Rival watch

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Convinced we have some of the worst attacking options in the league. Either that or Arteta is seriously **** at organising attacking patterns of play. Could be a combination of both...

Either way, we're ****ed.

Like I said before, it must be a north London thing.
 
BrunelGunner said:
Convinced we have some of the worst attacking options in the league. Either that or Arteta is seriously **** at organising attacking patterns of play. Could be a combination of both...

Either way, we're ****ed.

Like I said before, it must be a north London thing.
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to be honest, every year i think arsenal don't look very good attacking wise if teams sit deep (think this happens a lot). Last year was the first time you guys were fluently winning games with saka producing and odegaard with moments of magic alongside havertz knitting the play well. I've always thought you guys were a keep it solid and ground out wins type of team so last year surprised me.

Looks like you have reverted to type.
 
BobbyD said:
Interesting to see where you guys might have been if you had kept him <whistle>

instead you let levy go all abramovich
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TBH he was dealt a bad hand from the outset, given we seemed to plan on Harry Kane leaving and using that windfall to rebuild - but Kane didn't leave, so we had no windfall and (Romero aside) only had the filler signings that get picked up throughout a window and not the major pieces we were expecting to make late in the window with said windfall

That being said, Nuno didn't help himself by letting himself be pressured into starting Ndombele, so he went from a solid but reasonably effective midfield trio which had various combinations of Hojbjerg, Skipp, Sissoko or Dele to a midfield trio that had a training cone filling one of the spots that fatally weakened the entire system...though he could have added a dash of creativity if he played Lo Celso instead as he at least knew what defending was, but Nuno decided to play him on the wing instead
 
BobbyD said:
to be honest, every year i think arsenal don't look very good attacking wise if teams sit deep (think this happens a lot). Last year was the first time you guys were fluently winning games with saka producing and odegaard with moments of magic alongside havertz knitting the play well. I've always thought you guys were a keep it solid and ground out wins type of team so last year surprised me.

Looks like you have reverted to type.
Click to expand...

I thought the year before we'd learned to break down deep defensive blocks too, but yes, overall, it's not been great. I honestly think part of the issue is Arteta not platforming our best players. If he did, then it'd be easier to tell who is good enough and who isn't. But sometimes it's difficult because he never sets the team up with the best chance to win, so all roads lead firmly back to Arteta.

He sets us up in a way that prioritises conceding fewer chances at the cost of having a lower variance of chances in attack. There's too much emphasis on rehearsed patterns of play, and there's very little room for attacking players to show their individuality or express themselves. This 'control-first' approach inhibits us from being able to create good quality chances consistently. So, of the few good quality chances we do create, it feels huge when we miss because we don't know when the next opportunity will come.

Let's see how this style works in the cups because it's certainly not suited to the league. But the game on Wednesday in the Carabao Cup is massive. He simply needs to win silverware this season.
 
Pep gonna look like Freddy Krueger tonight with the amount of face scratching he's gonna do after that loss.
 
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