Mikel Arteta and his Arsenal squad walked away defeated on Thursday night at The Emirates against West Ham in what was a game with plenty of chances for Arteta’s side, but again, like a lot of other times this season, we just weren’t clinical enough in front of goal and it’s beginning to become a concern for Arsenal fans as we look to charge for the title in the second half of the season. But why can’t Arsenal seem to score like we were last season?
Last season our problems seems to revolve around the backline and our defensive set up, Arteta decided in the summer to bring in reinforcements in the backline and signed talented young Dutch defender Jurrien Timber, bring him straight into the starting line up and made it clear that he would be a key part of the defensive system, but unfortunately in the first game of the season, Timber was forced off the pitch against Nottingham Forest with an ACL injury that could see him miss the entire season.
Since then, White, Saliba, Gabriel, Zinchenko and Tomiyasu have held the backline up and have looked solid all season. Unfortunately, Tomiyasu is another player we’ve lost to injury for an extended period of time, but other than Thursday’s game against West Ham, our defence has looked probably the best in the league all season and now it seems our problems lay with the front line.
On Thursday Arsenal had an astounding 30 shots on goal, 8 of them were on target, 10 shots were blocked, we had 18 shots inside the box and 12 outside the box, but still couldn’t manage to get the ball in the back of the net. With 78% possession and 77 touches inside West Ham’s box, we should have been pumping in the goals, but our front three just don’t seem to be clicking like they did last season. Scoring only 10 Premier League goals between them.
It’s become a big problem and I’m just not sure what’s changed since last season, it’s almost like we’ve taken one step forward and two steps back. Last season, the goals were spread around the whole attack and with everyone contributing it seems like we were scoring goals for fun and our only problem was conceding goals.
For me, Arsenal need to be looking at reinforcements in the January transfer window, if we want to be competing for the title, we need to be scoring more goals and there’s something not quite right about our front line at the moment but if we could bring in an experienced striker, I think that changes the whole set up and could make us a force going forward as well as in defence.
What’s your thoughts Gooners?
Daisy Mae
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Problem looks like everyone in the front line is looking for personal glory. They are not setting each other up in the box, everyone wants their star to shine
Dunsan Vlohovic or Santiago Gimenez has to be on top of that list if we are serious, putting the little grudges aside.
I think they will only be available in the summer
Maybe Arsenal didn’t sign that big CF type in the previous transfer window because they have made a commitment to Jesus and Nketiah
Am not sure Arsenal will be forced into panic buying a striker in January.
They are far more positives coming out of the West Ham game, a 75 % possession with some 77 touches in the opposition box with over two dozen shots on goal.
If the opportunity does present itself, one of those strikers surely would fits the bill, but its another powerful midfielder is our priority January in my opinion.
We’ve got too many central midfielders, but we don’t have Giroud 2.0 on the bench
We have rice, jorginho, elneny and partey who are bone fide central midfielders – only rice from those for has the quality and consistency of performance and availability to be truly useful.
Vieira, havertz, ESR and odegaard are all attacking midfielders who we can and do play in CM, but their skillets are lopsided towards the attacking sides of the game (even when they can and do help with pressing and defending). Imo we should ideally be playing only one of them in midfield in away matches or against tougher opponents, otherwise we’re always at greater risk on defensive mistakes or losing control of the midfield. A consistently fit partey in midfield with rice dominates this league, and very likely wins it, imo.
75% possession and 77 touches in the box means nothing when you have no one to make anything of them.
You can use statistics to make anything look good.
That’s shows the bubbles were living dangerously on the edges, on another day the conversation would have been completely different.
But if those impressive stats continue, and am warning some teams are going to find themselves on the end of heavy defeats.
Our expected goals was 2.73 vs west ham, whereas theirs was 1.52 – we should have scored at least 2 but we gave up more chances than usual.
Over the season, though, our expected goals is about 39, and we’ve scored 36, which suggests our finishing isn’t actually that bad – we would be pretty much spot on if you exclude our last game.
I think in general our problem has been more to do with creating chances than taking them, though a specialist goalscorer would likely help in both categories, by finding the spaces to receive opportunities to score.
For Davi
a) You made sensible points.
b) For me there are 2 problems with the existing squad: lack of rotation; lack of variable tactics.
c) Lack of variable tactics: As GM is out of form why not try GJ on the right and BS on the left as traditional wingers rather then inverted ones and go with either EN, LT or KH as CF with OZ in midfield and JK @ LB. It gives the opposition something to think about.
d) Rotation: Cannot understand why AR, ESR, LT and RN have not been given more time on the pitch whilst benching the underperformers.
Thanks IGL – completely agree with your points. Just to add, I do think a new forward player would useful to freshen things up, and ideally help us to both increase and outperform our xg. I suppose my only point was that we aren’t poor finishers in general and as a team – on an individual basis, I suspect jesus and probably Nketiah would be underperformers on that metric, but i don’t know.
It suggests we have scored less than we ought to have scored – albeit by only three goals.
To me expected goals is just subjective nonsense. The only important statistics are goals scored and conceded.
I used to think that way, but if you look through the list, the xg and actual goals, both scored and conceded, are quite similar for most teams, which suggests it’s fairly accurate. Some teams out or under perform in either direction – villa outperform their xgs but city have underperformed, which makes sense to me (seeing as city have been missing haaland for a lot of their games).
It’s also definitely *not* subjective – it’s objective, because it’s based on positions where shots are taken. You could definitely argue about it’s accuracy, but i find it quite convincing, as mentioned above.
Like I said, the last game aside, we’re pretty much spot on 1xg per actual goal which means we’re taking the chances we’re expected to on average – it means our finishing is average overall, not brilliant, but not poor, which again, make sense.
Looking at the list on a site called understat, I would be worried about city, and would expect villa and Liverpool to drop off over the season – in terms of expected points, we’re still second, clear of Liverpool but narrowly behind city. It could be that Liverpool and villa continue to overperform, though.
It’s the opposite of subjective. Just hard, cold data. It tells a story, albeit only part of one.
@Me2
RealTalk 👍🏾
Article Writer, if you want to know why we were so ineffective against West Ham, consider that they set up the low block in such a way as to prevent our high press and to make it very, very difficult for us to pass the ball while we were in or near their penalty area, forcing our forwards to attempt to dribble their way through, which accounts for the record number of touches in an opponent’s penalty area. At least, that’s how it appeared to me.
Expect the same from Fulham tomorrow.
Frankly, I would be happy if MA played Kai Havertz up front and gave ESR the midfield role next to Odegaard. I think Jesus needs to rotate on the wings with Saka and Martinelli.
Saka has been really poor recently, Martinelli was off his game against West Ham, but then so was everybody else, except ESR when he came on. No doubt it won’t win him a place in the side for the next game though.
Trossard was incredibly bad. His delivery from corners is so bad I can’t believe he is still taking them. Is he too weak to get the ball beyond the near post?
There is a lack of depth. Our substitutes are lucky to have been brought here, they are players for Championship teams. Second is to those who are supposed to be in the top flight.level and I mean the starting eleven, their mentality and the professionalism they have to have on the pitch is just miserable. Fat asses we made From many pounds, and faces that just score have the style of a thousand cardinals. In other words, Arteta has to toughen up his training, but also his voice. We want a championship, not jokes and laughing in training. Until everyone realizes that time is passing and we need to put some gas on the performance, time is running out pointlessly. They laugh and look like they have taken Their dog this mentality must be cut with a knife. Then you will see how the goals will come! But for sure we want three or four transfers, as well as getting rid of them so that there is some confidence and depth solvency … that only City has and Liverpool to a lesser extent. It is tragic to finally be given the opportunity for a title, and to launch yourself into world football, and you kick it all this.Also reading about transfer prospects verses….again same crap as always.Soap opera since October.When you want a player you go and get him…if you want to l big club. They say they talk about a hundred names and in the end it seems that it is probably impossible. I hope now that it will be and something else will happen. Not like last year with Mudrik, when the others went to One night they took him to polish their bench. Many words have been said, let’s finally decide what we want and what we can do, because if we can’t we’re just a small club.
We have some miserable fans.