So back

How Jurriën Timber's subtle but obvious genius for positioning has changed Arsenal; how build-up has improved the attack; some light critiques; Ø's return; quick restarts; Merino's running; and more

After the Nottingham Forest match, I had every intention of starting this newsletter by writing about the partnership between Martin Ødegaard and Bukayo Saka. And make no mistake: we’ll cover that, too. But upon rewatch, my eyes kept drifting toward a different subject, albeit one not far away: Jurriën David Norman Timber.

I was halfway through writing my Timber hagiography when it was time to watch Sporting. That, uh, did nothing to alter the course of this piece.

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Let’s actually start with Saka and work backward. I’ve cheekily said that “the objective of every Arsenal gameplan is to move heaven and earth to manufacture 30 seconds per game where Bukayo Saka is defended like Phil Foden.”

This is a difficult objective to achieve in practice. Teams are well aware of the threat our Starman poses. They do everything in their power to shut it down.

Newcastle were successful for two reasons, both of them due to personnel:

1. Arsenal had a fundamental lack of helpful threats over there. The RCM beside Saka was basically Trossard, and his wide help was basically Saliba, as Partey was inverting from RB and not out wide. Neither Partey nor Saliba were going to push up high, overlap much, or drag defenders around on the wing.

2. Newcastle’s left-sided defensive help (Joelinton, Willock, Bruno, Burn) is elite.

Those dynamics improved with some late subs, but it was too late.

Here’s what it looked like last time out against Newcastle, even with Ødegaard and White playing. Being Bukayo is a tough gig.

(Yes, Saka created a good chance out of that situation.)

In that match, Arsenal won 4-1, and it was largely thanks to Saka’s world-classiness and Ødegaard finding and exploiting these pockets. This connective work was sorely missed in the 1-0 loss this year.

Back to Nottingham Forest.

In that one, the build-up setup generally looked like this.

Some of the keys here:

• Jorginho ran the ship from the #6.

• Calafiori generally inverted in the second phase of build-up, but was free to go wide or high as needed.

• Merino was usually high but could also drop wide.

• Ødegaard’s job was to float through pockets and create vulnerabilities — sometimes on-ball, sometimes off-ball.

This is a nice balance of fluidity and rigidity. Too fluid, and you have chaos (not to mention bad rest defending). Too rigid, and you’re unlikely to move around a block.

In that last screenshot, you’ll see part of the issue for Forest: if they are unwilling to let their central midfielders get dragged around wide, their winger (Callum Hudson-Odoi) is going to have too many people (and unfriendly angles) to cover. In that last screenshot, Timber is essentially free to carry forward at will.

That difficult choice (CHOice?) is illustrated here. With Domínguez not wanting to vacate the middle, Hudson-Odoi has to try and close the distance to Timber and keep an eye on Ødegaard behind. It’s too much.

Take a look at Timber’s positioning in that one (relative to Saliba and the touchline) and you’ll see what I’m about to cover.

Here’s a snapshot of it working. Saliba prods and waits for Taiwo Awoniyi to jump, as Timber closes up the space and delivers it to the free man (Jorginho). This is a fairly prototypical, easy “third-man circuit.”

But there are interesting details to investigate.

In an entry-level course on build-up patterns, Timber would be more likely to preserve space with Saliba instead of nudging ever-closer. Why? Spreading out ideally gives the opponent the most grass to cover possible. Kids are taught to be big when attacking and small when defending. But Timber kept creeping and crowding that space, walking toward his teammate. This had a few objectives.

At that moment, it complicated CHO’s mandate.

Picture if Timber was out wider, in the big white circle below.

An Ødegaard ghosting run behind would be less problematic for Forest. CHO can probably grab an angle that cuts off Timber’s access to both of Timber’s teammates. When Timber is pinched in, though, he can access either Jorginho or Ødegaard, depending on the route that CHO takes. Not to mention, the pass literally takes less time.

We kept seeing that throughout. Look here: Saliba is controlling the ball, and Timber keeps slowly following him, and gives a sly nod to Ødegaard to drop wide.

Again, he’s in no rush to give Saliba real space, even willing to drop behind him.

A little later, we saw another simple “third-man circuit” open up through the tight positioning of Jorginho and Timber. Saliba doesn’t see it (or prefers another route) and both Timber and Jorginho voice their displeasure.

After that, he did something funny. He told Saliba to go play RB so he, Timber, could deliver the pass he wanted, and Saliba could find the free man. Saliba does. It’s a little jerky and late, but it works out in the end.

Here’s what I said in my critique of the right-sided inversion we saw against Newcastle, which resulted in insufficient activity around Saka and wide help for Martinelli being supplied on the left by the wrong-footed Timber.

By and large, however, the progression felt slow, hitchy, and overly predictable. It’s easy to focus on struggles in the final third, but so much of football is about creating conditions so that players arrive in the final third with advantages. That didn’t happen. Newcastle, protecting a lead, were able to err to the side of defending — and masterfully executed another rough-and-tumble gameplan.

Lest we forget, the purpose of this all isn’t to complete a few slick passes deep. It’s to generate good conditions for your eventual attack. And through a variety of means, that happened over and over.

But back to the original snark about moving heaven and earth for Saka to be defended like a normal winger. Against Forest, he arrived in normal 1v1 situations over and over, for a variety of reasons.

One of those reasons? These little angles and deliveries deep.

The more Timber steps deep and narrow, the further that the wing help (Hudson-Odoi in this case) will be from helping the full-back in the eventual 1v1 against Saka.

Timber’s subtle, Ajax-brained understanding of deep, progressive angles and distances has been a boon. His comfort on the right has shown in the numbers, too. His three highest-touch games have all come at right-back: Leicester (82 attempted passes), Sporting (73), and Forest (58).

(It’s a helpful education when used correctly: his old Ajax teammate, Noussair Mazraoui, who I’ve always liked, just went 114/119 (96%) from RCB in the Europa.)

Against Sporting, Timber led the team in forward passes (17) and shared the lead in progressive passes (4). You can see his darker connections with the likes of Partey, Saka, Ødegaard, and Saliba. The right side, in other words.

Pass connections vs. Sporting (Data: WyScout)

But up the pitch, the impact has felt even more pronounced.

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So much of this comes from his positional and tactical swagger.

Here’s Zinchenko hitting a long-ball to a striker.

Sorry, I meant Timber, who had run over from right-back.

There wasn’t any strange, specific reason for him to be up there — he just saw the spot open and felt like it. It was 5-1 at the time. The madman.

Playing left-back against Newcastle, he was doing in-behind striker runs.

The Forest press didn’t want to get baited, as we saw with CHO earlier, but at 2-0 they had no choice. What Arsenal did was play around with it through the middle, then recycle it back to Raya. If these two midfielders were successfully drawn forward, Raya would blast it behind them:

…and in this case, the player waiting for that ball was Timber, who was returning from a high-10/false-9 position.

Near the box, he is at his most different. He really likes camping out in the right half-space and serving as a tight-space associator — a quick backboard for others.

He was returning from one of these positions when Saka regained his own loss and drove forward. This could have easily been an assist.

He got one quickly against Sporting. After his own throw-in, Timber drove into his half-space happy-place, then kept swirling and rotating around. With the offside trap getting progressively reset, little gaps opened up. Arsenal were happy to overcommit to players on this side. Timber slipped in behind and delivered a quick, low, curving assist that Martinelli drove home.

He played a part in the build-up to the second goal.

For the fourth goal, he paired up with Ødegaard to swarm Hjulmand, and delivered the quick pass that set things into motion — resulting in the penalty.

For the fifth goal, his initial touch and dribble split the block open and created the opportunity from whole cloth.

…and he wasn’t done there, assisting this late Nwaneri shot.

Against Sporting, Forest, and Leicester, Timber logged 15 shot-creating actions in all.

Is he a perfect player? No. He’s still got a couple of vulnerabilities, or improvements to make. Among them:

• While he’s absurdly consistent with grounded passes, this hasn’t necessarily extended to wider ball-striking: big shots, lifted crosses, clips in behind. I don’t feel a sense of certainty with how those are going to come off.

• He can have blind spots when tracking runners out-of-possession in transition moments. If they make a smart run at the right time, he can be late to react.

• Arsenal’s other defenders are his superior at winning open-play headers. I think he can do better here because he’s good at positioning and can jump well. But the stats aren’t there yet.

My other questions with regard to the physical demands of the role. As I wrote before:

These roles are extraordinarily demanding. You’re expected to run overlaps, underlaps, carries, counterpresses, play like a controlling midfielder, and then take personal responsibility for 1v1s against Premier League wingers. However injury-prone our full-backs may be, I think there’s some chicken-and-egg there: with so much running, so many duels, so much action on both ends of the pitch, it’s easy to see how players pick up knocks. I’m honestly concerned about it, and wonder if it’d be pragmatic to rotate in some games of full-backing normalcy, especially for Calafiori.

With White out for a while, managing his workload is going to be key. Late against Forest, we saw an interesting development on that front.

Timber’s overall statistical footprint at Arsenal does him no justice because of all the time spent at left-back, with 10 men, or else getting back to speed. That’ll start self-correcting.

Credit: @markrstats

Arteta talked about what the full-backs unlock.

“They are two players that have the football brain, the intelligence, the courage, the quality and adaptability to occupy different spaces attacking and defending,” said Arteta yesterday. “That gives the team a different dynamic and makes us unpredictable for the opponent to defend. And they’re both huge personalities, which I love.

“Playing full-backs that are inverting with their natural foot for the flow and the units, it’s really important.”

This kind of praise has been following around Timber for a while. Here’s Winston Bogarde, who also coached both brothers at Ajax:

“He’s a natural leader. He shows it with his game and shows his leadership through his organisation; he will put you in your place. If you fuck up, he will correct you. You’ve got to be sharp because he doesn’t want to lose.”

On top of that, this full-back role is tremendously fun. It’s every kid’s dream to float around at will, cause chaos, and exploit any gap you can find. But there’s a reason a role like this is so rare. It’s difficult to do it responsibly.

Outside of pure load management, one of the ways to do it in-game is to have Timber and Calafiori see-saw in their rowdiness. I don’t decouple the full-back injury list with the demands of the role. I’ve generally felt really good about the maturity and calma that Calafiori has shown in the last two games. Perhaps they can alternate spells as the wild one.

Look, I won’t mince words. If it wasn’t clear already, I think we’ve got an understated superstar on our hands. His 1v1 defending makes him matchup-proof, and his game intelligence is at the highest level — evident in his subtle adaptations, communications, and observations. Health permitting, I see no reason he can’t enter the conversation as the second-best right-back in the world, behind Trent Alexander-Arnold, who I consider to be a one-of-a-kind historical anomaly. When searching for comparisons, I eventually had to look outside football, and landed on Chris Paul of the NBA: a stocky, tough, vocal leader with intelligence, playmaking, bags of nuance, and elite 1v1 lockdown ability. Both seem to have been born with rulebooks in their pockets and overhead cameras in their heads — grumpy and generous, slick and efficient, and above all: just plain smart.

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Immediacy on the left

We’ve talked at length about how “advanced effectiveness” is usually drawn from “deep manipulation.” If the block isn’t effectively moved around in the middle third, it’s going to be hard to find joy in the advanced third. This isn’t only true on the right.

Here’s a moment on the left. First, you can see Timber dropping below Saliba again. Then, you can see one of the subtle, coordinated runs that old heads like Merino and Ødegaard consistently make. As soon as that pass is made, Merino goes to sprint inside.

You’ll see how that run forces Aina’s attention and respect, and giving Trossard the ability to accept it and push forward.

As Trossard looks for an opening, there’s all kinds of activity in the box. Calafiori is making a credible threat as an underlapper, Jesus is going near-post, and Ødegaard is sagging into the Ø-zone.

This next part is key, and is one of the big changes to the team’s temperament of late. After Ødegaard’s shot is blocked, he doesn’t look to control and recycle it. He hits it right back into the mixer.

That leads to the slick interchange, the feinted pass, and the cold Saka dribble and finish.

Shortly after the goal, we watched the left continue to make headway. This is the kind of activity that has been sorely lacking over there in the last year-plus. Ødegaard is unhooked and free to find vulnerabilities. He floated over to overload, Calafiori is spinning around, and Merino swaps up to do striker runs in the box.

Against Sporting, here’s what the passmap looked like in general.

In Five Ways to Improve Arsenal, written before the transfer window, I rose to defend imbalance on a match-to-match basis:

We hear a lot about balance, but we have to decide how big of a “problem” this is, really. The objective is not to create a perfectly egalitarian balance in touches throughout the pitch; the objective is to score as many goals as you can. Balance can help with that, but our pixel-perfect passmaps won’t get us into heaven.

You need to be able to execute balance as the situation requires, and you shouldn’t have to avoid left-sided build-up because it’s ineffective. But if the right side is humming, keep feeding the beast. That’s what happened against Sporting.

Here’s a general look at what the build-up setup looked like on a high-level.

I was a little confused by the Sporting setup. It didn’t look quite aggressive enough or zonal enough. They seemed hesitant to get dragged around because of the threat of Havertz dropping. Their captain noted this in the post-match:

“When they deployed their striker more like a No10 and sometimes almost like a No8, they had more players in midfield. We could feel that on the pitch, they’re a tough opponent. It didn’t go well, we’re not satisfied and we need to do better.”

That shows up in Kai’s map of received passes.

Havertz - received passes vs Sporting as a #9 (Data: Wyscout)

That uncertainty enabled a lot of opportunities like this.

The free man was, guess who, the pinched-in Timber who dribbled past his man and delivered it to Saka on the wing.

One of the best ways to judge a team’s tactical intent is by looking at the actions of the keeper. Because he gets the ball in more controlled situations, his distribution is often a clear distillation of the gameplan. In this one, you’ll see how he was looking right.

Raya distribution against Sporting

…and that reflected in the team’s final progression numbers. Saka, Ødegaard, Timber.

Which brings us to the return of Ødegaard. I’ll be honest: I’m having trouble finding an “angle” on writing about him because his impact has been so clear, so obvious, to anyone who is willing to pay attention. He adds a final bite to the press and a missing thread to the attack. Don’t take it from me.

Said Arteta:

“Obviously, when he’s on the team, you can sense something is different. It is difficult to put a finger on it but it’s different.”

Said Saliba:

“I think he’s one of the best midfielders in the world and we are so happy to have him back. We are better with him so I hope he won’t get injured again. Of course, we have to enjoy playing with him. We can see since he’s back we are better. He’s top three [in the world]. I don’t want to put too much pressure on him but I think top three. I love this guy.”

Said Saka:

“The day he returned there was a big smile on my face. You can see the chemistry we have, how much I enjoy playing with him, I’m happy he’s back and I hope he stays fit for the rest of the season.”

I happen to think Saka is still Arsenal’s best player (he’s more matchup-agnostic, can playmake or score, and goals matter above all else in this particular sport), but if you think it’s Ødegaard (or Saliba…), you’ll get no arguments from me. Or the numbers.

That shows a comparison with midfielders (instead of AM’s/wingers), which might help him out; but in the last 365 days, that may be more accurate: in addition to the advanced stuff, he was third in progressive passes in Europe last year, trailing only Rodri and Xhaka.

But how about we don’t argue at all? In the words of Poet Laureate Rio Ferdinand, who was talking about Messi and Ronaldo:

“People try and make comparisons of who's better, etc. Just enjoy it, man. We're lucky to be in this time.”

His freer role against Forest showed him at his best.

We’ve covered a lot of the high associative work when we talked about Timber.

There’s also been an improvement with outlet balls. Here’s one with his right.

But really, it’s allowed the team to exploit a team’s tendency to over-mark Saka, instead of falling victim to it. Here, you’ll see the kind of situation that is difficult to work out of without an interior like Ødegaard or a right-back like Timber:

They play out of it, resulting in a real shooting opportunity.

It’s clear to see how all this vibrancy is turning into opportunity. In the last two matches, Arsenal have had 6 and 9 (nice) goal-creating actions via live-ball pass. The previous high, across all competitions, was 4 — and the average was 1.5.

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Light critiques: pressing gaps, dips in second-half intensity, and set piece defending

I’m still in a critical mood about Arsenal’s pressing this season. I think it’s fair to hold the team to the highest standard in the world, because so much of the transfer business has been predicated on this area of the game. Whereas my previous beefs have been mostly on the player-level (small miscommunications, late jumps, Partey’s proclivity to dissolve into the backline), some of my beef against Sporting was more philosophical: I generally believe in a “press or don’t” approach, and don’t like the in-between stuff that we saw so much from Ten Hag sides. It means your first line is too easy to bypass and you’ll be running a lot for no reason.

I can’t really argue with the results, especially in the first half. Instead of having Partey join all the way up high, he’d patrol the middle — which would generally mean that there is a free man in build-up, but that Gyökeres would be marked by both of our CBs and our midfielders would be around to pick up second balls. The gamble was that the first line of press would still force a long-ball, and then the backline have the numbers (and quality) to win it. When it worked, it looked like this.

There is a big part of this that I agree with: nullify your opponent’s strongest strength. We see what happens when teams apply no half-measures to defending Saka, and that’s what happened with Gyökeres. He won only 3/12 ground duels against Saliba on the day. That performance against Gyökeres was delivered by the same backline that allowed zero shots on target to Nottingham Forest.

But that instruction — to have the CBs stay back and Partey in the middle of the park, looking to block space, but not really marking anybody — shows cracks, too. As soon as a free man is found, it looks like this.

The real issue is falling into the lower-intensity quasi-press as the game progresses. The difference was stark, as we’ll see in the lack of yellow lines on the right side. Some of this was just because Sporting were able to pick up the ball in more advanced spots, and Arsenal again were clearing too much.

Sporting Losses - Half by Half (data: Wyscout)

And some of this is just pure game-state after Arsenal conceded (another) set piece goal. While this may have just been the case of Calafiori stumbling, and a sick finish, my feeling on those is that the team isn’t communicating effectively. With so many leadership types, and so much chopping and changing, there are a lot of cooks in the kitchen — everybody yells one thing or another and then an opponent gets free.

But the dip in intensity was seen in the Forest game too. As soon as the second half whistle sounded, and Jorginho went off, Forest were able to generate control. Zinchenko, Nwaneri and others were eventually able to restore it.

Arteta had an interesting, vague quote on this after Sporting:

“You cannot speculate and we had a period after 39, 40 minutes that we started to do that and I had to stop it because that's the tendency the team wants to do, to control it. We are not good at doing that.”

In general, there were a lot of high recoveries, especially early, and I understand the desire to not overburden the team at this stage in this season, especially with positions like right-back looking so thin. Ødegaard lends a lot of bite himself, but more than that, the team is more likely to operate on the same page.

Ødegaard recoveries — last 365 days (data: Wut)

One service had the final second half shot tally as 17-4 in the column of Sporting. While many of those were of the speculative, long-range variety, they were good rips, and that’s just too many shots for my liking.

Raya was tremendous again, though.

This was pleasing.

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Rapid reset

In the saner world of last season, Arsenal faced some of the lowest defensive lines in all of Europe. As things return to normalcy, we’ll see more of that. One of the best ways to counter that is via quick restarts.

We had another quick-start controversy with captain Ryan Yates yelling at Simon Hooper after the latter had laughingly restarted play when he was hit with a pass. Yates wasn’t happy:

Nwaneri carried it up, delivered it to the wing.

…and Sterling nailed the cutback so Nwaneri could blast-poke it in.

Another pleasing camera angle.

This is a particular strength of Sterling at right-wing, as we covered in his scouting report.

While we’re here, we can discuss some of the differences between Sterling playing on the left versus the right.

I pulled all the data, and the overall numbers are laughably similar — with one exception: He has almost three times the assists from the right side.

Elsewhere:

It’s the primary way his game changes from the left to the right, and something we’ve talked about a lot lately: the deep cross.

As you’ll see, it was the big way he generated assists last year.

It’s simple. He can beat you to the byline and hammer in a quick cross. If you have a good box-crasher in there, they will cash in.

Nwaneri is a good box-crasher, indeed.

That quick-restart may have looked familiar.

A final, fun view from behind the net.

And while we’re here, here’s my #1 Nwaneri play of late, even if it didn’t result in a goal. This is the kind of quick interior dribble and quick-shot that is fully additive to the current Arsenal team.

Twitter user and analyst @borberly_imre recently published this excerpt from Ian Graham’s book:

This idea of usage led us to question whether attackers were adding value by using up possessions or by keeping them going. Our favourite type of striker was the ‘triple threat’—a player who could add value through shooting, passing and dribbling. These players are difficult to defend against—they can choose to pass or dribble instead of shoot. And they use up fewer possessions than players whose only skill is shooting. At Liverpool we had the luxury of three triple threats in Roberto Firmino, Sadio Mané and Mo Salah. Even so, Salah was the highest volume shooter, and benefited from the passing ability of Firmino. Separating players’ contributions into different types of action—passing, shooting and dribbling—allowed us to begin to understand teamwork. Too many shooters and the ball does not get passed into dangerous locations. Too many passers and the ball does not get shot into the opponent’s goal. Likewise, Salah’s presence increased Firmino’s impact on the team.

This will lead you to think about certain Arsenal players — but also how they best complement each other.

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Merino’s physicality

Finally, a note on Merino.

When we covered the Liverpool game, we noted that he nailed in this free-kick goal home — but only after he had personally gotten on the end of four straight free kicks in the first half, including one where he was fully free.

It happened again when facing Forest, but he was an inch offside. The proportion of “free kicks to Merino headers” is entering a gobsmacking territory.

That leads me to my dopey suggestion on those. As the team shuffles back into the line and gets onside, the opponent generally has one player (in this case, Domínguez) setting the line. You can theoretically throw a player like Trossard or Saka up there with him, and instead of nudging him back, nudge him forward — if he takes a step or two, you may get another foot of onside space to play with.

Merino is getting his legs back. From Arsenal.com, after Forest:

Mikel Arteta’s men ran 7.95km further than our opponents on Saturday. That is an extraordinary difference with the Gunners also making an extra 314 intensive runs during the 100 minutes played, with Mikel Merino topping the rankings for distance covered (11.7km) and intensive runs (329).

You’ll see it here on a counter opportunity. He’s the first one back, covering Saliba, and jumps the pass toward the box.

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🔥 Wrapping up

I’m on Bluesky now, by the way — you can follow me there. As I said there, “this level of we’re so back can be seen from space.” Any time you head away to Portugal in the Champions League, hand a great team their first defeat of the season, and score as many goals as they’ve allowed all year in the league, you should feel pretty good about yourself.

But rent is due every match, and the night is dark and full of terrors. The joke of the “we’re so back” meme is how quickly it can return to “it’s so over.” There is a threat of getting footballed at every moment, so the objective of the team is to play with a quality that is beyond the clutches of variance. They are absolutely capable of that.

They look like Arsenal again.

Next up, West Ham.

(Yes, it’s still called Edu’s BBQ for now. I’ll get to changing that whenever.)

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