Increasingly with every post I’m thinking…
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Same.
But Cuellar has a better moustache than Flanderino
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He still might be, if Pochettino or Allegri don’t go there.
Bielsa is the kind of guy a lot of players learnt from but guys like Pochettino, Simeone and Gallardo far surpassed him in terms of developing upon his ideals.
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That you sound like Ned Flanders. Diddly.
Was it @SDGooner who said that English clubs would be better served by making their coaches better at youth level instead of just spending big money on players from the continent who aren’t all that good.
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quite a good read thanks for posting. No wonder we were getting nowhere from the youth set up…takes just 1 good person with a bit of knowledge and it can do wonders
“Bukayo Saka is the best example of where we want to go with Arsenal. He was a winger, but because he is not a Leroy Sané in small spaces, he will not get beyond top 30 best wingers. As a wingback, he can become top 3 in the world… [& he can develop defensively w/good coaching.”
How do you feel about our head of the academy saying this, @GC-Maniac?
While I tend to agree with him–hence why I worried about letting go of Amaechi, who at least can be a winger–I wonder how these public comments sit with Bukayo himself…
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Would like a link of those comments.
Even if they’re true I don’t see it to be honest. Feel like the trajectory of TAA is what’s causing this acceptance of wingers/playmakers playing as full-backs or wing backs. Plus, I feel like Bukayo has a knack for goals too, doubt how he could get into positions to score while also having defending on the back of his mind.
They’re in that thread. @SDGooner had already mentioned them too having read them in an interview in Dutch press.
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This has been happening long before Alexander-Arnold…
No, I think you’ll find that Liverpool invented the concept of attacking fullbacks, thus revolutionising the whole of world football and giving Aussie a perpetual log in his pants.
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Articulates my arguments better than I ever could.
Senior players are shit, should he shipped ASAP, many younguns are good and should make up the core of this side until we find genuine upgrades and Auba on the left is not a long term solution.
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As for the actual pressing, we’re not seeing a lot of evidence for it in the numbers. Arsenal’s defensive distance—how high up the pitch they make a defensive action on average—is actually lower under Arteta. The Gunners now allow slightly more passes before making an attempt to win the ball back. The intent is there, but Arsenal do not yet have anything resembling a coordinated press.
Nor in the numbers nor with our eyes. Haven’t really seen us seem to press in any significant fashion whatsoever since the first half of Chelsea. Otherwise it’s been Wengenpress
It’s an obvious thing to do with a team that isn’t that talented but has a minor talent gap on the opponents in general. Up the pressure on the ball and the chaos, make the team look a bit more dangerous than it is, unsettle oppositions more than they would be otherwise. I thought this was really gonna be the first thing Arteta would do here, and it kinda seemed like that in the first half against Chelsea, but with the Olympiakos game being the punctuation mark in his first 15 game stretch or whatever it is (I still cannot fathom how passive and lacking in any press whatsoever our performance was against Olympiakos) he’s really failed to do this categorically.
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Or he realised that installing a press with slow or mistake-prone players like Lacazette, Xhaka, Mustafi and Luiz is taking to many risks.
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Yeah…the personnel is definitely worth mentioning, aside from that you’ve got Pepe who doesn’t really seem to be good at pressing, and Ceballos who is also slowish along with Xhaka and Özil to really make a terrible three for pressing in the middle of the pitch.
But he’s the one who’s picking the teams, tbf. Get Nketiah out there every time to press from the front, Auba does a decent enough job, Nelson too, get Özil out for fucking Joe Willock to be the Press Setting High Lying Nothingmaker (PSHLN) that he is if need be, but I just don’t think the shit personnel is enough excuse for such little progress on this front, and it reeks of over-conservativism/ risk-aversiveness, and in general there just doesn’t seem to be a real coherent idea other than: let’s not be quite as shit as Emery if possible.
I would honestly feel better if I were seeing some ideas and the results were worse, but then I guess that is not the reality Arteta is living in. So yeah, pray this is all just short-term band aids and that and we’ll see his real ideas next season, but seems hard to imagine he’s going to all of a sudden flip the switch from as risk averse as we’ve seen to something else altogether.
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I think we’ve had that problem since Wenger tbf.
Too weak defensively and offensively from set pieces
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