SWLondon Saint

'Mikel Merino says he is seeing football in a different way after his first month or so under Mikel Arteta at Arsenal.' https://www.theguardian.com/football/2024/oct/02/mikel-merino-arsenal-training-methods-mikel-arteta Call it a hunch, but given RM's teams long history of shambolic defending, I'm guessing our training isn't at that level...

Watching the PSG game, Arsenal are actually quite direct a lot of the time. They are quite happy to send it long then win the 2nd ball or counter-press to win it back high. It's kind of the Ralf Rangnick Red Bull template. Several times Arsenal smacked it into the corner then had 5 players press. That would basically destroy Russball if they just did it all match....

I think the reason we always seem to concede a 2nd after the first is that after conceding, the other team tends to press as hard as they can to try and secure the advantage. Because we try to keep possession rather than playing direct / positional (the traditional ' get and keep the ball up their end') we actually invited pressure instead of exploiting the old 'teams are vulnerable after going ahead' truism. So it's a double or triple whammy of the more passive style adding to pressure/ increased confidence for the other team.

Watched the whole 2nd half and saw highlights of the 1st. Nothing has changed from the long post I wrote a few matches back. RM is just out of his depth - there's nothing personal about that, he just doesn't have the knowledge or experience. It looks like what he needs is some time away when he finds a way to go observe, say, managers like Alonso, Gasperini, Simeone, Inzaghi. He has never played at that level or been managed by anyone that good. All the experienced PL managers have set traps for him and he's walked the team into them with absolutely no self awareness whatsoever, and you can see it in the players. They don't have confidence in the structure, the setup, so they simply can't perform. The biggest thing is that he seems completely clueless that teams are going to press the crap out of us because they know they will get goals out of it. You can't simply say 'Be brave and keep possession lads!!!', you have to have a plan about how to beat what you know is coming. He's shown absolutely no signs of adapting to the challenge of outsmarting the press he knows is coming. And let's not get started about the defensive shape and set pieces, we made exactly the same mistakes about leaving the top of the box totally unguarded several games ago now. When the only thing a manager can say is 'we need to play harder' that's usually a sign they're out of ideas.

Well, if I remember right we were warned about this by Swansea fans when he came, so not much reason to think a light's suddenly gonna switch on in his head... Just can't see the logic in Wood over ABK or Edwards.

Think that's a bit unfair on Yoshi, who while not on VVD / Fonte level was a 'lower-middle' class Premier league defender IMO. Also that season Fonte did seem to be increasingly and alarmingly error prone if I remember correctly. I feel Stephens has this uncanny knack of making whoever he's playing with look crap! It's something to do with the way he loses attention and drifts away from whoever he's meant to be marking and then the other CB is left desperately trying to cover...

Agree with pretty much everything here, watching JS since the Puel cup run season when he had a run in the team with VVD out I've always felt he was at best a back up. He somehow always makes his defensive partners look bad as well though when you look more closely you see the problem is often caused by Jack 1 or 2 phases back like with the pass to THB against Brentford - he moved forward into a cul-de-sac and forced himself to turn back. On the playing / coaching front I liked seeing 3CBs as a forward exactly due to that tendency for defenders to get in a mix up with zonal marking. I mean, you'd think professionals should know better but... For modern 3CB play though, have a watch of Leverkusen, I know it's a bit hipster with Alonso being flavour of the month/year, but they are really bloody good. Don't understand why if the plan was to play 3CBs the staff couldn't just analyse their play and just copy it, or adapt it at any rate.

Either he didn't establish penalty takers, or he chose Archer - doesn't matter which really, they both reflect badly on him, he knows that, that's why he's being mega-defensive and angry about it. Palace got criticised for sacking DeBoer after 4 games a few years back, but it was clearly absolutely the right decision in hindsight. The big question here is: do we think RM will actually improve? The biggest problem all his teams have, including us last season and this season, is conceding a ton of goals. There is clearly something not right with his approach to defensive transition as his teams get cut apart after losing the ball. He thinks he's Pep, but Pep teams are drilled to death in how to stop teams getting at them when they lose the ball. Sure, they have better players too, but we had players at the top of the league ability range last season and we still conceded a ton of goals. I hoped something would have clicked over the summer, or the club would've found a coach to deal with this issue, but neither has happened. Nothing in his career to date has indicated he knows how to fix his team's defensive issues, so why are people still hoping there'll be a change?

I mean... All other failings aside, this is just unforgivable. What this says is: the preparation and analysis just isn't there. The manager and his staff are quite simply not doing their homework. To be honest, Captain Shoehorn reflects the manager well with his amateur hour sending off. Just bloody do a Chiellini, it's cynical but professional and you don't get sent off. All the doomsayers here need to watch that first 30 minutes. We do have a good enough squad to at least compete. But the organisation is still not good enough, every defensive transition we get cut open in 2 or 3 passes, same as the last 3 games which says the work isn't being done. I honestly find it hard to believe RM was a defender as he loves Stephens who if you watch him over a game, seems to actually disorganise whoever he's near. There was one defensive transition in the highlights which saw poor Sugawara running between I think Zirkzee and Rashford, Stephens offering no communication. The defender further back can see the situation better than the one running back, it is his responsibility to give a shout who he's moving to. But nothing. I was in the camp that RM should get more time to adjust, but I'm just not seeing it. I don't think the formation change particularly improved things, it's actually that we got our best players onto the pitch and we could see their level. The organisation and preparation required isn't there. He seems to make his favoured players feel great, which is good, but it isn't enough at this level.

Yep, that was actually the root cause of the 2nd goal. Just taking it on the half turn, advancing a few strides to commit 1/2 of the pressers, then playing it back if you must makes a huge difference to getting up the pitch. But giving it straight backwards makes things a lot worse. Dunno if anyone coaches here, but I think the approach is different on the continent. Yes, 1 touch is good, but not always, sometimes it's better to take more! It's inherently more risky, so save the 1 touch for near their penalty area not your own.

Absolutely, there was one wall pass by Smallbone against Forest that was absolutely criminal, Sugawara played an excellent ball round the corner off the right touchline under pressure, Smallbone had no one behind him and gave it straight back to Sugawara putting him and the team under huge pressure. He has to be good enough to know he can turn and go and he just wasn't. Drove me nuts 🤯

Had another look at the highlights after watching the last 10 minutes of the 1st and all of the 2nd half yesterday and a few thoughts: Good - Pretty much all of the signings we've seen so far are significantly better than what we had already. I actually think we have enough quality to stay up. Even BBD and Archer are clearly a level above AA. - Some of our play in the 2nd half going forward was good, but with the caveat they clearly were on cruise control and didn't want to make too much effort at 3-0 up. - RM made the right subs and shows signs of dispensing with his favourites. Bad - Several of our players still appear shell-shocked at the new level. AA and Smallboner look done. THB doesn't look comfortable defensively in the back 3. Stevens cannot step into midfield. Downes actually wasn't great either, too many wall passes straight back to the defenders which he could get away with at Championship level but not anymore. I think he's more of an 8 at this level, similar to Rice - he can't play as a single pivot under heavy pressure in this system. Ugly - Defensive transition was a complete mess. Leaving aside giving away the ball in our defensive third which should never happen, even when we lost the ball in their half, we seemed to have no plan at all about how to either counter press and win the ball back high, or to stop the ball while we transition back to our defensive shape. - Playing out from the back - Complete mess. The formation is hindering the players not helping them. If RM wants to stick with a back 3, he should copy Alonso at Leverkusen and play with a double pivot (and also with 1 CB capable of either playing in midfield or as a full-back, but that's another story...). It needs a truly world-class player to play as a single pivot in the modern game as the pressure is so high. Our 3 CBs are too close to one another, there's no forward pressure on their defense so their back line can push onto our midfield, compressing the play, no long pass threat to stretch the defense backwards...the list goes on and on. TLDR: RM looks dangerously out of his depth. I'm a football optimist, I like to think any team can play PB but the manager is failing at too many of the tactical things necessary to make it work. He has some credit but the same failings we saw last season are still in place.

3 at the back, 4 at the back - it makes no difference if you don't have a plan to beat the press you'll see at this level. What's most worrying is that RM seems to have spent zero time on this. I mean, come on, you've broadcast you're gonna try to play it out, surely you have to know everyone will try to nick it at the back?!! And we are a complete mess in transition after losing it. Where's the planning???

Haven't seen the build up to the goal yet but it seems like the team just doesn't know what to do in transition after losing the ball. 3 at the back can work fine, it does for Alonso at Leverkusen but they put massive pressure on the ball as soon as they lose it in midfield and that just isn't happening here.

Account approved just in time to join in the pile on! 😝 Watched all of the Forest game and the Cardiff game, honestly have no idea what Smallbone has on the manager. He was dreadful against Forest, no ability (or confidence, which is nearly the same thing at this level) to take the ball on the turn under pressure. Les or Fernandes obviously a class above. We'll see what happens early doors, but the problem so far has been that PL managers know how to stop this setup dead, just like Spain did in the Euros against England. It's not rocket science. You just put heavy pressure on 6, 8, 10 and if they're not good enough technically, which Smallbone and Aribo aren't (not sure about Downes), you simply can't progress the ball unless one of your CBs is good enough to advance into the space and use the ball productively.