Why Arsenal couldn’t get going against Liverpool by Leke Osmani
That Liverpool game is still driving us mad. Is Arteta the right man? Does the team not have the ability to even play football right for 90 minutes? These are not the questions we want to be asking ourselves as fans but we are.
We can look back at the Liverpool game and look at our stats to give us an idea about what went wrong. These are our passing statistics from the game. We’re trying to figure out who our playmakers were. Leno, the goalkeeper will be disregarded as he would take goal kicks. As can be seen below, Partey, Gabriel and Holding were the main players trying to get us to progress up the pitch. Our Fullbacks in Tierney, Chambers and Soares also attempted to get us to move up the pitch. Our midfield of Ceballos, Pepe, Odegaard, Elneny and Martinelli all were very bad at getting the ball moving forward. Our striker Lacazette was the worst player in making forward passes. Our only attacking player attempting to make any substantial forward passes was Aubameyang.
| Player | Passes Attempted | Passes Completed | Total Pass Distance (in Yards) | Total Progressive Pass Distance (in Yards) | Minutes Played | Total Progressive Passes per Minutes Played (in Yards) |
| Leno | 30 | 17 | 578 | 350 | 90 | 3.89 |
| Chambers | 49 | 34 | 605 | 101 | 90 | 1.12 |
| Holding | 43 | 35 | 734 | 211 | 90 | 2.34 |
| Gabriel | 47 | 31 | 763 | 268 | 90 | 2.98 |
| Tierney | 18 | 14 | 345 | 86 | 44 | 1.95 |
| Partey | 43 | 35 | 712 | 231 | 90 | 2.57 |
| Ceballos | 31 | 25 | 447 | 51 | 57 | 0.89 |
| Odegaard | 31 | 28 | 489 | 81 | 90 | 0.90 |
| Pepe | 23 | 18 | 302 | 31 | 90 | 0.34 |
| Aubameyang | 28 | 20 | 243 | 97 | 76 | 1.28 |
| Lacazette | 17 | 12 | 198 | 9 | 90 | 0.10 |
| Soares | 28 | 23 | 345 | 86 | 46 | 1.87 |
| Elneny | 13 | 11 | 224 | 13 | 33 | 0.39 |
| Martinelli | 4 | 3 | 36 | 0 | 14 | 0.00 |
Now you can see from this that our most positive passes came from the back. Our defence making that first pass to break the Liverpool press. Once the ball got to Partey he again was good at breaking the press. Once the ball went any further up the pitch we had to go backwards or sideways. We couldn’t get any good number of forward passes from Lacazette to an onrushing midfielder and we couldn’t get any overlaps going on. This meant that we just couldn’t break through Liverpool’s press the higher up the pitch the ball got for us.
The fact that we missed Xhaka and David Luiz, which are our main players in terms of playmaking roles to get our rhythm and passing movement going was evident to see. Let’s now look at the Tottenham Hotspur game where we had both players present.
| Player | Passes Attempted | Passes Completed | Total Pass Distance (in Yards) | Total Progressive Pass Distance (in Yards) | Minutes Played | Total Progressive Passes per Minutes Played (in Yards) |
| Leno | 27 | 20 | 455 | 263 | 90 | 2.92 |
| Soares | 55 | 41 | 625 | 183 | 90 | 2.03 |
| Luiz | 58 | 50 | 1123 | 467 | 90 | 5.19 |
| Gabriel | 57 | 52 | 1187 | 337 | 90 | 3.74 |
| Tierney | 55 | 41 | 810 | 250 | 90 | 2.78 |
| Partey | 63 | 49 | 906 | 213 | 90 | 2.37 |
| Xhaka | 68 | 65 | 1287 | 343 | 90 | 3.81 |
| Odegaard | 59 | 52 | 889 | 168 | 90 | 1.87 |
| Saka | 16 | 13 | 131 | 10 | 45 | 0.22 |
| Smith-Rowe | 42 | 37 | 537 | 89 | 76 | 1.17 |
| Lacazette | 20 | 15 | 200 | 41 | 90 | 0.46 |
| Pepe | 24 | 15 | 232 | 54 | 45 | 1.20 |
| Willian | 6 | 5 | 81 | 13 | 14 | 0.93 |
| Elneny | 2 | 2 | 22 | 3 | 3 | 1.00 |
Looking at the Tottenham game, you can see that our defence and our center midfield partnership all were excellent at moving the ball up the pitch. David Luiz and Xhaka were the best at the amount of progressive pass yards per minute with 5.19 and 3.81 respectively. We dominated the match because we got passes linking up from our defence and our midfield and towards our attack. Our progressive passes per minute up front are obviously lower but they are good down the wings and through the center. Even Lacazette is making more passes forward from his advanced position.
Now for argument’s sake let’s compare our defence and center midfield partnership between the Tottenham game and the Liverpool game.
| Position | Tottenham Game Total Progressive Passes per Minutes Played (in Yards) | Liverpool Game
Total Progressive Passes per Minutes Played (in Yards) |
Difference in Total Progressive Passes per Minutes Played (in Yards) between the two games |
| LB | 2.78 | 3.82 | 1.04 |
| LCB | 3.74 | 2.98 | -0.76 |
| RCB | 5.19 | 2.34 | -2.85 |
| RB | 2.03 | 1.12 | -0.91 |
| LCM | 3.81 | 0.89 | -2.92 |
| RCM | 2.37 | 2.57 | 0.20 |
We declined majorly in our progressive passes when comparing the two games. The positions we most declined in were RCB and LCM. The personnel changes in these two positions were Holding for Luiz and Ceballos for Xhaka. This shows that we missed these two players the most when it came to our build up play. We couldn’t keep the ball or break the press because we don’t have the playmaking prowess to do so. Let’s hope we get Xhaka back for Thursday and that Luiz plays again before the season ends!
COYG!