Which currently available player who is not in Mikel Arteta’s “first eleven” would make the biggest difference to our performances?
It seems like a pertinent question, following our lame capitulation to Aston Villa on Sunday night.
And before you ask, this is not a roundabout why of trying to reignite the Ozil debate. Ozil is not in our Premier League squad so he is not available for selection. End of.
In fact this Post was inspired by a comment from kfdickie in response to yesterday’s match report.
Dickie said: “…why wasn’t AMN put on to stop Grealish? That would have stopped 50% of their play.“
I’m sure some of the Arsenal players had nightmares on Sunday night in which Jack Grealish was running at them, ball glued to his feet, all energy and intelligence and not to be stopped.
Reading Dickie’s comment I thought: “Yes! Why didn’t we do that?” And it led me further to think that Maitland-Niles was the one player I would most like to see given a run in our Premier League starting line-up.
He was outstanding in our successful FA Cup campaign this year and, in some games, played with great dedication in shutting down dangerous opponents.
If we take it that (at least as of last Sunday) Mikel Arteta’s first choice team is/was: Leno, Bellerin, Holding, Gabriel, Tierney, Elneny, Partey, Saka, Willian, Lacazette, Aubameyang, who would you swap in? And for whom?
I’m talking about a player you think should be given consistent starts in the EPL.
(Since you ask, I would put AMN in on the right of midfield in place of Elneny, assuming all other options are fit).
The fan consensus about Arsenal is pretty damning this morning.
We got outplayed, outfought and out-thought on our own ground by a very decent Aston Villa side.
Losing is always disappointing, but it is much harder when you go down without a fight. Last night we collapsed with barely a whimper. In fact, we put the ‘wimp’ in whimper.
What was Mikel Arteta’s response afterwards?
Well, it was actually pretty classy. He did not throw any individual players under the bus (as Mourinho would probably have done in similar circumstances). He put the blame squarely on his own shoulders:
“We performed below our standards, our ability and I didn’t see the spirit for the first time that I have seen every day in training and every day when we compete.
“This is totally my fault, it is why I am here, I am responsible for that, to make sure the team performs and competes at the highest level every three days. Today I haven’t done that, so obviously it is my fault.
“At the end of the day, if you are late in ever decision you make, if you don’t win enough duels, if every second ball isn’t for us, you don’t show the quality with the ball, you cannot defend your box, and when you get chances you don’t even hit the target, it is a really complicated way to win football matches.”
The match itself started badly when Villa had the ball in the back of our net in the first minute. VAR correctly ruled it offside (a Villa player was interfering with Leno’s line of sight) but it was a warning as to the visitors’ intent. Unfortunately we did not use it as a wake-up call.
The same starting 11 that were dominant across the pitch against Manchester United struggled to win any 50-50s, seemed low on energy and individually full of errors. Even in that Old Trafford win we were pretty toothless up front despite our superiority. Against Villa our toothlessness sank to a whole new level of gummy impotence.
The front three of Auba-Laca-Willian were far too far apart from each other for most of the game so moves broke down almost as soon as the ball reached them. Willian in particular had a truly awful game that must have had Chelsea fans rolling about laughing.
Nothing progressive came from midfield, although Partey had one or two dangerous-looking surges. Unfortunately an injury prevented him from returning after the half time break. Ceballos took his place but also struggled to make a big impact on the game.
One of the ironies was seeing our FA Cup hero goalie Emi Martinez return to the club where he had served over a decade in the shadows before his sudden rise to glory and walking off the pitch with three points and having barely been troubled. Villa’s second goal came from Big Emi catching a contested cross that Leno would probably have punched, then releasing the Villa attack with an outstanding Lehmann-like throw out.
I know there is no point raking over the goalkeeper decision now, but I am by no means convinced we kept the right stopper.
Overall, we looked weak in every department while the Midlanders looked strong, fast, decisive and dangerous.
I wrote a column a few weeks ago suggesting they could be a surprise Top Four package this season and I saw nothing yesterday to dissuade me from that. In Grealish they have the best English player of his generation (inexplicably frozen out of Gareth Southgate’s first team plans); Grealish’s partnership with Ross Barkley is turning into something potent (Ian Wright said the team he would most like to play for this season if he were still young is Villa because of Grealish-Barkley); and in Ollie Watkins they have a confident and in-form striker (who happens to be an Arsenal fan).
For all the pain of our performance, I actually enjoyed watching the way Villa played last night. In Arsene Wenger’s famous metaphor they played with the handbrake fully off. They deserve congratulations. Towards the end I found myself thinking “I wish we could play like that.” As for us? It’s not so much that our handbrake was on, it’s that we didn’t have a handbrake. Or an engine. Or any wheels. We played like a clapped out Ford Escort stripped bare and propped up on bricks after being left overnight in Scouseland.
But that’s enough doom and gloom.
For all the disappointment we have to remember that it was one game. Undoubtedly there is a lot for Mikel Arteta to think about it, but our young manager in whom we have such high hopes has not become useless overnight.
In his post match interview he added that you learn more from defeats than from victories and already in his brief tenure at the helm of HMS Arsenal he has earned the right to be given time to do that learning and to put things right.
I, for one, am a long way from giving up on him.
A lacklustre performance happens to all teams at times and I’m sure Arteta can get the players fired up again. A bigger issue is that we are creating so few chances and the answer to solving that problem probably lies less with personnel (although that is part of it) and more with how we set up.
Arteta came in to a club that gave away sloppy goals for fun and saw his first job as making us tighter and better organised at the back. Notwithstanding yesterday, he has mostly achieved that.
But the process of doing so seems to have infected him with a sense of undue caution. It’s time now for less caution and more risk. He who dares doesn’t always win, but he feels a lot better about himself for having tried.
Arteta has the international break to ponder things. He has been drilling his team in a certain style of play but that style now needs to be modified and I hope he is broad shouldered enough to admit it.
Release the handbrake Mikel.
Player Ratings
Leno – 4
Not sure he could have done much about any of the goals, but you don’t get points for letting three in.
Bellerin – 5
Average from Hector and no more.
Holding – 5
For a change individual defensive errors did not undo us, more an overall paucity of effort and concentration. Rob was average.
Gabriel – 6
Our best performer on the night, but no-one gets MoTM after that showing.
Tierney – 5
Unusually tentative at times and made one hilarious slip that has already become a meme.
Partey – 5
Looked promising at times but went off injured at HT.
Elneny – 5
Ran around a lot.
Saka – 5
Can’t fault his effort, but nothing came off.
Willian – 2
A truly awful performance. Villa’s first goal came from Willian passing to a Villa player while not under any pressure. He gave away possession time after time and had zero impact as an attacking force. Has he been sent by Chelsea as a sleeper agent to help destroy us from within?
Lacazette – 3
He has a difficult role in this set-up, but he missed our best chance of the game.
Aubameyang – 4
Unable to influence the game from his exile out in the wild west.
SUBS
Ceballos – 5
I felt Dani tried, but could not make any impression given the overall lacklustre nature of our team performance. He played a couple of nice through balls that came to nothing.
Pepe – 5
Was an improvement on Willian, but my Gran would have been an improvement on Willian and she’s dead.
We entertain Aston Villa this evening in North London and I haven’t the faintest idea how this is going to go.
Will we get the Villa that hammered Liverpool 7-2 and beat Leicester away?
Or will it be the Villa that got thrashed 3-0 by Leeds and lost a crazy seven goal fixture against Saints in their last league outing?
After a flying start the Brummies have lost two on the bounce, so I would not be surprised to see them set out more defensively than usual against us. They’ll be wanting to steady the ship.
Chances are they will be hard to beat and we know they carry a potent goal threat.
They have scored 15 goals already in the EPL in just six games, compared to our nine in seven games.
Jack Grealish and Ross Barkley give them plenty of attacking threat and athleticism in midfield.
Meanwhile young Englishman Ollie Watkins has been in good form up front.
But enough about them.
We have the personnel to win this game if we work hard and keep our concentration.
Selection raises a few issues: Holding or Luiz to partner Gabriel at the back? Pepe or Willian on the right? Will El Patron stick with Laca as central striker?
Chances are the heroes of Old Toilet will mostly get the call up again, with ElPartey being asked to reprise their dominant midfield showing against the Mancs. I expect to see this starting XI:
Leno
Bellerin – Holding – Gabriel – Tierney
Elneny – Partey – Saka
Willian – Lacazette – Aubameyang
Three points would send us into the latest tedious international break in good spirits and looking good in the table.
Perhaps it is time we took stock of our mercurial Ivorian.
His performance against Molde pretty much summed up his time at Arsenal.
For most of the game (certainly until Bukayo Saka came on) he was, frankly, pretty poor.
He was unable to impose himself against a team who are hardly numbered among the greats of world football (no disrespect to Molde, who deserve credit for the way they played us).
He seemed to trip over the ball at times, at others he was muscled off it. When he tried to dribble he lost possession and he offered no real goal threat.
Then he ended the game with an assist and (another) peach of a goal.
The man is a mystery.
It would be easy to be critical of him for the majority of his play against the Norwegians, just as it was against Dundalk a week earlier. But in both games he ended up on the score sheet.
So what’s the problem?
Is it that his £72m price tag weighs too heavily? Is it that the way we set up (and, more importantly, the way teams set up against us) does not suit his game? Is it just down to his quality?
I think we can discount the last one. He has shown on enough occasions that when given an opportunity he can do the right things and do them very well. If you cast your mind back to our FA Cup Final win, his control and pass for Aubameyang’s winner were top, top class.
It’s consistency that’s the problem.
There was a discussion about him on the Arseblog podcast yesterday in which it was suggested that we should be hoping he becomes a new Ljungberg or Pires, capable of delivering 20 goals a year.
No doubt we would all love that, but it may be a stretch for Pepe. Over his club career he has scored 50 goals in 180 games – or a goal about every three-and-a-half games. If he played all the games in a Premier League season that means we could expect him to find the net 10 or 11 times. Not bad, but not likely to make the difference in us achieving something special.
The missing part of this puzzle is his potential. What is he capable of if coached to be the best he can be? It must be on Mikel Arteta’s mind. El Patron saw Raheem Sterling arrive at Manchester City as a gifted but raw and frustrating striker and watched as Pep Guardiola turned him into a world class player.
Can he do it with Pepe? What do you think?
My feeling is that it ultimately won’t work out for Nico at Arsenal. I dearly hope that I’m wrong, but my instincts make me doubt that he will suddenly explode as a goalscoring, assist-making talent and I would be unsurprised if we start the 2021-2022 season without him.
A slightly strange game against Molde, in that we started very cautiously, perhaps because Molde shared the top of the Europa table with us, and yet, in the end we had a pretty comfortable win. How so?
We experienced yet another game where we misfired more that we would want in the attack.
Some of that involved bad luck with the referee ruling out a good goal for Eddie, which VAR, yes that VAR, would probably have given him the thumbs up.
But VAR is not available in the group stages — and will only come into play in the knockout stages — go figure.
But Lady Luck smiled on us with two very nice own goals from Molde. Umm, did I mention that we had gone down 0 : 1 at that stage, after some woeful defending and Leno seeming to have gone to sleep.
Willock, and Pepe put the icing on the cake late in the game and ‘hey presto’ one more win and we will qualify for the knockout stages. Then we get to bring on the kids.
For those who watch every game possible, the improving Joe Willock is very eye catching, and like in our last game, he inspired the team to keep trying harder and… they did. Good lad.
We were frustrated, both the fans and the team by having a lot of pressure on Molde but missing each chance at a goal until the first own goal just before half time. We are still missing a top creative talent in the team, but another own goal made the team relax and the game simply slipped into our hands, with the lads laughing and hugging each other.
We cannot help but be pleased, but we must ensure this ‘second team’ gets going from the off, in the future or laughter could easily become tears.
For some reason I thought Molde was in Belgium. It’s not. Perhaps I was thinking of Mol.
In fact it is in Norway and, although I have never been, it looks like a spectacularly beautiful place.
It is most famous for the stunning Atlantic Ocean Road and Bolsøy Bridge which takes traffic across the Bolsøysund Strait via a succession of small islands.
We can never take anything for granted in football, but facing the Arsenal in North London should be a bridge too far for Molde FK.
Not that they will lack confidence: they beat Celtic in Scotland to qualify for the EL group stages, they won away in Dundalk and beat Rapid Vienna one-nil at home.
They were Norwegian champions last season and are sitting second in the current campaign, but the quality of our squad should see us comfortably through.
Their danger man is Ohi Omoijuanfo, but he is returning from injury and may not start.
The match is another opportunity for El Patron to put some of the peripheral players through their paces.
We should see starts for Pepe, Willock, Ceballos and Nketiah, although our injury problems at centre back will again limit our options.
We have six points out of six so far and we should expect that to be nine from nine later tonight.
While we continue to bask in the warm glow of a deserved win at Old Trafford, it is time to consider whether Mikel Arteta is now close to knowing his preferred starting XI.
Have the outstanding performances of Thomas Partey and Mohammed Elneny agents Manchester United – both individually and as a pair – cemented their places as automatic starters?
It’s certainly tempting to jump on the ElPartey train after such a pleasing victory, but I would add a couple of notes of caution.
First, we have seen very little of Partey in an Arsenal shirt and of a Partey-Elneny axis in any game.
Second, it’s easy for we fans to get carried away with the most recent good performance. At times in the last couple of years we have lauded players like Mustafi and Xhaka who were previously on the naughty step; we have torn our hair out over David Luiz then sung his praises (in the FA Cup games in particular); Dani Ceballos was great, then a waste of space, then great again… Was Elneny’s Old Trafford performance a flash in the pan? Or a sign of a player who has finally found his place at Arsenal?
For today I’m ignoring wide midfielders and other formations (eg using Luiz as a holding midfielder) and working on the basis that El Patron will generally want to pick two central midfielders in most games.
His principal options are Partey, Elneny, Xhaka, Ceballos, Willock and Maitland-Niles.
You don’t have to agree with me (and you’ll have options to that effect below), but I am going to take it as a given that Partey is one of the first names on the team sheet, so the question becomes – who plays alongside him?
Elneny: even in his earlier spells as a fairly regular player for us I always liked Moptop Mo for one main reason: he hardly ever loses possession and his short passing game is excellent (I suppose that’s two reasons, isn’t it?). The downside was that he never seemed much of a ‘progressive’ player, often preferring to pass sideways or backwards. He has been more progressive minded in his most recent outings and I hadn’t really thought much about his athleticism previously, but his size is an asset and the clip of him sprinting to close down Man Utd players in the 91st minute on Sunday was an eye-opener.
Xhaka: how many words have been written about Granit? Most have been critical, particularly around the time last season when he threw off the captain’s armband and stormed off the pitch. I had sympathy for him then because I always hate it when one player becomes the lightning rod for fan dissatisfaction with the overall performance of the team. It looked like his Arsenal career was over, but Arteta brought him back and he was a crucial part of our run to FA Cup glory. He is slower than Elneny and gets around the pitch less well, but his passing range is greater.
Ceballos: Dani looked like the new Santi Cazorla in his first outing for Arsenal, then his form dipped (along with that of the whole team) under Emery before Arteta revived him. Like Xhaka, Ceballos was pivotal in our FA Cup win. He offers something different to Xhaka and Elneny in that he is tricksier, more forward-minded and has excellent close ball skills. He is also happy to put himself about, although he is less physically imposing than the other two.
Willock and Maitland-Niles: I certainly don’t want to discard either of these promising young players, but I think we have to accept that – for the moment – they are what the Americans call “role players” rather than serious options for our strongest starting XI.
So now it’s your turn to vote for your preferred central MF pairing.
If you vote for Partey-Elneny are you suffering from recency bias? Will that pairing really help solve our struggles at the attacking end of the park?
If you choose Xhaka-Ceballos is it because you’re still reliving our Wembley glories of a few months ago?
A Mike Dean pen that went our way! Collector’s item
The pundits have loved beating Arsenal with the stick of not having won away at a ‘big six’ team since a win over Man City in 2015.
Well, yesterday Mikel Arteta took that stick, snapped it across his knee and shoved it up their collective Arsenal are the best club in the world. Ahem.
The nice thing about our win at Old Trafford was that the three points were fully deserved. We dominated the first half, coped well in the first 15 minutes of the second half when a reorganised United tried to get into the match, reasserted control and then saw the game out comfortably after scoring our goal.
There were encouraging performances in all positions.
The players who most caught my eye were Gabriel, Partey, Elneny, Tierney and Saka. In the first half I was complaining about Willian losing possession too easily, but on the plus side he was heavily involved and his work off the ball was excellent.
Lacazette is not in the best of form, but he was better against United than he was against Leicester last weekend.
I’m not going to go into a blow-by-blow account of the game. My big picture takeaway is that throughout the entire 94 minutes we looked like a team in which every player knew his job and worked his socks off to do that job to the best of his ability.
We had shape, organisation and discipline – three characteristics that are becoming a hallmark of Mikel Arteta’s Arsenal.
And it’s El Patron on whom I most want to focus.
In his eight months in charge, Arteta has won a major trophy (FA Cup) and a minor one (Community Shield); he got us into Europe against the odds; he has brought us long-sought-after victories over all our major rivals: Liverpool, Manchester City, Chelsea and Manchester United; and now he has ended the ‘can’t win away at the big six’ hoodoo.
He has given a real sense of “laying foundations” at Asrenal.
Right now we have the best defensive record in the EPL (our seven goals conceded is the best in the division) and if that comes at the cost of us not carrying enough of a goal threat, I’ll take that for now.
Under Emery and the later Wenger years we had the defensive resilience of a blancmange and it cost us time and time and time again.
So it is absolutely right that El Patron has made securing our defence his first priority. Get that right and we can build on the other things.
In fact, it reminds me of the early days of George Graham at Arsenal. The Scot arrived from Millwall at a time when Arsenal had been drifting for years and his first job was to make us hard to beat. He put his faith in a very young centre half – Tony Adams – and added players who would become defensive legends: Lee Dixon, Nigel Winterburn, David Seaman, Steve Bould and Martin Keown.
Are we seeing the early stages of that with Arteta’s Arsenal? Despite the disappointment of the results against Leicester and Man City, we restricted both those very good teams to hardly any clear chances. We did the same to Man Utd.
This is encouraging. Very encouraging.
These are the sort of foundations from which we can build something very special.
RockyLives
Player Ratings
Leno 7
Very little to do but made one good stop with his legs early on and, late on, improvised brilliantly to deflect a goal-bound ricochet onto the post with his face.
Bellerin 7
Much to like about Hector’ shift. Unspectacular but his tracking runs when United wide players were breaking were top class and saved us on a couple of occasions. And of course it was his run into the Man Utd box that led to our penalty.
Holding 8
A surprise start given his recent injury. Big Rob was solid all game and looked assured when we were playing out from the back.
Gabriel 9 (MoTM)
There were a few contenders for MoTM but Gabriel shades it for me. He looks like the sort of CB we have been needing for years. A very exciting addition to our side.
Tierney 7.5
We almost take these sorts of performances for granted now from our young Scot. Tireless, excellent in defence and contributing well to attack.
Elneny 8
Who would have guessed that mop-top Mo would turn into one of the sensations of our season so far? Always a tidy player, he seems to have added an extra layer of confidence. His short passing is as good as ever but he has added surging runs to his game too. Arteta the master of rehabilitation strikes again.
Partey 8.5
Close call for MoTM. He and Gabriel have given us a proper spine for the first time in years. Outstanding performance.
Saka 7.5
Always a threat, always available for the ball. He has become a reliable bona fide first team mainstay.
Willian 6.5
A busy outing. Was brushed off the ball too easily for my liking several times in the first half, but his work when we were not in possession was good and he was unlucky not to be on the scoresheet with a shot that hit the top of the crossbar.
Lacazette 6.5
Laca gets some unfair stick at times. He has a hard job to do trying to be an outlet in the CF position, usually receiving the ball with two or three players on him. But he was more effective yesterday than against Leicester and stopped Fred from fulfilling his usual role as a deep lying playmaker.
Aubameyang 7
Unlucky not to get on the end of a Bellerin cross in the first half. Did not have many opportunities but took his penalty with aplomb.
Subs
Nketiah 6.5
Not many opportunities for Fast Eddie as we sat back to protect our lead.
We have been particularly poor away from home against Big 6 teams. Arteta has not really managed to improve our form away from home in terms of points collected but since he took over, we are harder to beat which is a bit of a consolation.
The good news is that Man Utd have been struggling at home in the EPL this season but the bad news is that I feel like they are hitting form, especially Rashford. I like Rashford and I d be delighted if he joined AFC once Auba leaves 😛
I was not happy with our performance in our last EPL game against Leicester and our win yesterday was expected and nothing to brag about except for the positive performances from Runnarsson, Willok and RN.
We are on a good run against Utd (won 2 out of the last 3 games ; have not lost any of the last 4 in the EPL) and I hope it continues but I am going into the game with no confidence because we seem to struggle to create chances and also because Luiz is missing and Leno is not having a great start of the season.
As an Irishman it pains me to write this, but Dundalk FC will be one of the most objectionable teams we will entertain in N5 this entire season.
Yes, they come from a charming little town in the Irish Republic, just a bit south of the border with Northern Ireland.
Yes, they are currently the best team in the Republic and the top-ranked team in the country according to UEFA.
And yes, I’m sure many of their players are charming fellows with whom you would happily share a Guinness and a few yarns in MacManus’s pub to the background sound of a fiddle, pipe and bodhran trio knocking out a jolly jig.
But there is one big problem with Dundalk FC. One very big problem. It’s their nickname.
Take a deep breath, sit down… Dundalk are known as… The Lilywhites.
I know, wash my mouth out, scrub my keyboard clean. How can I let such filth emanate from my laptop.
As we all know, there’s another team not to far away from N5 that call themselves The Lilywhites. And we all know what we think of them. For the benefit of any Irish readers, our neighbours are eejits. They’re feckers. Flutes. A bunch of gobshite hoors.
And Dundalk, I’m sorry, but you are guilty by association. If you call yourselves Lilywhites, you must expect to be met with the scorn and derision that Lilywhites deserve.
And so to the game.
We had a disappointing result against Leicester City on Sunday. Despite dominating for large parts of the game (as GoonerB skilfully detailed in yesterday’s Post) we lost by a single goal.
This weekend we face an away trip to Manchester United, which will surely play a significant factor in El Patron’s team selection for tonight.
Disrespect to Dundalk, (I would normally say “NO disrespect”, but I can’t do that for the aforementioned reasons), despite being the top team in Ireland they are many, many levels below Arsenal.
So we need to start an entire second team against them, with a strong weighting towards youth.
By all means have a few of the big boys on the bench for any ‘break glass in emergencies’ scenarios, but leave it to the second string to bring home the points and leave the Lilywhites feeling blue.
My line-up would be as follows:
Runarsson
Soares – Saliba – Gabriel – Kolasinac
Maitland-Niles – Elneny – Willock
Pepe – Nketiah – Nelson
I have included Gabriel because of our injury problems at CB, and I’m starting Pepe in yet another attempt to boost his confidence by giving him the chance to bag some goals.
Anything other than a comfortable Arsenal win and a bunch of wilting Lilywhites would be a surprise, not to say an embarrassment.
Posted by RockyLives 
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