Former Premier League defender Matthew Upson believes that Arsenal needs a different style of play for certain matches, following their loss to Fulham in the Premier League today.
The Gunners were eager to bounce back after a defeat to West Ham in their previous match. With the opportunity to return to the top of the Premier League table before Liverpool played, Mikel Arteta’s side had high hopes. Unfortunately, they delivered one of their worst performances of the season, resulting in a loss to Fulham.
Despite their efforts to break down the Cottagers, Arsenal lacked the cutting edge needed to make things happen. It was an unusually poor day for Arsenal, even worse than their performance against West Ham in the previous fixture. It appeared that Fulham had thoroughly studied Arsenal’s tactics, successfully thwarting every Gunners’ attack.
In such moments, Upson believes that Arsenal should have adopted a different approach to secure a win.
He said on the BBC:
“Every manager will have their own philosophy with how they want to play football matches.
“For me, you’re going to have matches like today were you need something different to win you that match.”
Just Arsenal Opinion
We have a style of play and a system, but we need more than one to win many games in the Premier League.
Every team has a different approach to the game and we must find different ways to break each down to win them.
I don’t think Arteta is prepared to learn anything beyond what Pep Guardiola taught him, is so immersed in the acclaims he was showered with last season, he literally thinks he can’t learn anything anymore.
Delusions of grandeur, egomania and typical short man syndrome consume this novice.
Relax Marshall! ☺
Arteta hast to realize that his danger areas are Saka and martinelli which many oponets no that and they come prepared for them ,so Arteta mus be creative after realizing the key people are not delivering he has to change tactics
Come Arteta be creative
There is a serious need for plan B, the current system is no longer working,
I’m no manager by no means but this season arteta is not getting the best out of this team,
And that’s not the sign of a good manager,
Even if I was to manage a team against arsenal I’d know how to play them just sit back and double up on martinelle and saka and hit them on the break he should have seen at half time it wasn’t working why didn’t he try a different system like 4 4 2
Raya
Cedric. Saliba. Gab. Tomi
SAKA. Rice ode martinelle
Jesus. Havaretz
The truth is that we are missing granit xhaka,I don’t know why we sold him.
And Partey, to help Declan Rice
And Timber to add another dynamic to defense and attack.
@Jim Wall
I pointed out before how Kompany at Burnley and Arteta both try and emulate Pep’s style of play, but neither have the tactical nous or man power to pull it off. At least Kompany has figured it out and began using 4-4-2 system and are getting better results. Jus sayin…
Arteta has actually used different systems at times (including in-game against Fulham). Unfortunately, it hasn’t worked as effectively as the preferred setup.
Whatever system Arsenal employ teams are likely to sit back and try and hit us on the break as we have still have one of the best MF setups in the PL
The first problem stems from not being a to replace Xhaka and Partey adequately (we now can see how valuable they were to our success last season).
I also want to raise concern about what seem to be a one dimensional style of play from Arteta. He seem to know no other pettern of play. Can’t even switch Saka and Martinelli to alternate wings or even try long balls when needed. Just the normal back-sideways passes. A one trick pony is he really is?
My last point is about his hesitation to integrate some our best youth players into this team. I’m talking about Nwaneri and the likes(about four of them if I’m not wrong). Sometimes to solve some problems all needed is the ability to look inward and develop a solution. Just look at how Pep developed Cole Palmer, Rico Lewis and the likes and also Klopp with Harvey Elliot and the likes.
I’m not really surprised though. He never really sought to develop any young talent. He is just the typical checkbook manager that he is raised to be. More amusing is the fact that even the master from whom he learnt his trade has softened his ways when it comes to outright purchases in favor of developing young talents.
My hope was that, after the disastrous ending to the last campaign Arteta would’ve learnt and improved on some of these things. So far nothing has changed and infact we are even worse than we were last season.
@Twinlights
RealTalk 👍🏾
Agree with you about integrating young players, a good case in point was the last Champions League game, I don’t think anybody would have criticised Arteta for starting a few of them even if we had lost.
Arteta has started messing up everything, he should actually leave our team and go because if we continue like this, am telling you Arsenal is on it’s climax of it’s downfall. Since Raya joined Arsenal he gives him every match but I don’t see purpose there look at havertz, I actually don’t see any reason why he signed such players his doing nothing at the pitch but he gives him every match. I feel so bad, if he can’t manage our team well let him leave and go. This is a club not a family thing he should stop that hatred and brings back our keeper Ramsey and party. Arsenal is having 2 problems. Tipical 6 so that rice goes in his number and odegard goes back in number ten. Raya should leave our goal immediately
Your first point is valid.
Your second point is debatable as we still create chances. We have just not been efficient enough. Also, we do not have the kind of big, burly CF who would thrive on ‘long balls’
Third point is even more questionable as it based on nothing but a desire to see more youth players in the team.
Pointing to Palmer etc tells us absolutely nothing about how our youth players would do if hurried into the first team. Pep is able to promote youth players into an already proven team which is quite different from where Arsenal are at present.
Many of our “senior” players are only 22-25. Insisting that we should be giving more playing time to 17-18 year olds is unrealistic unless they are truly generational players.
There is nothing wrong with having a playing style and sticking to it. The challenge is having the right players to execute your style and coaching them properly for it.
Arsenal play more or less the same style as Manchester City. But whereas City players would put everything on the line to prevent a counterattack, ours can’t seem to be able to stop opposition players from breaking through their press and counter, often with devastating results.
Another difference is that because City have a Harland, they will often float the ball into the back post for aerial attacks . That’s what I thought Arsenal would also be doing using the aerial ability of Havertz.
We used to do much better in the area of stopping counterattacks, but that desire seems to be completely lacking right now
Arteta has no panacea to the current issues he’s facing. This is what happens when you are a copy cat or wanna be. Just like wright said,a plan B is urgently needed and that has to include a poacher. Arsenal creat unbelievable chances but cannot finish. That’s down to not having a clinical finisher. They need a dusan vhlahoch type of player. Like Rice said,it’s a tough one to swallow.
Did you see our crossing yesterday? It’s about the worst I’ve seen from any club level football. Even our set-pieces are almost as bad. You will see better quality in Sunday league!
How long have we been saying “we only play one way”? What Upson says It’s nothing new and many pundits have said it a long time ago. Arsenal have to manage games differently and they don’t. They don’t know how to. You can buy all the players you want but if you can’t manage them you won’t get a winning formula for long. MA has top formulate other ways of playing if we are going to challenge. Problem is, MA doesn’t like change. His rotation of players is almost non-existent. Even when our players are obviously tired, he still plays them. It’s time for MA to see the real problem here.
The pundits are out in force due to our losses. You can only rotate players effectively if you have fairly even quality within the squad. Arsenal do not have that yet. It is really only in the past year that we have had a strong enough first team to compete effectively with the best teams.
It is easy to blame the manager but the fact is that the bench players are not at the same level as the first team players. We have also been somewhat unfortunate with injuries.
I agree we’ve been a little unfortunate with injuries but lack of depth, and lack of consistent quality within the squad is not a good excuse when we’ve spent so much money on transfer fees and contracts.
I disagree.
Spending need to be considered in context not simply by plucking out headline figures and making superficial analyses in order to generate a narrative.
For many years we had a lot a of players with limited sell on value. Many of those players were never going to get us competitive against the very best. This necessitated a significant overhaul of the squad.
Guardiola came into squad which had already won a championship and some established top class players already in place who would be part of the squad for years. Klopp came into a team that had some players with huge sell on potential which helped him to rebuild his team. These are teams with two of the greatest managers the PL have ever seen.
Chelsea and Man U have spent huge amounts and are struggling to remain relevant partly because the quality right across the PL has risen significantly.
This to @Davi
You are truly the king of finding excuses for MA. We can always count on you attribute his mistakes to something subjective, making him accountable for nothing
Unfortunately, so many are simply stating their obvious irrational biases rather than considered analyses.
What are these ‘mistakes’ that you are referring to?
Don’t think I need to add on to the irrational biases so many have pointed out. Anyway there’s nothing MA needs to be responsible for. it’s probably my irrational bias to expect an inexperienced manager who inherited a most horrendous squad to do better after only 4 years and hundreds of millions spent. Let’s give him a decade and a billion or two to spend before judging him