The players were back in training yesterday after a few days off, and after some candid chats were reported between them after the Wolves game, I’m sure they will be working hard this week to prepare for Everton on Saturday evening.
As I said recently, I have no problem at all with players being demonstrably dissatisfied with a performance. I prefer passive acceptance, something we have been presented with too often in the past. Sometimes you need a moment like this to clear the air and press the reset button before you leave again. Doing this after a win, no matter how unconvincing it was, isn’t always the way to go about it either.
Normally you have dropped points, a draw or a defeat leads to the ‘We’ll pick ourselves up again and move on’ conversations. Remember those days when poor old Johan Djourou was wheeled out to do the interview on arsenal.com? This time, Arsenal can use this as a sign, a sort of ebb and flow of performances for this season, and work to ensure it doesn’t happen again.
But it was only a few weeks ago that we had convincingly won the North London derby and beaten Bayern Munich at home and everything felt a lot better than after Wolves. I’ve said it before, and it’s worth repeating, that I felt this title race was going to be one with some twists and turns along the way. We’ve been tossing and turning this week and it’s not that fun.
Have you ever seen one of those videos online where it’s a fair or a theme park or something, and there are people strapped into a roller coaster or one of those rides that catapults you into the air? There is a camera pointed at the people on the ride, and when it starts they immediately panic and start screaming and shouting in fear as they are launched upwards or upside down around a running section. That’s pretty much what the reaction to the Wolves game felt like. We are now back on solid ground and we have the chance to put that behind us at Everton on Saturday.
I wonder if for many, the feeling that we have crumbled a bit defensively is the biggest concern. It wasn’t that long ago that the opposition couldn’t even muster a shot on target, now we’re calling on late pressure and conceding late goals. Twist. Play. I don’t think it is entirely due to the injury situation, but the absences did play a role. No Gabriel makes you weaker, and the fact that his replacement is a player (Piero Hincapie) who is still coming to terms with the English game is a factor that perhaps isn’t paid as much attention as it should be. He is not inexperienced, but only five league starts is not much time to get used to a competition like this.
For me, though, it’s really about the other side of the pitch, and I found Mikel Arteta’s assessment of the match last weekend quite interesting. The “terrible defensive habits” line got a lot of attention, but the part where he complained about a “lack of precision” within the opposition framework, not so much. In every interview he did, he mentioned Gabriel Martinelli’s chance at the back post, which should have been a goal. Despite the fact that we didn’t play that well, I think if we score from some very representative chances in the first half, this will be a game that will take on a completely different look.
If you score just once, you’re open to a late blow, as happened against Wolves and Aston Villa the week before. So I’m curious how the manager will solve that this weekend. I suspect that Martinelli will lose his place in the starting line-up to Leandro Trossard, our most productive player in terms of goals and assists this season, and on the other hand, Bukayo Saka seems to me a player who is really finding rhythm in his game.
Then the question is who starts at the front. Here’s an interesting image from Sky Sports (via r/shooters):
A decision now needs to be made between Viktor Gyokeres and Gabriel Jesus, and hopefully in the not-too-distant future, Kai Havertz will insert himself into that equation. Is it time for an arm around the shoulder for the summer signing, to show him confidence and restore some pretty clearly lost confidence, or is it about showing how ruthless you have to be at this level and saying, ‘You’ve had your chances, it’s someone else’s turn’?
Personally, I lean a little more towards the latter than the former, but I recognize that there have been some problems for the Swede lately with injuries. Nevertheless, Arteta talked about having to ‘convert his chances’ against Wolves, which suggests to me that he is challenging him to get results. I thought his second half was better last weekend, and in Trossard he had a player outside him who seemed more on his wavelength than Martinelli, so maybe that’s something the manager should look at before changing things up too much.
Gabriel Jesus looks like a man determined to make up for lost time, and I don’t think we’ve quite seen the last of Mikel Merino in that position, even if we have other options at our disposal. I looked at the shot stats in the Premier League and Gyokeres is tied for fifth with Trossard on 20, with Bukayo Saka (29), Eberechi Eze (25), Riccardo Calafiori (22) and Declan Rice (21) ahead of him. Saka, Gyokeres, Eze and Trossard have the same number of league goals (4), which I think you can draw your own conclusions from.
Where I think he can improve is with the ball at his feet, aside from taking shots. He’s our least accurate passer of the ball with just 60% pass completion, and while I know this isn’t something you’re focused on when it comes to your centre-forward, bringing others into the game better can also increase the chances he gets to score. To be fair, the next three lowest are Noni Madueke (62.4%), Martinelli (67.4%) and Trossard (70%), and then David Raya, so it’s not unusual for the forwards to be on that list, but I do think this is an area where, if things improve, he could benefit in terms of the stats everyone rates the forwards on.
Either way, plenty for the manager to think about and consider in the run-up to Saturday and the festive period ahead. Okay, I’ll leave it there for today, enjoy and I’ll be back tomorrow with more and an Arsecast.
Until then.
#Twists #turns #everyday #reflections