenal lined up against Bayern Munich.
00:06 No real surprises here, it's a 4-3-3, we've seen all season except no, of course it's
00:11 not actually a 4-3-3, Arsenal adapt this based on the team they're playing.
00:15 And their main adaptive strategy was that Declan Rice actually sat in a double pivot
00:19 with Jorginho, with Oerdegaard sort of instructed to be a little bit further forward.
00:23 The plan here was then they had four players nice and deep they could bait Bayern's press
00:27 and then go through it.
00:28 But straight away this clearly wasn't going to work because Bayern might be down bad in
00:33 Germany, they might be down so so bad but they're still Bayern Munich in the quarterfinals
00:37 of a Champions League.
00:38 They pressed Arsenal in an incredibly disciplined 4-4-2 and basically used these four players
00:45 to cut off these six players from Arsenal.
00:47 The wide players would stop the balls going out to the full backs and Kehne and Musiala
00:51 would just not press the two centre backs, they were allowed to have the ball here and
00:55 they would use instead their shadow cover, which is something we've talked about on the
01:00 channel before, where you basically mark, not by marking, but mark by process of blocking
01:05 off the pass.
01:06 Look, this nicely illustrates it, to stop the ball going to Rice and Jorginho.
01:10 But this is Arsenal, loads of teams try and do this to them, they've got a very clear
01:14 plan for how to deal with that and instead what happens is it's not a double pivot, Martin
01:18 Oerdegaard then feels free to drop as deep as he likes to get on the ball, then all of
01:21 a sudden you've got two players trying to mark three, the angles don't work anymore
01:26 and that's how they play through you.
01:27 But again, this is Bayern Munich at the quarterfinals of a Champions League and they knew Arsenal
01:32 were going to do this and they had a solution for it.
01:35 And that solution was, so you know Kylian Mbappe here, yeah?
01:40 The solution was to just f*** him off.
01:43 Whenever Arsenal gave this a go, Leroy Sané would just leave him and then they would all
01:48 shuffle over one and then now again you can't play through the middle.
01:51 Now of course you can see the problem with this, you've now left a man completely free,
01:56 Arsenal could get the ball to Kylian Mbappe anytime they want when they're building out,
01:59 but Bayern had calculated this risk and they did not fear him.
02:04 They were like, look, you've got Jorginho and Rice and Oerdegaard and Ben White and
02:09 Saliba and Gabriel, if you want to give it to Kylian Mbappe out of all those players,
02:13 crack on lads.
02:14 So genius move number one by Arteta was to find a way to get Oerdegaard and Rice on the
02:19 ball even through all of this pressing and marking.
02:22 And he did that by allowing both the full backs to move all the way up, the wide players
02:26 went slightly narrower, and then having Martin Oerdegaard and Declan Rice basically pull
02:32 out into the full back positions.
02:34 I genuinely had to do one of those cartoon "Urgh" rubbing my eyes bits when I saw this
02:40 early on in the game.
02:41 That is a back four with Oerdegaard at right back and Rice at left back.
02:46 And as changes go, it's really good this one because both the Bayern's wide players are
02:50 supposed to be watching the full back, so you've effectively pushed them really far
02:54 back, allowing your best progressive passer of the ball and your best progressive carrier
02:59 of the ball to now get on it in space.
03:02 Now, obviously, Sane is a very wily player and didn't really get baited into this.
03:06 He was still quite happy to leave Kuriort and just move on to Rice here instead, as
03:09 he was supposed to do.
03:10 But Serge Gnabry, he can't leave Ben White.
03:14 So that forced him all the way back down that side and let Oerdegaard just have so much
03:19 control of the play from this deep position.
03:22 Like the guy's heat map in this match is insane.
03:26 Like given the territorial dominance Arsenal had in this match, how far back they were
03:30 pushing Bayern, the amount of times Oerdegaard is receiving it wide and in his own half is
03:36 absolutely nuts.
03:39 Even his pass map in this game is quite bizarre.
03:41 Like if we overlay that as well, you can see all the successful passes he made.
03:45 It's like this little sort of cone or I can't remember what shapes are called, like curve
03:50 from wide right to the outside of his box.
03:52 You can see him sort of like floating away from Bayern's defensive structure to get on
03:57 the ball where the space was.
03:59 Now, yes, obviously, in an ideal world, you do want Martin Oerdegaard to be getting on
04:04 the ball in this part of the pitch.
04:06 But if you can't do that, the next best thing is to just get him on the ball full stop.
04:11 And that's how Arsenal scored.
04:13 This is the build up to Arsenal's first goal.
04:14 You can see Benoit is pushed all the way up, forcing Navry back, Saka's there as well.
04:19 So Bayern are pinned in down that side and then right back, Martin Oerdegaard gets the
04:23 kind of time and space here that he's never, ever going to get here.
04:28 Something just quintessentially Arsenal about what happens next, because they need a centre
04:31 forward, right?
04:32 A proper goal scorer who stays between the width of the post.
04:35 They're never going to win anything without one of those, right?
04:38 Well, the only reason they score this goal is because when it's turned over, they've
04:41 got a 3v2 advantage here because Kai Havert is free to roam wherever he wants and comes
04:47 across because he thinks he can be helpful there.
04:50 If he was just loitering around the penalty spot, this goal does not happen.
04:54 But this is the best thing about football, right?
04:56 Because Arsenal have made these changes which have completely undone Bayern's plan for stopping
05:01 them.
05:02 They're now playing through, they're dominating the game.
05:03 They have their foot on Bayern's neck and perversely, this was the worst thing that
05:09 could happen.
05:10 And that's because one of Bayern's major problems this season is that they've struggled to dominate
05:14 games the way you would expect Bayern to dominate games.
05:17 If they're going to have most of the ball, they can sometimes struggle to break teams
05:20 down.
05:21 If they've got to go toe for toe in possession with their opponents, they can struggle to
05:24 assert their dominance.
05:26 But they have still got a number of players who are brilliant at being really fast and
05:31 really direct and doing counterattacking football.
05:34 It's just that when you are the biggest team in your country, you almost never get dominated
05:40 enough that that actually happens.
05:42 But Arsenal, of course, they did manage to dominate them and press right the way up.
05:47 And weirdly, that made Bayern incredibly dangerous in the space behind.
05:52 Like I've seen a lot of discourse about whether it was Gabriel's fault or Raya's fault for
05:57 that first goal.
05:58 Should he have left it?
05:59 Should he have come that far?
06:00 But if you look at where Arsenal are when Bayern clear that ball, it's not even just
06:04 that they're on the halfway line, they're practically camped in the final third.
06:08 David Raya won't just be on alert for this.
06:11 He'll be on like five alarm, chilli and six expressos, making sure he closes that gap
06:18 if the ball goes into it.
06:19 So I don't think actually either of them were at fault.
06:21 This is just a very precarious situation.
06:23 And Gabriel is unlucky that the pass misses a teammate, but also unlucky that it lands
06:28 at Bayern when they are dreaming about getting into this kind of situation.
06:32 I will say the second goal is one of the most un-Arsenal goals to concede that they've had
06:36 all season.
06:37 They lose an individual one on one battle.
06:39 Kivio, this side, just gets turned and run away from.
06:42 And then they're a bit indecisive in the challenge.
06:46 Everybody sort of jumps in, but nobody does it particularly dedicatedly, committedly,
06:51 you know the kind of word I mean.
06:52 And then they end up fouling him.
06:53 But just one thing about this, right.
06:56 I think everybody's missed.
06:58 I just want to rewind this.
07:00 So this is Arsenal's pressing structure, right.
07:02 And the reason I said at the start of the video that Bayern kind of taught them a bit
07:05 of a lesson is because Arsenal were really brave with this and they got it spot on and
07:10 it was very effective and Bayern still exploited it to get that second goal.
07:14 So just like Bayern, Arsenal also pressed and defended in this 4-4-2 shape.
07:19 So you can imagine this is their move right up because Bayern have got the ball at the
07:22 back and have added all the Bayern players who were involved in the build up, Manuel Neuer,
07:27 the goalie, then you've got De Ligt and Dier.
07:29 They split the two centre backs in this situation.
07:31 Then the full backs, Davies and Kimmich, they stay really wide.
07:34 Then you've got a single pivot here of Leimer.
07:36 And what they were doing was like similar in concept to Bayern, but very different in
07:40 execution because you had Oerdegaard would just sit on Leimer, cutting off the ball to
07:44 sort of the playmaking midfielder straight away and then Havard to kind of stagger himself
07:49 and go and sit on De Ligt and sort of jump between him and Neuer.
07:52 Now with Saka and Martinelli staying on the full back straight away, you can see Bayern's
07:56 only real out ball here, the safe one, is to Eric Dier.
08:00 But just like with Kylian over here, Arsenal were like, well, okay then, one, he's on the
08:04 wrong side, so it's going to be really difficult for him to play forward on his weaker foot.
08:08 And two, that guy used to play for spares.
08:10 So we think he's...
08:11 So as soon as the ball would go out to Dier, then Oerdegaard would jump off Leimer, closing
08:18 him down, leaving him in, everybody say with me, his shadow cover.
08:22 So he's still marked, even though he's left him, they would put Dier under pressure and
08:25 try and turn the ball over.
08:26 And that again was really effective.
08:28 Also got a really good chance of doing this exact thing in the first half.
08:33 But again, Bayern are kind of wise to that.
08:36 Right before the goal, they have set this up perfectly again.
08:39 Like here is Oerdegaard watching Leimer and ready to jump on Dier, who is completely free.
08:43 Havard is cutting off the ball to De Ligt.
08:46 Price is even pushed up so they can't use Goretzka to get out this way.
08:49 There's Saka in attendance of Davies and you'll use your imagination.
08:52 But obviously Martinelli is on the other side with Kimmich.
08:55 Havard does his job, steps forward to put Neuer under a bit of pressure to force him
08:58 to play that ball to Eric Dier.
09:01 God damn it.
09:02 Leaving De Ligt in his shadow cover.
09:04 And then Manuel Neuer just does this.
09:08 And from there, Bayern get the ball on the right hand side, play it forward.
09:11 Kyrgios gets turned, they run it in the box and that's how they get the penalty.
09:15 You don't see this happen to Arsenal in the Premier League because from back to front,
09:19 I don't think anybody's capable of doing that to them.
09:22 And of course, if I was doing a video on the genius way Bayern Munich beat Arsenal, I would
09:27 now be saying "Bis späten, thanks for watching.
09:29 Don't forget to like, share and abonieren."
09:31 But I'm not because it didn't beat Arsenal because Michael Arteta still had more changes
09:35 in him that managed to salvage a really good result here from what could have gotten away
09:40 from them.
09:41 And that change was in his substitutions.
09:43 You might be sitting there going "Well of course it was, Adam.
09:46 It was Leandro Trossard who scored the goal.
09:48 He was a substitute."
09:49 Or perhaps you mean Gabi Jesus who set up the goal.
09:53 He was a substitution as well.
09:54 And no.
09:55 No, they were not the genius changes, they were the obvious changes.
09:59 The genius change...
10:04 Right there.
10:05 Arteta looked at Bayern's out of possession shape and said "Alright then, you don't think
10:08 Kyrgios is any good on the ball and you're going to leave him unmarked.
10:11 I'll replace him for someone who is good on the ball.
10:14 Then what are you going to do, bitch?"
10:15 He doesn't even wait, he just brings them on at half time and from there Arsenal are
10:18 in almost complete control.
10:20 And he was happy to get the ball out wide and do some stuff with it but primarily what
10:23 that led Arsenal to doing was getting into this sort of nearly perfect, I'm just going
10:28 to reach across, 3-2-5 shape.
10:31 And the impact Tsenchenko had from this position was just really good because he passes the
10:35 ball so well from these areas.
10:37 He was finding Jesus really easily because they had early guarding habits.
10:40 They kept pulling wider and wider to remove that midfield screen.
10:43 Jesus would then drop and receive and then Arsenal had the ball in really good areas.
10:48 It worked really well but it wasn't quite getting them the goal.
10:52 But if those two goals should have shown Arsenal what playing Bayern at this level is all about
10:57 then that equaliser from Arsenal should have shown everybody what this Arsenal team is
11:03 all about.
11:04 Because the reason Arsenal wanted five players here was to stretch Bayern as much as possible.
11:07 And they brought Trossard on, on the left hand side and this, up until the goal, is
11:13 his heat map.
11:14 And what you will no doubt notice straight away is he is hugging that touchline.
11:17 He's barely moving off it.
11:19 His job is to make sure the kimmick stays wide so there's room in the channels for
11:23 Havertz or whoever floats in there to get on the ball.
11:26 And yet if we look at the moment he fires in that equaliser, he is absolutely miles
11:31 away from the one position he's supposed to be in.
11:33 Why?
11:34 Well, it's because this Arsenal team are not scared of this Bayern team.
11:39 Doesn't matter what the previous results were, all those five ones or the fact they
11:42 kept getting counter-attacked on, they believed in their ability to keep the pressure on and
11:47 get a goal.
11:48 Havertz and Trossard should be on the left hand side, that is where they're supposed
11:51 to be playing.
11:52 That's where the space is in case Arsenal do turn it over.
11:55 But they don't care.
11:57 They don't want to wait for that ball to magically come back to them as a team.
12:01 They want it back now.
12:02 And Bayern, like so many teams in the Premier League, just couldn't live with those numbers.
12:06 They couldn't live with that determination, they couldn't live with that willingness to
12:09 go and fight for the ball.
12:10 It gets turned over and from there, it's individual brilliance.
12:14 There's been almost no space in or around the box all night but Jesus is so good on
12:19 the ball.
12:20 He draws like five Bayern players toward him in a panic.
12:23 Eric Dier lunges in when he really shouldn't.
12:25 The space opens up and somehow, because I've watched it back and he doesn't look, presumably
12:31 through the power of telepathy, he knows exactly where Trossard is.
12:36 No, you're right, he probably did just give him a shout.
12:39 That is a distinct possibility but I like my idea more.
12:42 He rolls it across, Trossard gets the equaliser and I think if he had 10 minutes more in this
12:46 game, maybe Arsenal go on and win it.
12:49 I certainly don't think they were in any danger of losing it.
12:52 And yes, of course, it's going to be really difficult for Arsenal to go away to Bayern
12:56 and win that game and get to the semi-final.
12:59 But I do think that if they do win, as we've discussed, they're probably going to play
13:02 in a way that will lend itself to what Bayern really wants to be doing.
13:06 But I just think when you look at the determination and the individual moments and also Arteta's
13:11 on-field management, that is a team that can't just beat Bayern, or not only will beat Bayern,
13:18 you know what I mean, but can go all the way in this.
13:20 I am now going all the way to shop to get myself some lunch.
13:23 So thank you so much for watching this year.
13:24 If you have enjoyed it, please do consider subscribing to us here on 442 Champions League,
13:29 Championships.
13:30 We will have our trousers down, excited for it all.
13:33 New issue of the mag is on sale now, but they're still upstairs.
13:36 I forgot to bring them down.
13:37 So you'll have to imagine it.
13:38 You can go get that from the description below or in a newsagent like they used to do in
13:42 the olden days.
13:43 You can get me on Twitter @AdamPirey, C-L-E-R-Y, 442 social in the corner of the video.
13:48 And until tomorrow, yeah, I'm doing another one tomorrow, actually.
13:52 Until then, I will see you later.
13:54 I do really feel like I've forgotten to mention something here.
13:56 Like I had to tell you something really important and now it's just completely gone out of my
14:01 head.
14:02 You're right.
14:03 No, you're right.
14:04 These outros are getting worse.