*** Tottenham Hotspur - Arsenal OMT ***

[chancer]

I don't think this was Wenger's tactics at all. We just went to Arsenal's ground and controlled the game. We set the tempo.

How do we now it wasn't Wenger's plan for exactly this to happen?

His team are known for passing at a fast tempo and Wenger would have known that AVB would have set us up to counter this, which he did with the 4-3-3 and those deeper 3 midfielders there mainly to disrupt. So, instead, Wenger decided to let us have loads of the ball knowing we were ill-equipped to do anything with it. Which is exactly what happened, and indeed their goal was scored on the counter just as such a strategy would have indicated was their best way to score playing this way. The rest of the time, let Spurs have the ball, safe in the knowledge they'd be passing sideways all day.

Are we sure that's not why we had so much possession and "control"? Isn't it possible we fell into Wenger's trap?

 

[BrainOfLevy]

How do we now it wasn't Wenger's plan for exactly this to happen?

His team are known for passing at a fast tempo and Wenger would have known that AVB would have set us up to counter this, which he did with the 4-3-3 and those deeper 3 midfielders there mainly to disrupt. So, instead, Wenger decided to let us have loads of the ball knowing we were ill-equipped to do anything with it. Which is exactly what happened, and indeed their goal was scored on the counter just as such a strategy would have indicated was their best way to score playing this way. The rest of the time, let Spurs have the ball, safe in the knowledge they'd be passing sideways all day.

Are we sure that's not why we had so much possession and "control"? Isn't it possible we fell into Wenger's trap?

No, I just don't believe it was his plan to finish the game desperately hanging on to a 1 goal lead with 4 full backs on the pitch. People are so keen to talk us down after that performance, probably because of the pain of losing a derby and having high expectations following a pretty good transfer window, but I'm not having that we fell into some Wenger master trap.

This is the guy that went to Old Trafford with one of the most ramshackle Arsenal teams ever and got beaten 8-2 because of his committment to focussing on his own game, to playing the Arsenal way and letting the opposition worry about them. I don't believe for a second he decided that this game, a North London Derby is the time where he's going to plan to sit back and hit us on the break in his own patch. No way. Not him. The fact that they were pushed back so much was down to how good we were at controlling the ball. I'm not saying we had the cutting edge and created chance after chance, but that will come. What we did do though was pin them back for large periods, and force them to concentrate on only one side of their game, and not allow them to take the game to us at all.

 

[BrainOfLevy]

Another thing, I think people talk down our midfield 3 way too much. They are not pure cloggers there to disrupt. A 4-3-3 is a perfectly good system that can play good football and create chances when it clicks. Paulinho and Dembele are not pure disrupters. Capoue can play. We didn't click on the day but I don't believe we set up like that to purely disrupt Arsenal. It was the same team as against Swansea. And we created chances against them.

That's another thing. People are talking us down saying we haven't scored in open play. Yes, true. But we missed easy chances vs Palace. We created good chances vs Swansea. Arsenal was a problem, but it was a top 4 rival in their own patch. I don't expect to slice them open at will.

 

[Hootnow]

Another thing, I think people talk down our midfield 3 way too much. They are not pure cloggers there to disrupt. A 4-3-3 is a perfectly good system that can play good football and create chances when it clicks. Paulinho and Dembele are not pure disrupters. Capoue can play. We didn't click on the day but I don't believe we set up like that to purely disrupt Arsenal. It was the same team as against Swansea. And we created chances against them.

That's another thing. People are talking us down saying we haven't scored in open play. Yes, true. But we missed easy chances vs Palace. We created good chances vs Swansea. Arsenal was a problem, but it was a top 4 rival in their own patch. I don't expect to slice them open at will.

Nobody said they're pure cloggers but they're no Xavi, that's for sure.

Palace we did miss easy chances, for sure (though games aren't won on chances we could have scored). We didn't create a great deal against Swansea, especially not for Soldado. And again against Arsenal, where Soldado barely had a touch or shot. Nobody was expecting us to slice open Arsenal at will but I was at least expecting us to work Szcezny one or two times during the match and not from Townsend shooting from 45 yards.

 

[BrainOfLevy]

Nobody said they're pure cloggers but they're no Xavi, that's for sure.

Palace we did miss easy chances, for sure (though games aren't won on chances we could have scored). We didn't create a great deal against Swansea, especially not for Soldado. And again against Arsenal, where Soldado barely had a touch or shot. Nobody was expecting us to slice open Arsenal at will but I was at least expecting us to work Szcezny one or two times during the match and not from Townsend shooting from 45 yards.

You're just exagerrating there and not making a fair point.

I wasn't saying our midfielders are akin to Xavi in quality but a trio of Dembele, Paulinho and Capoue is not selected 'purely to disrupt' and playing into some Wenger master plan. They are good players, capable of creating chances. People are talking us down way too much.

 

[Hootnow]

What am I exaggerating?

 

[BrainOfLevy]

What am I exaggerating?

Saying that are midfielders are not Xavi - what kind of standard is that? I'm not saying they are, but they are very capable of creating chances and playing the game and not just being regarded as players sent out there to frustrate the opposition. Players sent out there to frustrate don't control possession like we did.

And the Townsend from 45 yards thing - exaggerating. He got into a few positions where it was perfectly reasonable to let fly.

 

[chancer]

You're just exagerrating there and not making a fair point.

I wasn't saying our midfielders are akin to Xavi in quality but a trio of Dembele, Paulinho and Capoue is not selected 'purely to disrupt' and playing into some Wenger master plan. They are good players, capable of creating chances. People are talking us down way too much.

I said "mainly to disrupt" not "purely to disrupt". And I absolutely am not slating our players. Paulinho would be an auto starter all season for me in the spine, barring catastrophic loss of form. This discussion is about tactics, which are down to the coaches, not the players.

I think you are trying to have it both ways. You can't on the one hand laud our control and possession and then turn around and say our midfielders weren't there to disrupt. Our high possession stat certainly wasn't because we were weaving intricate patterns all day that the Ar-se players couldn't keep up with. Rather, it was because we blocked them from working down the middle and then passed the ball amongst ourselves when we won it back. Our posession was mainly a by-product of disruption. If it wasn't, then Ar-se would have had more of the ball and we'd have created more offensive danger.

However, I am more than willing to put this down to teething problems. I have no problem with two DM's or even three, with the idea that one or two of them are charged with transitioning. That could indeed work, but it didn't yesterday. Nobody was transitioning, meaning the disruption part of the plan worked but not the shifting to offence bit. That failed woefully, but maybe that's down to a bedding-in issue and the fact we didn't yet have Lamela and Eriksen to pass to.

 

[Hootnow]

My point is that they are not creative players, regardless of what we say. That does not mean that they are not capable of producing creative, splitting passes, most of the midfielders we've had over the past 10 years have had that. It doesn't mean they do it on a regular basis though. Fine then, ignore Xavi. They're no Huddlestone.

It wasn't exaggerating. He had 2 shots I believe against Arsenal, one from I estimate 45 yards out or so, it was ridiculously far out. That one in particular wasn't a reasonable attempt at all.

And if we're going to play a 4-3-3, we need the other 2 of the front three to make damned sure they support the striker and at least one of the central midfield 3 to get up there as well. In the first two games, that was something Paulinho was doing well, even if wasn't coming off for him. Not sure why he stopped, after a while, it was clear we weren't going to score with the 3 cms passing mostly amongst themselves and we need one of them (probably Paulinho) to gamble a bit more. If we're going to spend 26 million on a striker whose biggest asset is scoring goals and not holding up etc, we need to get him that service.

I'm not saying this won't improve. I'm hoping as Paulinho becomes more comfortable, Eriksen, Holtby and Lamela become more integrated and the team gets to know each other, we'll improve upon this but we cannot say we were creative at all on Sunday. Its constructive criticism, find out what was wrong and try to rectify it.

 

[elltrev]

No, I just don't believe it was his plan to finish the game desperately hanging on to a 1 goal lead with 4 full backs on the pitch. People are so keen to talk us down after that performance, probably because of the pain of losing a derby and having high expectations following a pretty good transfer window, but I'm not having that we fell into some Wenger master trap.

This is the guy that went to Old Trafford with one of the most ramshackle Arsenal teams ever and got beaten 8-2 because of his committment to focussing on his own game, to playing the Arsenal way and letting the opposition worry about them. I don't believe for a second he decided that this game, a North London Derby is the time where he's going to plan to sit back and hit us on the break in his own patch. No way. Not him. The fact that they were pushed back so much was down to how good we were at controlling the ball. I'm not saying we had the cutting edge and created chance after chance, but that will come. What we did do though was pin them back for large periods, and force them to concentrate on only one side of their game, and not allow them to take the game to us at all.

Can you just elaborate on exactly how controlling the ball leads to the opposition being pushed back? To me that suggests that you think they were initially playing higher up the pitch (trying to win possession back from us and then keeping it for themselves), but that either a) they couldn't get the ball from us through their pressing and so decided to conserve energy by sitting back, and / or b) we were taking advantage of the space behind their high line, thus forcing them to drop deeper to protect their goal.

I just didn't see either of those things happening. Did you?

I can agree that towards the end they looked increasingly desperate in terms of camping inside their own penalty box, but I think that a) that was only right towards the end, and b) that was because of general nerves at holding onto a lead at home against huge rivals at a time of vulnerability / negativity (as opposed to us 'forcing' them back by the two points I mentioned in my first paragraph).

(I take your point about Wenger always sticking to his principles, but I don't think it's particularly worth discussion as it's more conjecture-based)

 

[BrainOfLevy]

I said "mainly to disrupt" not "purely to disrupt". And I absolutely am not slating our players. Paulinho would be an auto starter all season for me in the spine, barring catastrophic loss of form. This discussion is about tactics, which are down to the coaches, not the players.

I think you are trying to have it both ways. You can't on the one hand laud our control and possession and then turn around and say our midfielders weren't there to disrupt. Our high possession stat certainly wasn't because we were weaving intricate patterns all day that the Ar-se players couldn't keep up with. Rather, it was because we blocked them from working down the middle and then passed the ball amongst ourselves when we won it back. Our posession was mainly a by-product of disruption. If it wasn't, then Ar-se would have had more of the ball and we'd have created more offensive danger.

However, I am more than willing to put this down to teething problems. I have no problem with two DM's or even three, with the idea that one or two of them are charged with transitioning. That could indeed work, but it didn't yesterday. Nobody was transitioning, meaning the disruption part of the plan worked but not the shifting to offence bit. That failed woefully, but maybe that's down to a bedding-in issue and the fact we didn't yet have Lamela and Eriksen to pass to.

Why can't I laud our posesssion and say they weren't there to disrupt? To me, a disruptive midfield would be something like Parker, Livermore and Michael Brown, positioned infront of the back 4 to fly into tackles and stop Arsenal squeezing the ball through. We kept possession because we were good with the ball and had a nice shape. We won it back well because that's what they are capable of doing, but I'm just not having that it was a Wenger master plan of 'Aha! I know they will play midfielders that mainly disrupt so I am going to trap them by playing purely on the break on Sunday' because he just doesn't do that. Someone please give me an example of another game where by Wenger has decided he is happy to sit back and purely hit a team on the break.

You don't just beat Arsenal with possession on their own patch by 'passing it among yourselves' and lucking into it. That takes work, that takes tactics and it takes good players to carry it out. We weren't carving them open but that will come. But people are reacting like it it was a horror performance and it really wasn't. It was pleasing to me.

 

[thfcsteff]

Can you just elaborate on exactly how controlling the ball leads to the opposition being pushed back? To me that suggests that you think they were initially playing higher up the pitch (trying to win possession back from us and then keeping it for themselves), but that either a) they couldn't get the ball from us through their pressing and so decided to conserve energy by sitting back, and / or b) we were taking advantage of the space behind their high line, thus forcing them to drop deeper to protect their goal.

I just didn't see either of those things happening. Did you?

I can agree that towards the end they looked increasingly desperate in terms of camping inside their own penalty box, but I think that a) that was only right towards the end, and b) that was because of general nerves at holding onto a lead at home against huge rivals at a time of vulnerability / negativity (as opposed to us 'forcing' them back by the two points I mentioned in my first paragraph).

(I take your point about Wenger always sticking to his principles, but I don't think it's particularly worth discussion as it's more conjecture-based)

Look, the fact is that for long tracts of the match they looked like Wigan at the Lane (more quality on the counter but that's it)...their two best chances came as a direct result of errors our defence made, and we lost a half whilst Dembele and Paulinho felt their way into their roles for the match. What the filth knew was that without a lock-picker and without the ingenuity of Bale, they could afford to play the % game and defend deep. This they did. I think had we had Lennon, for example, that would've instilled a bit more honesty in them, furthermore I wish we had pulled the trigger a few more times as with that many men crammed into the box, more crumbs would've fallen.

It was obvious that the one element we lacked was a lock-picker, but with Lamela and Ericsson to bed in, we've potentially double our numbers in that regard when compared to last season, and I still believe that a fully fit Lennon is going to be a fantastic asset. Nah, there were a lot of positives to be pulled from the match, a lot...

Perversely to many here, I was delighted that we could not shed ourselves of Ade before the window shut. I trust AVB to get the very best out of him, and as such, think he could prove quite an asset. But back to Sunday...it was a game of styles and margins...the season is long. The doom must end.

 

[elltrev]

Look, the fact is that for long tracts of the match they looked like Wigan at the Lane (more quality on the counter but that's it)...their two best chances came as a direct result of errors our defence made, and we lost a half whilst Dembele and Paulinho felt their way into their roles for the match. What the filth knew was that without a lock-picker and without the ingenuity of Bale, they could afford to play the % game and defend deep. This they did. I think had we had Lennon, for example, that would've instilled a bit more honesty in them, furthermore I wish we had pulled the trigger a few more times as with that many men crammed into the box, more crumbs would've fallen.

It was obvious that the one element we lacked was a lock-picker, but with Lamela and Ericsson to bed in, we've potentially double our numbers in that regard when compared to last season, and I still believe that a fully fit Lennon is going to be a fantastic asset. Nah, there were a lot of positives to be pulled from the match, a lot...

Perversely to many here, I was delighted that we could not shed ourselves of Ade before the window shut. I trust AVB to get the very best out of him, and as such, think he could prove quite an asset. But back to Sunday...it was a game of styles and margins...the season is long. The doom must end.

Don't think there's much doom on here. Certainly not from me. Just enjoying an interesting discussion.

 

[DHSF]

How do we now it wasn't Wenger's plan for exactly this to happen?

His team are known for passing at a fast tempo and Wenger would have known that AVB would have set us up to counter this, which he did with the 4-3-3 and those deeper 3 midfielders there mainly to disrupt. So, instead, Wenger decided to let us have loads of the ball knowing we were ill-equipped to do anything with it. Which is exactly what happened, and indeed their goal was scored on the counter just as such a strategy would have indicated was their best way to score playing this way. The rest of the time, let Spurs have the ball, safe in the knowledge they'd be passing sideways all day.

Are we sure that's not why we had so much possession and "control"? Isn't it possible we fell into Wenger's trap?

I agree with your sentiments - its fairly easy to play against us at the moment. Let us have the ball and when we get into the last third, get the ball and attack em. Everyone is so obsessed with control and possession but that doesnt win games especially when there is no end product or creativity. Hope that changes but if we continue to play Dembele out of position and not where he was last season we won tbe successful. His hold up play was excellent and that allowed players to get into an attacking position, with our more creative talent this season, we would be even better.

 

[DublinSpur]

I agree with your sentiments - its fairly easy to play against us at the moment. Let us have the ball and when we get into the last third, get the ball and attack em. Everyone is so obsessed with control and possession but that doesnt win games especially when there is no end product or creativity. Hope that changes but if we continue to play Dembele out of position and not where he was last season we won tbe successful. His hold up play was excellent and that allowed players to get into an attacking position, with our more creative talent this season, we would be even better.

To be honest, I see Dembele getting less and less playing time now that Sandro's back, Paulinho looks like a regular starter, Lamela and Eriksen have joined and Holtby is starting to show his potential. All across the midfield we have a multitude of options and I think AVB has been right to give Dembele the opportunity to hold onto his spot at the start of the season (newcomers shouldn't always be automatic starters). But I just don't see him holding onto that automatic starting spot for much longer.

 

[milo]

http://www.zonalmarking.net/2013/09...and-the-through-balls-for-giroud-and-walcott/

 

[DMac]

No, I just don't believe it was his plan to finish the game desperately hanging on to a 1 goal lead with 4 full backs on the pitch. People are so keen to talk us down after that performance, probably because of the pain of losing a derby and having high expectations following a pretty good transfer window, but I'm not having that we fell into some Wenger master trap.

This is the guy that went to Old Trafford with one of the most ramshackle Arsenal teams ever and got beaten 8-2 because of his committment to focussing on his own game, to playing the Arsenal way and letting the opposition worry about them. I don't believe for a second he decided that this game, a North London Derby is the time where he's going to plan to sit back and hit us on the break in his own patch. No way. Not him. The fact that they were pushed back so much was down to how good we were at controlling the ball. I'm not saying we had the cutting edge and created chance after chance, but that will come. What we did do though was pin them back for large periods, and force them to concentrate on only one side of their game, and not allow them to take the game to us at all.

Spot on, our pressing has become much better than Arsenal's, as is our ability to win the ball back. Problem is no one coming between the lines to pick up the ball from our midfield, but that will be solved by Eriksen and Lamela.

 

[Mosquito_Coasting]

Dunno how people can say we controlled the game. We may have had more possession but it was mostly sideways passing. They looked far more dangerous and likely to score. That's the kind of control I prefer.

 

[Robspur12]

Dunno how people can say we controlled the game. We may have had more possession but it was mostly sideways passing. They looked far more dangerous and likely to score. That's the kind of control I prefer.

And I thought I was the only one thinking this. Chancer the only reason I don't believe Wenger "set a trap" especially for us is that Arsenal have been playing this way since we beat them in March. Draw teams in by putting 10 men behind the ball then sucker punch them with a quick counter. They usually get 1 goal and then hold on to their lead. They did it in loads of games at the end of last season. Their tactics were not knew hence my disappointment that AVB played into their hands by not playing a more creative midfielder who can play balls behind their defensive line. Hudd would have been perfect - I hope we have replaced his passing with Eriksen.

 

[Mosquito_Coasting]

And I thought I was the only one thinking this. Chancer the only reason I don't believe Wenger "set a trap" especially for us is that Arsenal have been playing this way since we beat them in March. Draw teams in by putting 10 men behind the ball then sucker punch them with a quick counter. They usually get 1 goal and then hold on to their lead. They did it in loads of games at the end of last season. Their tactics were not knew hence my disappointment that AVB played into their hands by not playing a more creative midfielder who can play balls behind their defensive line. Hudd would have been perfect - I hope we have replaced his passing with Eriksen.

Spot on. They are much more dangerous now Wenger has given up some of his attacking philosophy. They have been playing like this for months.