Why Arsenal's Problems Are Even Worse Than You Think
Adam Clery looks at the number to work out where it might be going wrong for the Gunners.
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00:00All right, so first off, this is not the Arsenal side that started against Fulham.
00:05Arteta had done a little bit of rotation up front and in defence, but this is pretty much
00:09the Arsenal side we sort of expect in most of the games this season.
00:12And the thing is, it's not too dissimilar from the Arsenal side of last season.
00:16Obviously, David Rye instead of Ramsdale, that feels like a big change.
00:19Declan Rice is a huge addition.
00:21He starts whenever possible.
00:22But other than that, in pretty much all the major areas, you've got the same key players.
00:26The main difference, though, is not in the personnel, it's in what they're trying to do.
00:30Arsenal last season were probably the best team in transition in the league, if not in
00:36the entire world.
00:37They would win the ball back absolutely everywhere.
00:39They would play immediate, quick, incisive balls, getting behind the opponent and score
00:43goals that way.
00:44The only problem with that, though, and almost certainly the reason they didn't go on and
00:47win the league, was they lacked the ability to really control games of football.
00:52Sometimes it was too open and too frenetic, and they would concede goals when they really
00:56shouldn't.
00:57And that's the difference between finishing second and finishing first.
01:00So that's the watchword for Arsenal this season.
01:02They are trying to control games a lot better.
01:05They're trying to see more of the ball.
01:07They're trying to have more possession.
01:08They're trying to have more territorial dominance.
01:10They're trying to not be as open at the back.
01:12And that is absolutely working for them.
01:15And if we look at the numbers this season, they have the third highest possession in
01:19the league.
01:20That's way up on last year.
01:21They've got the highest number of touches and the highest possession in the attacking
01:25third of the pitch.
01:26So nobody is penning teams in better than Arsenal are currently.
01:30They've even got the highest number of touches in the opponent's penalty area this season.
01:34So not only are they really good at boxing them in, they're really good at, I don't know,
01:38turning the noose, tightening the screw, whatever the phrase is.
01:41So that's great then, surely.
01:42They want to be a team that controls games better.
01:45And not only are they doing that, but they're controlling games in the best possible area
01:50of the pitch.
01:51So why are they not winning more?
01:53Well, and this is going to be the through line of the entire video, Arsenal create absolutely
01:58loads of chances now, but Arsenal don't create good chances now.
02:02So this is the boring statistical way of looking at all of this, right?
02:05First of all, put aside the set pieces.
02:08Arsenal are brilliant at set pieces.
02:10They score loads of goals from that, but set pieces aren't going to win you a league.
02:13It's the goals you make from open play that are.
02:16So from open play this season, Arsenal have created 450 chances.
02:22That is, that's amazing.
02:23That is second in the league.
02:25Only Liverpool are creating more chances than them.
02:27That is title winning stuff.
02:29But in terms of open play passes that have led directly to a goal, so either they are
02:34the assist or the ball before the assist, they've only had 35.
02:40That is pathetic for a title winning side.
02:42That's 11th in the league.
02:43It sandwiches them between, I think, Forest and Crystal Palace.
02:46Like that is an absolutely enormous disparity between the amount of chances they're creating
02:51and how many of those chances are leading to goals.
02:53So what's the problem?
02:55Is it just that they're not taking these chances?
02:57Are their strikers not very good?
02:59I think Jesus has only got like three goals in the league this season.
03:01Martinelli's only got two.
03:02Are they the problem?
03:04Well, if you want to answer that question, it depends absolutely on how much you care
03:08about XG.
03:09Arsenal's XG, which if you just haven't heard this term still, it's basically like a measure
03:13of the quality of the chance.
03:14And what is the probability you should score each and every one of them?
03:17And you total that up and that should tell you how many goals you should have scored.
03:21Their XG is 36.4, right?
03:23Now that's pretty low for a team with title aspirations.
03:26Put them like fifth or sixth in the league.
03:28But crucially, it's bang on because Arsenal have scored 36 goals this season.
03:34So while it probably does feel easy to blame their strikers because they haven't scored
03:37a lot of goals, they're also not exactly being wasteful.
03:41But if you really want to go down this XG route, then Martinelli and Jesus are pretty
03:45much bang on for their XG.
03:47They're slightly underperforming it.
03:49So they should maybe have one or two more goals this season based on the quality of
03:53chance, but not so much that's going to have made a massive difference.
03:56So the problem isn't the strikers.
03:57The problem is this level of control Arsenal are trying to have because it's changed who
04:02they are as a team.
04:03And as a result, it's changed how other teams play against them.
04:06And they're struggling against that style of play.
04:09But again, just to go back to last season, Arsenal were great in transition.
04:12They would get the ball, whether it was in their own third or in the final third, and
04:15straight away, they would try and play a killer pass and it would make great chances
04:19as a result.
04:20It was so exciting to watch.
04:21I went back and I watched all of Arsenal's goals last season, and this one near the end
04:25of the season jumped out at me immediately.
04:27This is Zinchenko on the ball here.
04:29And what you'd probably say has become the quintessential Declan Rice position for Arsenal
04:33this season.
04:34They've made that box midfield.
04:35He's the deeper two and he's on the left hand side of it.
04:37And he's got the ball and nobody's pressing him.
04:39There's a sideways pass on to him here.
04:41There's probably a nice easy ball that plays it forward to Martinelli here, but he doesn't
04:45do either of those.
04:46He does this brilliant through the lines pass to Granachaka that opens the whole game up.
04:52He immediately does one little layoff and all of a sudden, Arsenal have three or four
04:56players between the defensive lines that are going at goal and they score from it.
04:59And that goal really jumped out at me because not only can I not really remember seeing
05:03that pass from Arsenal this season, I can also never really remember seeing it from
05:08Declan Rice.
05:09Like, just to clarify here, this is not going to be a video where I say the whole problem
05:12with Arsenal is Declan Rice, by the way.
05:14He's an absolutely fantastic player.
05:15If you can't get a bargain at a hundred million, he absolutely was it.
05:19He's the reason they're so able to control these games like they want to now, but there
05:24are one or two things he doesn't do as well as they would perhaps want him to.
05:28I'm just going to show you all of his relevant FB ref numbers from this season in the Premier
05:33League here, right?
05:34And this paints a picture to me of one of the best central midfielders in the world.
05:39He's just fantastic in possession here.
05:42He passes the ball brilliantly.
05:43He progresses the ball brilliantly.
05:45He carries the ball brilliantly.
05:46You don't even need to see how well he wins the ball back because that's kind of like
05:50one of Declan Rice's big things.
05:51He's exactly who you'd want at the base of a midfield three if you're the kind of team
05:56that wants to control games.
05:58Two numbers that should jump out at you immediately as a problem here are these.
06:03Key passes and through balls.
06:04Now, don't get me wrong.
06:05When you're in one of the deeper midfield positions, the onus of chance creating is
06:08absolutely not on you.
06:09I'm not saying you should have loads of assists or anything like that, but those are the
06:13two stats that probably best measure how incisive your passing is.
06:18Like, key passes is anything that leads directly to a shot.
06:20You effectively make that chance even if you're not necessarily laying it on.
06:24And through balls is just any pass that goes between the defenders and in behind.
06:28And those are the two things he's not currently doing.
06:31Like, they're the only two things he's not doing.
06:33I hasten to add he does everything else superbly, but the problem is Arsenal really need somebody
06:39who's going to do that.
06:40Case in point, here are Oleksandr Zinchenko and Thomas Partey's numbers specifically from
06:45last season.
06:46But in through balls and key passes, while they're not drastically higher, they are definitely
06:51higher.
06:52They were doing that more.
06:53Now, again, don't get me wrong.
06:54I'm not saying this is all Declan Rice's fault, but this just inability or possibly reluctance
06:59to play that exact kind of pass makes life difficult for Arsenal.
07:03I'll show you what I mean.
07:04So what ends up happening, and I've got Arsenal set up in their box here that they do when
07:07they're building out from the back.
07:09What ends up happening is instead of being able to find any of these five players when
07:13they've drifted between these two defensive lines, what happens is you play safe and you
07:18move up the pitch and the other team gets set into what's known as a low block.
07:22They get two tight banks of four with no space in between.
07:26And what then happens instead is you end up in sort of like this situation where everybody
07:30spreads out to try and find a bit more room and you pen them into their half, hence why
07:34they're having all these touches and all of this possession.
07:36And what you do is you just go from left to right.
07:40You pass it round in what's known as the horseshoe.
07:43You can't get any sort of, what's the word I want, penetration in this area of the pitch.
07:48So it goes left to right, left to right, left to right, waiting for something to happen.
07:52You see Man City do this every single week and they are brilliant at it.
07:56They use this opportunity to start moving players into different positions.
07:59They rotate, they move the defense around, and eventually they find a gap and they get
08:04a goal from that.
08:05Arsenal are way, way, way too static to make that work right now.
08:10That's not their game at all.
08:12Players like to stay in their positions and yes, they will run and yes, they will make
08:15changes here and there, but not enough that it breaks down teams like Fulham, teams like
08:20West Ham.
08:21Without the space between the lines and in behind, Arsenal really do struggle to create
08:25good quality chances.
08:26And without a player at the base of the midfield who's going to make immediate, quick, incisive
08:31through balls, they can't get that space.
08:33Or to put that another way, right, Arsenal are struggling because they're being forced
08:37to play like Manchester City this year when they are not Manchester City.
08:41What made them so good last year was all the ways they were different from Manchester City.
08:45And this, right, in my opinion, it means that Mikel Arteta has a pretty big decision to
08:49make in January because this decision to control games better is actually working, that they're
08:54not scoring as well and the results aren't really there, but they still have got the
08:57second best defense in the league.
08:59They don't look anywhere near as open as they did last year.
09:02So in that success, success, sense, it's been a success, sense, success, what?
09:07But the problem is they're going to keep finding themselves in this situation and if you want
09:10to be the kind of team that can still score goals from here, you need a different kind
09:15of centre forward.
09:16Like, Man City work the ball around brilliantly and they create a small chance for Haaland,
09:20who himself is occupying two defenders, creating space for his teammates, and they get loads
09:24of goals that way.
09:25Gabi Jesus is a great, great centre forward, but he's not that kind of player.
09:29He will drop out of that space and try and link up that way, but you need a more central
09:34focal point.
09:35So he's either got to surrender a bit of this control in order to get the space back that
09:39they need, or he's got to go shopping again, and I don't know if you know much about buying
09:45goal scoring centre forwards in the January window, but oh my God.
09:49So yes, I think that's the problem with, this is Stone Cold, what am I doing?
09:52This is the problem with Arsenal right now.
09:54They wished so hard to be a team who could control games, but they know what they say
09:59about wishing you should be careful of it.
10:01But I mean, Arsenal fans, you'll probably have a way better idea of all this than I
10:05will.
10:06I was barely even watching the Fulham game because Neil Morrissey came into the pub and
10:09we were like, oh look, there's Neil Morrissey.
10:11So let us know what you make of this whole situation in the comments below.
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10:33But until next time, my friends, I've knocked that.
10:36I've been Adam Cleary.
10:37This is 442.
10:38That's Arsenal, regrettably.
10:39And I'll see you soon.
10:41Bye.