Arsenal have found it very hard to score in the Premier League lately, but to be fair, Mikel Arteta has probably been concentrating much more on the defensive side of our game.
This seems to be working as we can now boast the current best defence in the EPL, with just 7 goals conceded in our first 7 games. But offensively we are hardly a team to write home about either, and only Fulham, Wolves and Palace have scored less goals than us.
So, hopefully the boss can now put more effort into the offensive side of our game, especially when we come up against teams that build a brick wall in front of their goal and invite us to try and find a way through. This is exactly what Villa did in our last meeting, and they ran out 1-0 winners, so we should not be surprised if they try the same tactics tomorrow.
But Arteta believes that his team are now improving in the department, and he told Goal: “We need to be more productive,”
“In the last few weeks’ve found teams with lower blocks. We’ve trained to be ready against that, we’ve experienced that throughout the games and [against Molde] you could see a big improvement.
“That’s probably the final bit that we need to improve upon as a team because there’s many areas where we’ve improved on a lot.
“In the last few weeks that we’ve improved with the goals and the creativity but it’s the consistency that we need in the final third.”
Let’s hope that he has started getting the boys ready for those tactics and they can find a way past Martinez tomorrow, hopefully a lot more than once!
COYG!!!