Before Etihad. Is defensive solidity all we can offer?

The goalless draw against Atalanta left me both impressed and frightened. Impressed with our defensive solidity, and even a penalty after a very costly Partey mistake was very unnecessary, since Saliba was already there to cover. Frightened with our complete disconnection in attack. The centre was not functioning at all. Atalanta has put man-to-man to our midfielders and always a cover up for Saka and Martinelli. This was enough, Arsenal wasn’t able to exploit the spaces appearing elsewhere after the overload on one side. Defenders were not overlapping enough, central players were not opening up enough.

While 0-0 is acceptable in Champions League game (frankly, both teams were happy with the point before the game and it was one of the main factors it went that way), we can’t afford such results in Premier League with Southampton or Bournemouth. And it’s completely possible that Iraola and other PL coaches will try and replicate Atalanta’s setup to nullify Arsenal’s attack. Without Odegaard our attacking flow is severely damaged. His dribbling abilities are the remedy to the man-to-man defensive game, his movement abilities are the counter measure for double-up against Saka. We need somebody who can replicate them both in some capacity. As I was saying before – Trossard and Nwaneri are the ones with such potential. Especially Ethan, who we need to start seeing more, but only after Sunday.

Player observations from Atalanta draw

• Calafiori is just a different breed, his movement with the ball is mesmerising, the level is beyond every our other defender. I really want to see more of him and since Ben White was not really impressive recently, he could give the way for young Italian.
• Sterling is not going to help us in the next 1-2 months much. He is not integrated into Arteta’s system, he looks disconnected. The only thing we can wait from him is some spark of individual brilliance, like a dribble past a couple of players in a 2-man counterattack.
• Jesus looked quite bad, he’s not the man to create the chance by himself, he’s pretty much dependent on other people’s creativity, so I am not sure about this contributions without Odegaard.
• Martinelli missed a couple of good chances and I know he’s getting fair criticism for the misses. But he gets into these positions, in contrast to any other Arsenal player. His movement is opening up defences. It’s already half way to end product and better than not getting these chances at all. He just needs confidence and it can come, we’ve all seen the Havertz transformation.
• Raya, Raya, Raya, what are you doing to us??? The number of saves the man made inside one month is just insane. This will end sooner or later, the opponents will learn to shoot in the corners against David and I am a bit concerned what will be our results then.

Elephant in the room 115

Let’s move to the toughest away game of the year. The Man City game comes in a time, when Arsenal is replicating good old Atletico Madrid in away games – trying to keep clean sheets and pull somehow a goal upfront. I don’t see a reason why we need to stop doing this on Sunday. Let’s be honest, even with Odegaard and in a great team form, we couldn’t do much damage on Etihad half a year ago. One of the best coaching staff in the world has detected the bottleneck of our attacking flow before we have seen it in practice and tried to specifically exclude our captain from the game.

But what we need to do for this game – is to get rid of the standard attacking flow and execute a new plan specifically for this game. This would bring Arsenal to another level of class and maturity. The last team that won a big game on Etihad combining defensive solidity with rapid-fast counterattacks (which is exactly what we need) – was Solskjaer’s Man United. They won 0-2 and 1-2 in two successive years. They deployed a 4-1-2-1-2 setup, their average positions looks approximately like this:

The defensive shape is extended into 5-2-1 in a deep block and provides following benefits:

• Five in the back provide cover on both sides for an overlap for attacking defenders
• Left and right 8 are closing up spaces for City’s attacking midfielders.
• The central part of the pitch is in general congested and forces the opponent to attack using wings.

The main downside of this setup is that there’s no use of the pitch for a proper attacking flow. That’s why the team can offer only rapid-fast counter attacks, that works as following:

• The fact that wingers are missing forces opponent wing backs to go in attack.
• That means that whenever Arsenal intercepts the ball there are empty spaces marked in green on the picture.
• The team quickly launches ball into one of these areas, where one of the two forwards sprints to get the ball.
• Then the second forward, same-side wing back and two midfielders make runs into the corresponding half of the pitch to try and deliver the ball in the box in 2-3 passes for a shot.
• The other wing is not being used for an attack.

I would go with the following line-up:

Raya – Timber, Saliba, Gabriel, Calafiori – Rice – Partey, Trossard – Havertz – Saka, Martinelli

Our fastest players will be deployed in front, Partey, Trossard, Calafiori and Timber would be instructed to search for the long passes into areas behind City’s defence.

I don’t think Arteta would take the risk of deploying such tactics, however remember, the fortune favours the bold!