Graeme Souness worried about Arsenal’s lack of Plan B

Former Liverpool man Graeme Souness has commented on Arsenal’s chances of ending this season successfully and he fears they lack a plan B.

Mikel Arteta’s men have been in terrific form this term, which has made them one of the in-form clubs in Europe as they sit at the head of the EPL table.

It is a run of form that benefits everyone at the club and we expect them to have a good end to the season if they can maintain it.

But Souness has doubts, he writes in the Daily Mail:

“Arsenal are playing with a freedom, belief and confidence. When I watch them, they believe they can out-football and out-score anyone. That is a tremendous conviction to have. 

“But it can cost you, because I don’t think they have a plan B. That is not a criticism.

“It is just that Mikel Arteta has instilled so much belief in his players that they go out and play their own game. It will be fascinating to see how that strategy fares when they meet City in February.”

Just Arsenal Opinion

We have some fine players in our current squad, which means we can set up our team in different systems and formations.

Souness might think we have just the one plan to win games because we have not tinkered too much with our system, but we trust Arteta to come up with a new solution if our current one stops working.

For now, we need to just stay focused and work on our performances while ignoring what pundits think.

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11 Comments

  1. What is City or Liverpool’s plan B? Newcastle have one to an extent due to their personnel but even then Howe is a manager who believes in consistency and playing a certain way. Just watched a fantastic long-form interview with him talking about his year out and he made that very clear in it.

  2. Plan B is a cliche that is overused and betrays a lack of original thought.It is used by virtually every pundit and, unfortunately, by many subscribers to JA.

    1. “The next goal is vital”
      “2-0 is a dangerous lead, if they score 1 it’s game on”
      “What this game needs is a goal”
      etc.

      The main thing that annoys me with commentators, in general, is the relentless bias toward the actual scoreline regardless of performance. If you completely change the way you are talking about a performance based on a freak goal then something is wrong even a mistake you can focus on the mistake but it doesn’t take away from the overall performance. It’s just the easy thing to do and not stick your neck out.

      It’s the same thing with pundits’ talking on form, United with 5 wins in a row will get bigged up now for the top 4 despite a few of the wins being less than convincing because pundits wrote them off after their start to the season. Meanwhile, Liverpool is getting a relentless focus on their form despite being unlucky in certain games and with injuries because they were expected to be challenging for the title. It’s just silly.

      1. They’ve got to say something. That is how they make their bread and butter. Look how many time we are mentioning Graham’s name and opinion.
        He is making a very safe statement tbh. I heard my Liverpool friends 2 years ago complaining about Klopp’s lack of a plan B. In a perfect footballing world all teams miss this to some extent. Look at the dominant Man City. Teams learn how to absorb their dominance and as I speak they are tied 1-1 with Everton in a game they are completely dominating…at the Etihad!
        All to say, no reason to get worked up about commentators making statements and observations from their very safe pedestals…they have nothing to lose but everything to gain. We are in a good way and just need to keep playing the way that we are because it is winning games and has us too of the league.
        COYG’s!!!

        1. My point was that what they say changes with scorelines within games that haven’t finished and not in the subtle way it would with scoreline changes. It just absolutely does where it becomes an entirely different narrative to feed into the media if it stays the same post-game. Don’t have time for it it’s lazy and cowardly.

  3. Such a lot of nonsenne is talkedby so many across many decades alreay about plan A and Plan B.
    So let us examine wht is meant by Plan A. It plainly means that the preferred method of playing is used And why? Because it has the most often success, THAT being WHY it is used. Obvious then? It OUGHT to be.

    Lets now examine what is meant by Plan B. It surely means that Plan A has not worked out and so a second best method of playing, Plan B, is chosen And why would anyone sensible choose a second best plan when the best one, Plan A failed to work? Because Plan A- the best choice, remember , does not work.
    ,
    So if the best choice does not work, WHY do some people think a second best choice is more likely to work? Some of us do NOT think that!

    We think that sticking to what works best most often is the correct percentage way to play and that is WHY Plan B is so often a nonsense concept.

    REALITY! Or, if you prefer, logical thinking!! As demonstrated.

    Now, that being said, there IS a flaw in what I write. Can anyone come up with it? Logical thinking will help you!

    1. Well, plan A won’t necessarily work against everyone in every game. Sometimes teams have their own plan to counter your plan A, so a fall back strategy is useful, the opposition might not be able to counter it. Typically they just want us to be able to throw on a tall striker to win headers if we’re struggling to break through a defence with our short passing game. Not convinced we need a plan B, but it’s not necessarily flawed logic. Sometimes our preferred way of playing is simply not the best/most effective way of playing.

      1. I’m not convinced it’s right either, but wenger had a great plan B which he used often when we were struggling to score – throw on all the strikers. Ferguson did similar with his utd side. It can be useful – we just don’t have many strikers to throw on!

  4. If you look at how we played City last year when we lost on a BS penalty and a toe poke goal in extra time, you can see our Plan B. We playedCity better than anyone last season and we’re unlucky not to grab at least the point in that tie. I look at Bernardo quite differently after that dive. First in Arlene we trust now Miguel.

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