Arsenal FC- The Attack Is The Biggest Cause For Concern

As the dust settles on another weekend of Premier League action, hindsight is the only saving grace for some managers. Every edition of the Premier League seems to outdo its predecessor in terms of shock value and entertainment, and this season has been no different. More so for Arsenal who face some daunting fixtures from now till March end, ones which could decide their fate eventually. Consider this: the 3 teams to have beaten Arsenal on the road convincingly enough this season are 1 point, 5 points and 14 points behind the Gunners going into the midweek fixtures. Defeats against Aston Villa on the opening day, Man City and Liverpool have seen Arsenal hit rock bottom but despite this the Gunners have shown character to recover and are only 1 point shy of Chelsea at the zenith of the table. Yet any defeat begins a circus of crisis. Arsenal aren’t champion material, Arsenal can’t sustain a challenge, Arsenal will fall off the pace, Arsenal look jaded in defeat and what not.

Human nature dictates that defeats are over analyzed and thus expose some obvious discrepancies whereas a win does a good job of covering it all up. So in a nutshell it’s easier to analyze a team’s shortcomings after a defeat, the areas a team can work on, what needs to change and why a certain tactic didn’t work. In the past month or two however, with Arsenal there has been a prickly feeling of dissatisfaction or a certain edge to the play irrespective of the number of wins racked. Win, draw or defeat, there is an underlying incompleteness to Arsenal’s performances of late which begin to surface once the team faces a difficult spell. Saturday’s game re-emphasized the edginess and it stems from the fact that the team has barely dominated an opposition from the opening kick to the final whistle. A 5-1 scoreline meant the defence was obviously castrated by the media as was the midfield protection to the defence thus taking away attention from the most worrisome area of the side: the attack. Arsene Wenger’s sides are known to be free flowing and free scoring so what has been the reason behind Arsenal’s lack of sharpness in front of goal? What has limited the Gunners in attack? In order to avoid clouding the reader’s judgement with the recent defeat at Anfield, that particular debacle has not been taken into consideration in this analysis of the club’s major stumbling blocks and where and how Arsenal can oil their attack into a more fluid unit.

The midfield

A lot has been written and spoken about Arsenal’s brilliant midfield and how it is probably the best on paper but probably that is all it is, brilliant on paper. Arsene Wenger has a host of options at his disposal but finding the right balance has been a tough challenge ever since Ramsey got injured. Mikel Arteta and Mathieu Flamini have been partnered together or with either Jack Wilshere or Alex Oxlade Chamberlain. Yet none of the pairings have had the same balance and attacking threat as the Ramsey-Arteta pivot from the earlier half of the season. Wilshere has the natural ability to carry the ball forward from deeper positions but what he lacks is the knack of making runs without the ball, making himself free of his marker and occupying pockets of space in advanced areas of the pitch. This makes the attack very predictable with Wilshere in the side. Opposition managers instruct their players not to give him too much space to run into and more often than not it results in him giving away the ball. The graphic for 3 different matches can be seen below, how and where Wilshere loses possession.

Wilshere's dribble map against Newcastle(reds show failed dribbles while green shows successful ones) — Wilshere’s dribble map against Newcastle(reds show failed dribbles while green shows successful ones)

Wishere's dribble map vs Spurs(red unsuccessful, green successful) — Wishere’s dribble map vs Spurs(red unsuccessful, green successful)

The Arsenal team as a whole is uncomfortable against high pressing sides as has been seen against Southampton, Dortmund and Liverpool. One-twos have featured in cameos at best and the only players willing to do a give and go are either the fullbacks or Wilshere. The rest of the midfield is either too static or too one dimensional, moving step by step towards the opposition box without any pace or tempo. What it does is, it gives the opposition more time to regain its shape and get organized which in turn means more difficult to break down. Coming back to the midfield options, Chamberlain looked at ease versus Palace in a deeper role and has the right ingredients to deputize for the injured Ramsey. His passing, distribution and running off the ball are almost the right mix required for the given role and complement the attack brilliantly. There is often a sense that the Gunners rely too much on Cazorla and Ozil to create with no support from the other 2 midfielders, and like Chamberlain showed in the 2-0 win, running at the defence with the ball or making oneself available can make all the difference. Having a different dimension is essential and till Ramsey is out, Chamberlain is the solution to those woes.

The Mesut Ozil conundrum

Mesut Ozil can’t catch a break. The German had the worst Whoscored rating for an outfielder this season against Liverpool. No, we aren’t dwelling on the defeat, merely pointing out a fact. Premier League is no doubt one of the most challenging leagues in the world and that might probably help explain why Ozil has struggled in recent matches. David Silva didn’t hit the ground running nor did Juan Mata or Eden Hazard for that matter, all suffering blips of their own. The argument here however is that Ozil started life in the Premier League with a bang, so what changed? Aaron Ramsey and Theo Walcott. These were the 2 players who showed telepathic understanding with the former Real Madrid man and their runs into the channels and behind the defensive lines provided Ozil an opportunity to play the ball into. Since the duo’s injuries, nobody barring Gnabry looks intent on drifting in open spaces to receive a ball. Often enough Ozil finds himself too far ahead with nobody to feed the ball to and with Giroud playing with back to goal it always requires a 3rd person to be available. Because of no movement ahead of him, and virtually minimal creativity from deeper areas he drops behind again constricting his play to get more involved. Look at his distribution graphic against Palace and notice how few touches/passes he has in the final third, with most of his involvement being in and around the centre.

Ozil's distribution map vs Palace: Withdrawn and without sufficient pentration — Ozil’s distribution map vs Palace: Withdrawn and without sufficient pentration

Having said that, in the 2-2 draw at Southampton, he produced probably one of his best performances in an Arsenal shirt in the second half alone. The thing is that Ozil has pace, he can run at defenders and probably with the best and keenest runners out injured he should do it more often. With bags of pace and good dribbling skills, it was easy to see why he looked so threatening against Southampton. This automatically makes one wonder if he actually exploits his strengths to the fullest. With some crucial games coming up he has to tune himself, the quicker the better. Ozil is a playmaker but there definitely is more to his game and the faster he respects and explores that, the more threatening the Gunners would become. But even after that an attacking midfielder is as good as the striker he feeds, right?

Giroud As Striker

Olivier Giroud probably is just the wrong kind of striker to play aside Mesut Ozil. Don’t get it wrong, Giroud tries very hard to impress and as far as work rate is concerned is A-rate. His link up play is also up there with the best strikers in the league but again what he needs is players to run past him, players that can use him as a decoy and that is the missing chunk. For players like Ozil and Cazorla to function to their fullest, the striker should preferably make runs into the box playing at the shoulder of the defenders. The graphic below shows Cazorla and Ozil’s passes made to Giroud in the 2-0 win over Palace. Look at where Giroud recieves those passes, and how none of them are inside the box.

Ozil's passes to Giroud — Ozil’s passes to Giroud vs Palace

Cazorla's passes to Giroud vs Palace — Cazorla’s passes to Giroud vs Palace

As a natural instinct, Giroud looks to put the ball back in the path of a better placed player after receiving from a teammate and further shielding it from the defenders. This not only kills the momentum but also means there is no one upfront for players to find with a pass. Add to it the fact that Giroud drops way too deep for a striker and also lacks the pace to hurt defenders, Arsenal’s attack becomes very streamlined, lacking the dynamism to break down opposition defences.

Central Creativity

Arsenal have created the least number of chances among the top 6 teams in the division and merely 2 more than Wednesday’s opponents Manchester United. Worrying? Definitely. A team with so many flair players and so much quality in the final third struggle to create chances regularly. What could be the reason for that? For starters, the slow tempo with which the Gunners start games factors majorly. Arsene Wenger’s sides have often had the better share of possession in the past but they also created truckloads. The present team has lesser possession, is more patient and creates much lesser. Buckling of the trend can be majorly correlated to the over dependence on creating through the middle. Cazorla and even Gnabry, in his few starts, have the tendency to cut in and shift the play centrally. The fullbacks do their bit by overlapping and occupying higher positions on the pitch in wider areas but the majority of the chances created are centrally and this makes things difficult against teams that crowd out the central positions and give no room for the mids to settle on the ball. Lack of natural wingers or wing forwards for that matter means the Arsenal attackers get sucked into central areas and that automatically freezes the number of chances created with the aforementioned factors.

Then again Arsenal sit prettily, second in the league table, and the table doesn’t lie as the cliches have it. What is being highlighted however is that there is immense scope of improvement and that the team is playing very much within itself. 48 goals in 25 league games is not at all a statistic you associate with an Arsene Wenger team. Playing with the hand brake on is becoming a regular feature and one that needs addressing to, at the earliest. A certain lack of fluidity and zip at the moment is holding the attack further back and an extra dimension needs to be added to restore the confidence and belief in the side. Once that begins to show, we would finally be able to see the best of this Arsenal side.

Tags: Arsenal FC Mesut Ozil

Arsenal FC – The Attack Is The Biggest Cause For Concern

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