Power n Glory wrote:elkanofan wrote:Power n Glory wrote:It's not worse. We just keep playing the wrong combination along with Emery playing Torreira as a box to box player. Playing Xhaka as a DM whilst allowing the two CM's beside him to roam forward is suicidal.
The problem is we have no reliable number 10 to retain possession in the attacking third, we have box to box players who will give the ball away more than a proper playmaker would, leaving us open to counters, plus bar Xhaka all of our midfielders are young, naive and still learning. Ceballos cannot last 90 minutes and fades around 60-70 minute. This is so important but again, many of our fans have no idea how good we actually are.
But you think thats better than what Chelsea have with Kovacic, Kante, even shitty Barkley for example, i don't even like Chelsea and Lampard ain't a great manager but hes got more than what we have.
I wouldn't say it's the players or lack of having a 10 that stops us from retaining possession in the final third.
Ozil rarely loses the ball as a 10 and we have enough players that can play as a CM with Torriera holding as DM. But I wouldn't say that's the problem.
Ozil lost the ball 4 times just 10 minutes before he was taken off and was killing our attacks with his lack of any conditioning to create, that's just today. He doesn't even get the ball anymore and spends most of the game walking around tired because he cant move into space anymore.
BTW this is against Nottingham Forest so against Watford pressing us like crazy you see what a massive issue this was against them.
Ceballos actually can drop into all areas within the midfield to build or create int he final 3rd. Ceballos is already way better than Ozil but hes still adapt.
Yes, thats it thats all we have in terms of attacking mids.
It's the spacing, the distance between our players and the structure. Emery likes to make the pitch big and and tends to attack the wings. The overlap is his go to move to create chances.
To attack down the center you need attacking mid to create chances in the final 3rd and need players who can anchor and create from deep. We don't have that hence why we need to look for the wings. We haven't even had proper wide players for ages, we have Kolasniac who is the only properly fullback/wingback we have, AMN is a squad player doing a job there and then thats it, its just squad players like Chambers filling in gaps.
We play down the wing because we really don't have a choice.
He's nothing like Arsene so the short, quick passing, possession game (tika taka) we used to see has gone. Wenger used to keep things tight, make the pitch small so we wouldn't see these gaping holes between our defenders, midfield and attack like we see under Emery.
Like i said, you cant do this without attacking mids and we don't have that, Ozil is shit, i told everyone a million times now!
Players are left isolated when on the ball with little passing options. It's a bigger emphasis on players being able dribble and drive forward like we used to see with Iwobi and like what we have seen with Saka, Willock and Guendouzi.
A symbol of a work in progress team with players still getting to know eachover and learn eachovers game plus clear talent deficiencies.
