PairyGrows wrote:Arteta is supposedly the understudy of a manager who is quite possibly the best organiser of possession-based football of all time, and yet we are utterly terrible on the ball. I'm not expecting us to play intricate football like Manchester City, but even the basics are wrong: our idea of build up is one player on the ball while six or seven players stand and wait.
To be fair, this problem dates all the way back to Wenger. But the fact that Arteta hasn't been able to do anything to rectify this even a little bit tells you everything you need to know. Sitting back and waiting for a counterattack may be good enough if you're a mid-table side, but it won't do if you want to finish in the top four, let alone win the league.
It's abundantly clear that Arteta's tactical understanding of the game is lacking. I see no signs of that changing. We need better from our manager.
I fear we're trying to replicate some of Pep's philosophy and players sticking to their zones on the pitch. That's why it looks so static and the distances between the players so wide.
We had a similar issue of keeping possession late on in Wenger's career but it was never this bad and not against every opponent. I would put some of those poor games down to the wrong team balance under Wenger. Games where we had Flamini and Ramsey in the double pivot or Coquelin and Flamini, Xhaka and Elneny....low level technical midfielders. It was often corrected once we had Cazorla pulling the string from deep. Wenger always had the players running mini 5 aside games I training, playing in tight spaces, one twos and one touch passes. It's like the opposite under Arteta. It's not just a problem with the players, it seems like a system problem. That zonal space playing style puts the shackles on our players and it's ugly to watch.
Under Wenger, if we had too many technical lightweight, players on, maybe we'd get roughed up a bit, lose those 50/50 challenges and look weak for set pieces and aerial duels. But we would at least be able to pass the ball better and dominate possession for most games even if it's just sterile possession and tippy tappy football. It worrys me that we couldn't even manage that when we had most of our technical players on the pitch vs Brighton and now Palace.
