Alexis as a striker

The Arsenal
#21

Him as a “striker” may not work necessarily if your vision of striker if he takes Giroud’s place and does everything Giroud does but better (I guess we can let him off for being worse in the air), but him as the most advanced attacker in a fluid attacking unit does work, and why wouldn’t it? He’s great and the players around him are great.

I remember making this long post on the subject just before we signed him and this match was just completely what I was dreaming of.

Iwobi, Ozil, Sanchez, Cazorla are 4 of a “front 4 or 5 that are great players before they are great forwards, wingers, midfielders” and Walcott’s role is also vital (and I’m hoping maybe Perez could fulfil the Walcott role and the Sanchez role if needed).

The problem was never Sanchez as the forward (although naturally a new role in a new system - he obviously needs to adjust a bit), IMO the problem has always been the rest of the team not playing a way that could use Sanchez as a forward. In the first few games we were getting wingers running to the corner flag and then crossing it high over Sanchez’s head - well of course that’s going to fail. This just completely felt like how it was meant to be though.

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#22

In his interview Wenger has confirmed he is dedicated to playing Alexis up top where Alexis will essentially have less defensive work and can focus on his offensive output, which makes sense given he’s our best forward.

There is still the problem of lack of runs into the box, which is mitigated by Theo somewhat. Without a Theo or a Perez we’d be very much positionally stagnent without any threat of movement. So with either of those 2 we can have a complimentary attack. The moment we start Alexis without 1 of those or maybe Welbeck we’ll have problems.

In terms of output Alexis is definitely producing with 5 goals off 6 starts.

#23

Why it doesn’t work is because Alexis doesn’t make intelligent runs. Gervinho for all his faults made great off the ball runs into space, Alexis hasn’t learnt to do this and he prefers to run to the ball and drop deep. As a CF, well he’s not a CF because he drops to the left wing or CAM space, at best he’s a false 9. Gervinho’s movement saw him in acres of space in front of goal because he ran into space at lightening pace as a forward. Unfortunately his first touch and finishing were abysmal.

Now in my prior post I’ve acknowledged the benefits of Alexis playing up top but there are clear draw backs. You essentially need a winger, namely Walcott to make the runs Alexis is incapable of making, which will generally see our right winger move into the centre. If Walcott gets injured the whole system becomes dysfunctional, not that it was fully functional in the first place. We now have Perez too who is another player who’ll make intelligent runs to stretch play. Alexis won’t ever develop intelligent movement imo. Your argument that he’s new to the role but Gervinho was new to the role and had world class movement.

#24

I remember that post and I remember liking it and being very much on board with this type of thinking. I, too, was one who always wanted the Gervinho/Walcott type experiments to work.

When we signed Alexis I was all about the plan being an Alexis-Theo interchanging front-line between CF and RW/LW. A large group of us assumed Alexis had been bought to be our CF. And then others, like @A.F., who were perhaps a bit more realistic, and said, no, Alexis is not a CF.

I think I’ve come a bit more back down to earth though since then, and realised even with the best of options (Griezmann for example, who I was banging on about us signing to be our new CF when he was at Real Sociedad), the false 9 thing isn’t something that’s going to always work, and it really depends on the opposition’s set up and the conditions around it.

Yesterday was a match where the opposition’s set-up and conditions around it were perfect, kinda like Gervinho against Southampton, or Walcott against Reading or United. I’m not going to get too carried away because our attack was pretty dysfunctional in other matches this season, and because @arsenescoatmaker makes some good points, as in, Alexis’ movement is pretty poor and he actually does some of the things we hate Giroud for, like dropping way too deep way too often to get involved in play, like almost never running off the last defender, etc. That said, he’s a far better footballer than Giroud, far better passer, far better dribbler of course, and far more athletic so one would hope that at least his movement could be improved a little through coaching.

What was frustrating up until yesterday’s game was that, what is our whole theory behind this whole type of set-up–interchange between the 3 (or 4) forward positions–was non-existent. Theo was on the right by and large doing his Theo on the right thing, Alexis was through the middle dropping way too deep, and Iwobi was combining only with Alexis and Özil really because those were the options available to him. Yesterday we saw Alexis, Theo, and Iwobi interchange a bit more, namely for the second goal, which is why I loved it. Let’s hope it’s a sign of things to come, but I would tend to agree with you arsenescoatmaker that it can only really work with Iwobi-Alexis-Theo. I actually think even with Lucas for Theo on the right we wouldn’t have enough pace and movement.

#25
#26

Makes you wonder though; what if we signed Mahrez with Alexis uptop? But sailed ship I guess.

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#27

Flipside. I think we would have seen limited time for our guy Iwobes and not witnessing a potentially very good player that he is turning into.

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#28

Iwobi > Marez all day

#29

Do you mean currently or going forward ?

#30

Both, he will be better than him this season and every season to come,

Marez will have no way near as good a season as he had last year and will spend the rest of his career at lester or some mid table Spanish team

Marez is mitchu

#31

Assuming Wenger not dropping Walcott, It’s better to have Sanchez-Iwobi on pitch than Sanchez-Giroud.

#32

Nah Mahrez has 5 times the talent that Michu had.

1 Like
#33

This is the kind of post people from other forums will quote to show how deluded Arsenal fans are

3 Likes
#34

lets see shall we, this time next season Marez will be a forgotten memory

#35

Iwobi [quote=“AbouCuellar, post:24, topic:724”]
What was frustrating up until yesterday’s game was that, what is our whole theory behind this whole type of set-up–interchange between the 3 (or 4) forward positions–was non-existent. Theo was on the right by and large doing his Theo on the right thing, Alexis was through the middle dropping way too deep, and Iwobi was combining only with Alexis and Özil really because those were the options available to him. Yesterday we saw Alexis, Theo, and Iwobi interchange a bit more, namely for the second goal, which is why I loved it. Let’s hope it’s a sign of things to come, but I would tend to agree with you arsenescoatmaker that it can only really work with Iwobi-Alexis-Theo. I actually think even with Lucas for Theo on the right we wouldn’t have enough pace and movement.
[/quote]

That’s not strictly true, Theo has been occupying the CF role in a few games before this at times. The link up play until Iwobi came in was pretty poor. Still despite all that Alexis is nearly on a goal a game and we’ve scored quite allot of goals.

I do think Perez has movement on par with Theo’s. Welbeck’s link up play with Iwobi was excellent last season to. and Alexis best form for us came with Welbeck playing as CF. So we have a few different line ups that could be dangerous ones to come.

Ofcourse, if just if Alexis develops good movement he will be the world class CF we’ve been crying out for. In the versus/every touch footage I think he was only in the box 3 times.

Also is it that Theo’s just in good form or does this set up just suit him better?

#36

Eh, not as much as you would like or the idea of the system is designed for. That’s coming from someone who’s typically very quick to praise the intelligence of Theo’s movement. But I dunno, before Chelsea, the quality of the interchange and attacking football in general was decidedly poor. We may have scored a lot of goals, thanks mainly to 3 against Liverpool and Watford and 4 against Hull, but when you look a little closer…I mean, against Hull, it took a goalkeeper error to open the scoring and from there it took a couple of late goals, including a Xhaka rocket, to tally 4 in a game where, 50 minutes a man up against a poor side, we really should’ve been scoring 5-6 easy.

We’ll see. The thing is he’s not that pacey. People keep talking about him like he’s really pacey but he’s much more like the pace of Iwobi than that of Welbeck.

Yeah, both things, mainly the second, as I said myself in another post. He’s in his comfort zone basically, and more than in good form I would say he’s not in bad form, as he was last season where everything was working against him, very much including the set up.

#37

Mahrez…

Sigh