Points finally on the board, but a lot of work to be done still. by Konstantin Mitov
Hello lovely Arsenal people. We beat West Ham! And in typical Arsenal fashion, we made it difficult. We conceded some pretty silly chances. If this was a better team we would’ve suffered. This is the part of Arsenal that’s hardly changed, but it really needs to.
The way we allow players to go past our defence is unbelievable. It’s shocking to say the least. Even schoolboy defending is a compliment for our back line. This is years in the making but I wonder aren’t we supposed to change this? What do we do about defending in training?
I am also very unhappy about the fact we stick with Xhaka, Bellerin and Cech. I continue to see nothing in Granit, yet a player like Torreira who kept Ronaldo quiet is on the bench? And we blindly trusted Guendouzi, who sometimes does make simple mistakes.
And I want to know how comes Bellerin gets the spot over Lichtsteiner? The Swiss is exactly the nasty type of player we lack and even though Hector is decent going forward, he is useless in defense.
What worries me big time is that we are playing whoever the manager likes rather than what’s best for the team. We looked miles better when Lacazette came on and Aubas form has been pretty poor. In all honesty the Gaboneese striker doesn’t do a good job on his own up top.
Lacazette has a lot more to offer in terms of hold up play and you have to wonder why we keep playing one striker only? It feels like it’s because this is how Unai Emery likes to play and this is not the best we can get out of the squad.
Under Wenger we tried to play a style of football that didn’t fit our players and it cost us bad and I feel we continue to do so instead of putting up a system that works for what we’ve got.
The players sometimes look like they’ve never seen each other on the pitch before. And comparing us to what Pep did at City is impossible with the endless budget he has there. He can buy the players needed to play his style, we cannot. And even thus so, he still won the title on his second season.
I don’t think Emery can leave his blueprint in 3 games, but if results don’t go his way, he doesn’t have Wenger’s comfort of having players and a board who constantly back him for historical reasons. Those players lacked confidence for years, especially in the big games. We need to improve there and we so far dropped our pants vs City and missed like 100 chances to beat Chelsea. It was really sad to see that we lacked character to get something from the game after coming back.
On a positive note, there are some signs of Unai’s ideas like the new pressing. Sometimes it’s very chaotic, but sometimes we do get the ball in dangerous positions.
Another difference is the usage of the wings. We scored quite a lot of goals after breaking from the wings which is funny when you consider the fact we lack a pure winger.
But all and all it’s a pretty poor start to the season. We definitely need more work on the squad, but we cannot plummit every big game we play, hoping that we’ll be able to beat the small teams. And there is still the small problem of our away form which is yet to be tested.
If I was the Arsenal head coach I’d first try to stop the major goal leakage and then worry about the style we play. This is why so many people wanted someone like Simeone to take over.
I’m prepared for another difficult season. Rebuilding something always includes tearing down at least parts of what it was before. Let’s hope we can now go on a positive run to gain some confidence.
Konstantin