So it begins

Post-Wolves and pre-Villa, we look at Arsenal’s build-up (including the second-half problems), Saka (!!!) and Martinelli, Kai’s ascent, quick restarts, switches, Merino, Timber, and much more

Aug 23, 2024

“If someone says it's raining and another person says it's dry, it's not your job to quote them both. Your job is to look out of the fucking window and find out which is true.”
— unknown

I already took too long to post this, and there’s lots to cover, so no preamble this time. You’ll have to use your imagination for what would usually fill this section — probably some shopworn analogy about the opening sequences in a chess match or some shit.

Let’s get into it!

🔥 On the build-up

👉 The good

A lot of the post-game conversation revolved around the midfield.

Arteta touched on it in his post-game presser.

“Especially the beginning of the match, in the first half, where we were really good - really aggressive, really intense, a lot of purpose to attack, very fast, a lot of threat in the box … In the second half, [there were] moments where we became a bit sloppy and not controlled, especially with some giveaways, which against this team is particularly difficult. Then the game was a bit more open and Bukayo had an unbelievable action again to make it 2-0. Then it was a different game.”

The last we spoke, we covered how the usage of Ødegaard is often the signifier of the build-up strategy of the day. Four options were outlined.

Early on, Arteta deployed what I called a “tight three,” which isn’t a great name, but we move.

All three midfielders stuck through the middle. Everybody was generally where you’d expect them to be against a team that wasn’t afraid to press.

Any introduction of Wolves must be accompanied by the fact that Gary O'Neil is a great coach. However overmatched his teams can be from a pure talent perspective, they usually play the kind of motivated, committed football that offers an intellectual challenge for top clubs. I didn’t follow their preseason, but I didn’t expect this kind of press from them at the Emirates.

Before too long, Arsenal switched to a very 2022-2023 setup, which may have been the intention from the start. This meant Zinchenko and Partey controlled the pivot and Ødegaard would float on top of it. In this incarnation, Ødegaard is not looking to exploit the opponent through his passes (as he does when he drops low to receive), but to exploit the press through his movements. He trolls around the blindspots and looks to receive line-breakers.

This worked for a while.

The first half saw some confident movements like this, where the press is stretched to the hilt (both high and wide), and a lone presser can be manipulated pretty easily with a touch or two. It’s just so much space to cover.

Here, you’ll see how Ødegaard isn’t in the pivot — but he spots an opening, darts down, and makes Partey the free man through the middle.

The idea is to make them pay for sending pressers forward without shadow-marking Ødegaard. The captain can then serve as the bridge between the build-up and attack. It’s a lower-touch, higher-impact role.

One of the benefits of this particular iteration is that Ødegaard stayed in-between — he didn’t get too high — which gave Saka a lot of room and license to float inside as he sees fit.

Saka — who led Europe in touches in the attacking penalty area last year, mind you — logged a higher percentage of his touches in the box (31.6%) than he ever did in a game last season. His twelve touches in the box all seemed to carry danger, and he played less of his utilitarian, fixer, high-touch, workmanlike role.

He was out for blood.

(Blood meaning goals.)

If you’ve read this newsletter over the last year or so, you’ll know how much danger is posed whenever this triangle forms.

It’s one of my preferred attacking mechanisms for the team, period. I’m also anxious to see how Timber looks in White’s position up there, which could add a little more immediate quickness and dribbling to the operation.

This is the type of scenario where you see that Saka is a top winger, but not a pure winger. Because of his comfort in traffic, associative brain, and expertise in maintaining leverage, he can do the stuff that more interior players like Musiala and Simons do.

We’d also see nice rotations like this in the first half. This is a great spot for Saka to be.

People undersell Saka’s athletic gifts because he’s always receiving the ball in traffic. He’s also managing himself. But given a lower-touch role, he can definitely probe for the right moment and beat his man on pace.

When things were firing, Havertz also got involved in that right half-space, and the team kept “good height” — keeping things pinned, and taking advantage of the direct proclivities of the midfield.

👉 The left

When things moved from side-to-side with velocity, and Zinchenko went wide, you could see attacks form like this on the left.

Whereas that aforementioned triangle is exactly what you’d like to see on the right, I think this is exactly what you’d want to see on the left. Zinchenko is wide, Martinelli is dashing and connecting, Havertz and Rice are both high, and Ødegaard is trailing to clean up in the Ø-zone.

On the day, the attack was nicely balanced.

Some cracks, however, started showing up before the half.

They appeared through an unlikely source: William Saliba.

After the first goal went in, Saliba was also caught in-between. He was straddling identities, balancing himself as a calm, patient quarterback and somebody who was keeping the accelerator pinned. As we’ve covered, Gabriel’s improvement in central areas last year helped Saliba push the play more and take more risks, which had cascading effects in progression. The effects were almost always positive.

Here, Ødegaard was free for a few seconds before the clip. Saliba’s impulse was to hang tight and recycle it, but he finally said “fuck it” and nailed it forward. The delay made things more demonstrative, and Lemina could read and intercept it. Wolves were great at this kind of thing on the day.

This led to the Raya wondersave. The Spaniard overrode his body’s inertia and showed a red right hand.

A little bit later, Saliba wanted to transmit aggressiveness to his team. Gabriel again can see this and start shading central to cover the kind of carry we saw more down the stretch. Saliba probably forced a pass through a defender who was reading the game well.

This didn’t really have a tangible impact on the overall flow of the game in the first half. It just led to a couple of chances, and Wolves were able to attack with real velocity and gusto after these moments.

In fact, a lot of the overall contours of the game were similar to Arsenal’s performances last year. Of note:

Arsenal vs. Wolves: 17 shots, 6 on target (35%), 16.92 passes per minute
Last year (avg): 16.1 shots, 5.8 on target (36%), 17.0 passes per minute

The possession, though, started to change in the second half.

👉 The second-half problems

Here’s where things flipped, as the numbers illustrate:

First half: 5.77 passes per possession, 17.65 passes/minute, 19.18 pass length, 57% possession, 3 low losses, 19 medium losses
Second half: 3.73 passes per possession, 15.84 passes/minute, 17.7 pass length, 40.27% possession, 11 low losses, 17 medium losses

Yeah: 11 low losses in the second half. I’m not even sure that fully captures it — it may have been even higher, if not for immediate regains by Gabriel and Saliba.

Using another way of looking at this, this led to seven high regains by Wolves, with four directly leading to shots.

Some losses, like this by Partey, were quickly won back.

Here, the Wolves press was well-coached, fierce, and ambitious — which led to Strand Larsen pouncing on an underweight pass from Zinchenko. If the press was performing their duties without utter confidence and swagger, this pass is completed without bother. It’s a psychological game, as always.

This was probably the moment that stuck in the minds of fans the most. Zinchenko goes to pass his way out of a regain, but Partey doesn’t feel the blind-side pressure and gets stripped. Within a couple of seconds, it’s a nasty shot.

This moment was probably most indicative. This was a low-pressure scenario, but Gabriel pushed it too high, got hassled, and had his options closed down. Instead of resetting out wide, Saliba stuck in the midfield. Raya gives it to him to find the free man, but he gets his feet caught under him and essentially delivers a pass to Cunha.

…and this little flick got intercepted, too.

We can keep a few things in our mind at the same time and retain the ability to function:

Expectations have shifted. The amount of control and defensive dominance we saw last year has moved our Overton Window. When this team has the gall to cede a total of 0.76 xG (and a clean sheet) to a well-coached, fierce opponent, we feel they left it too close for our liking.
Raised expectations are a good thing. (Though sometimes annoying.)
The build-up completion wasn’t too bad in a broad sense. Last year, Arsenal averaged 86.74% in build-up. In this one, it was 84%.
I am not too concerned that Saliba made a couple of mistakes in the opener. I can imagine you aren’t, either.
It is reasonable to have reservations about the ability to fully control games and modulate tempo from the Partey-Zinchenko pivot in 2024. (Especially if there is not a third, calming influence — and especially for 70+ minutes.) Both of them have a proclivity to go fast, and both can make a low mistake. This can work early in games, and is not always a problem in pure isolation, as they often cash in that risk for some tangible threat (as we saw in the first half). But it can compound when they are together, and a different speed is called for. Add Gabriel, who can share some of those qualities, and the bounciness and jumpiness can declare a quorum.
Those blind-side rips of Partey (caused by him scanning forward but not always behind) were not aberrational. We’ve seen it before. We’ve also seen him (and Zinchenko) get tired and looser as games go on.
This pairing looked better against Lyon because Lyon were less physical and defended deeper.

What solutions are available?

I personally think the second half of this match was a solid case for a Rice/Ødegaard/Merino midfield, which is my top preference to make work as a default option in general. In this mode, Ødegaard splits the pivot with whoever the LB is, along with occasional help from Merino. If hardcore pass progression is needed, the LB can be Zinchenko. If stability and carrying are needed, it can be Timber or Calafiori. Merino can drop down as needed, too. Some of that up-the-pitch, healthy-risk passing can be augmented from Merino. If things stall, you have the option to go long.
I’ve raised some rankles about Ødegaard dropping low into the pivot every game as a default: it’s just too much work to ask somebody to do every week, and it’s too far from his pressing responsibilities. His role has to have different iterations. That said: I thought he, Zinchenko, and Arteta were a little too stubborn about committing to the build-up shape with Zinchenko/Partey in the middle in the second half. I think Ødegaard is now the calmest and most effective build-up player on the team, and one of the best such players in the world. That may sound a little extreme, but I reviewed a lot of his deeper tape this offseason, pondered the counterarguments, and I’m not swayed. It’s ridiculous: he drops, moves people around, then blasts it forward, and is hardly ever dispossessed. Jorginho is his only rival, but Ødegaard is even better at splitting lines without risk, and doesn’t get run over. His higher involvement against Lyon led to better outcomes — he was a complementary force to Partey, and Zinchenko was able to go high and wide to support Martinelli. Again: he shouldn’t always do it. But when the match calls, or when things get fucked up, I’d like to see the LB (Zinchenko here) go wide and Ødegaard help steady the ship down low. Also, you have to consider a Jorginho sub (or start).
This also wouldn’t have been a bad game for Rice/Ødegaard/Nwaneri, but it’s too soon for all that (he declares, but scarcely believes). In its final form, that is the right amount of control, athleticism, and carrying/dribbling power for this one.
Some of the lack of control in the second half was based on an inability to grab second and third balls after going Route One. I didn’t see any particular issues (or lack of effort) to point to, really. Wolves did well, and the balls bounced in a different direction.
New relationships will develop. Here’s what I wrote in the Final Countdown:
A lot of the tactical possibilities rest on a trio of players: Calafiori, Timber, and Rice. If one of them proves they can dictate tempo, filling the void of a Zinchenko or Jorginho by stepping on the ball: speeding things up, slowing things down, or ripping apart a block with the right pass — then Arsenal can field a full XI of progressive duel monsters without clear vulnerabilities. If that doesn’t happen, it’s not calamitous — Ødegaard, Jorginho, and Zinchenko can do it — but there are just more trade-offs in some of the lineup selections.
We just saw some of those tradeoffs — progression, dynamism, line-breakers, and some mistakes — on Saturday.

🔥 Wingers take flight

It was an assuring reintroduction by the Arsenal winger duo.

Especially one of ‘em.

👉 The Starman

Early on, Saka was making his presence felt in relatively low-touch, assuredly high-impact ways. It felt like every one of his actions resulted in a chance. This isn’t the output of an overeager memory. In 38 touches, he had 5 shots, 5 key passes, 1 assist, and a goal.

This clip shows a good example of his superpower: how brilliant (and balanced) he is when using his body to gain position on his opponent. Look how the first touch is almost immaterial — he wants position first. It’s a good skill for kids to learn. Almost exactly like boxing out in basketball.

Then, of course, there was the assist in the 25th minute.

I am, admittedly, a broken record on the matter.

From the Havertz scouting report, written before he signed:

The lack of this threat in the frontline was one of the few frustrating bits of Arsenal’s season. Of all those who played in the front-five — Saka, Ødegaard, Jesus, Nketiah, Xhaka, Trossard, Martinelli, Reiss, Vieira, ESR — only a couple show any proclivity to look for headers, and even then, only sporadically.
On a dangerous whipped cross like this, all three of Trossard, Xhaka and Jesus let it ride — perhaps expecting somebody else to go for it:

This aerial presence would be much-welcomed. While the size and height of individual players can be overstated … I think the team makeup of size and strength may be underindexed. On corners, Arsenal typically got into trouble when there were too many slight characters in the box, which helped opponents isolate and create mismatches. The additions of Havertz and Rice would go a long way.

In October, after the 2-2 draw at Stamford Bridge:

TL;DR: Let’s kick it to Kai’s head a whole lot more and see what happens.
[…]
In terms of positioning, something interesting about Havertz is that he excels at link-up play while leaning a little right, but seems to be a clearly-better finisher in his home left pocket.
In his career, he’s played a lot more on the right, and has rarely scored from over there. Here are his career goals — you’ll see a little gap on the right:
Which brings me to my final point on this one: I see little reason that Ødegaard and Saka shouldn’t just be spamming 4-5 far-post crosses to Havertz a game. We’ve barely seen it at all, and to my simple mind, it looks like money laying on the ground.

After Brentford, in which Havertz was subbed on and delivered the late winner:

I’d posit that part of our issues with “chance creation” are actually a problem with nobody getting on the end of some of these balls.
So why did none of those wind up in a goal? I know I can be a bit nerdy, so I hope this is not too complicated: Brentford are very big and our lineup was not very big at all.
With that quality of cross, it should be no surprise, then, that Arsenal would score shortly after subbing on our Tall Boy Midfielder. Boom.
As we’ve covered, you generally want a majority of your guys (if not more) being tall and good in the air, because there is an equilibrium to strike on set pieces and opportunities like this. Arsenal certainly have the raw materials to do that.

From May:

It even showed up in the type of pass that I seemingly call for every single week: the back-post cross from the right half-space.

There were, ahem, a lot more.

This exercise has made me understand how much I repeat shit. I’m sorry.

Back to the action.

After a foul, Arsenal performed a direct kick routine from long, but played it short. As the play unfurled, we saw some interesting things that typify Arsenal’s approach after the initial set piece. Typically facing such gritty, settled shapes, this is a rare opportunity to catch defenders out of position, moving and swapping. So Arsenal like to keep it pinned.

As the play switches, Saliba drifts backward to join Rice and White as the deep protectors. But Partey goes up to attack the cross — and Big Gabi doesn’t retreat. He switches sides to attack the cross. This led to an overload through the middle. Wolves try to rush help over to double Saka, but Lemina doesn’t engage despite Gomes’ protestations. Saka has space to deliver a perfectly whipped cross. 1-0, Arsenal.

Here’s what it looked like when drawn up.

Said Arteta:

“It was a great action - the whole action, the position, the delivery, the position we had in the box, the way he attacked the ball. It was superb, a great goal.”

Some teams like to “reset” with more haste. The presence of huge aerial threats like Gabriel, combined with versatile defenders who can cover a backline in his absence (like White and Rice here), enables Arsenal to stay aggressive as the first phase of a corner turns into the second or third.

Free money, indeed.

👉 On Martinelli

On the other side, Martinelli led the team with seven take-ons and logged five shot-creating actions and 10 touches in the penalty area. From a purely positional and role point of view, I really liked what I saw. While I did like Zinchenko’s role against Lyon, in which he was often holding width and enabled Martinelli to run from left-to-right, this was good too.

We saw opportunities like this a fair bit — Martinelli driving before the defenders could set, and picking out a quick pass or shot.

The decision-making was mostly good. Even the times when he probably made the wrong call — like when he ripped a quick shot instead of dishing it to Rice as the latter arrived late in the box — I wasn’t mad. The shot was narrowly deflected, and you’d rather him err on the side of aggression than deference.

From Five Ways to Improve Arsenal:

The timing of his season was annoying from his personal perspective. As soon as dynamics started improving, and Ødegaard started shepherding play throughout, and actual midfielders were in the left-8, Martinelli was battling some knocks and Trossard had rendered himself undroppable.
[…]
This all led to a season that was perhaps less of a step back than many would perceive. Looking through the data, he’s improved or matched his previous campaign in most statistics. He was just able to score with less frequency.

It is true that he was overcompensating for much of the year; then, once dynamics were greatly improved on his side, minutes were hard to come by — and his finishing was rushed or unconvincing. With a refresh and a steadier environment, it’s reasonable to expect improvement on the final bit. The other bits are still there.

In all, the Arsenal winger duo had 22 touches in the pen and 12 shot-taking actions. On a different day, where slight deflections go his way or his teammate hammers home a rip, Martinelli logs a goal or assist.

The ingredients are there.

👉 Martinelli on the right?

Another quick thing of note: the speedy gentleman wrapped up the game with 16 minutes at right-wing. When I was reviewing last year’s games during the break, one of my observations was that Martinelli had played over there a bit more than I remembered. He started against Everton and played against Brighton, Luton, Sevilla, and (here's the one I forgot): he closed it out in the draw against Man City.

In that lone start versus Everton in the final game of the year, he racked up the box touches and the wide crosses, creating five chances in all.

Some of us may consider Gabriel Jesus the best option for rotation at RW. Something marginally interesting is that since Jesus joined in 22/23, he’s made four total appearances at RW for a total of 129 minutes in the Premier League and Champions League — with the bulk of them coming in a start against Manchester City. In that same period, Martinelli has made 9 appearances for 232 minutes.

I’m on the fence about which I prefer. It usually has to do with the surrounding dynamics, and what qualities are needed. But until another signing is made, Martinelli looks like a real option out there.

🔥 Start quickly

Last year, Arsenal faced the third-lowest defensive actions (by distance from goal) in all of Europe’s top-5 leagues. Opponents packed the box, which made it difficult to get players like Saka in truly 1v1 situations.

Wolves, while less timid than some others, did seek to get everybody back as soon as possible. And any well-coached team is just so difficult to break down when things are settled.

One of the best weapons to combat this? Quick starts.

Arsenal used them well against Wolves. Here they had a quick, low loss — Ødegaard grabs the ball from the stand, exploits the lack of offside calls on throw-ins, and tosses it right to Havertz. This leads to a solid shot against a scattered block within seconds.

Here, before Wolves (or the cameras) can reset, Raya was blasting it behind their lines to get Martinelli into space. (I had vague, joyful memories of Van Dijk and Alisson misjudging a ball in this area and Martinelli slotting it home.)

In this sequence, Arsenal kept pushing forward and generated a nice Havertz opportunity

Then, there was the second goal. Ødegaard was fouled on the carry. Then Wolves showed a little naïvety by not blocking the restart. Partey resets the ball, delivers it to Havertz, and they’re off to the races. Exploiting moments like this is one of the only ways to get Saka in normal winger situations.

…and we all know what happened next. Limbs.

Whenever people say “Arsenal need to sign an elite scoring threat,” please correct them — we’d like another elite scoring threat. We already have Saka.

Which brings us to our next point.

🔥 Kai Havertz scores (and assists) again

One of the things we mentioned earlier in the post was how Havertz can look awfully comfortable in link-up play on the right but then has a lot of his best strikes and headers from the near-left. He’s been so good at that high-pressing and channel runs at the top, and is a tough cover for even top CBs — which is the mark of a top striker. But one of the advantages of playing him in the #9, where he’s led the Premier League in goal contributions in 2024, is that he can combine both aspects of his game — he can float right during build-up, and then attack the left-middle of the box.

Arteta often talks about being observant about how relationships develop on the pitch. One of the little things that seems to be working is Ødegaard playing a little bit deeper, Havertz filling in some of those high-right spots as needed, and Saka destroying everyone. The running, physicality, and peeling nature of his work all seem to benefit the pod over there. He works well with Saka.

After that snap-restart, it was Havertz who burst forward on the carry, then bent his run toward the box to occupy a defender and threaten a header. Saka, briefly mystified that he was 1v1, destroyed it to the near-post in seconds.

It was an easy assist for Havertz, but an assist nonetheless. That’s his eighth in an Arsenal shirt — all of which have been logged at central forward.

Here, Ødegaard managed to get him the ball after the duo showed Wolves how pack animals really operate.

Later, Havertz moved into the LCM — which is a nice late-game move, especially because he never seems to tire.

One of the more fun developments of late has been seeing him show off range like this. He flashed this in his Leverkusen days, and had some nice crosses when he was feeling confident at Chelsea, but it’s hard to imagine him hitting this kind of thing in his first few months at Arsenal.

The final piece will be to generate a few more shots for himself. He gets himself into the right positions for this, he just needs to be thinking “shot” more actively, and get them off with less hesitation. Even so, he's performed over his xG baseline for Arsenal so far.

From Transfermarkt, here are all his performances at CF at Arsenal to date. The blue column is goals and the green column is assists.

As we covered last week, there are still situations in which Havertz in the nominal “LCM” makes sense — we may see it this weekend, in fact — but it’s hard to argue with that production.

🔥 Big passes: Here to stay?

On the day, we saw a pretty clear sense of positioning: five players in build-up, five players in the front line.

When there is this much vertical space across the pitch, switches become an option. As we wrote last week:

Many switches are performative and don’t result in an advantage. But it’s hard to watch Toni Kroos play this kind of ball over and over without seeing its value against mid-blocks.

Here was the diagram:

And here’s what we saw from White in the 36th minute.

The switches to Saka are often triggered by Ødegaard. If you look at the below clip, you’ll see him sprinting through the middle in an effort to shade a defender inside — this is then timed with the switch, which improves the attacking conditions for Saka.

Ødegaard makes that kind of run regularly, and is almost never hit directly with a pass — it’s all about creating space. On the left, it’s a subtle detail that is not often afforded to Martinelli. With Merino, my hope is that will change.

Arsenal averaged 1.71 switches per 90 last year. Against Wolves, we logged four.

Still, I’m cautious about overstating the depth of the changes, as I’ve found that you can find almost anything you’re looking for when watching a game. This seems to be more in the category of a tweak than a wholesale … switch … in priorities.

🔥Assorted notes

👉 Defensive height

This image will show you just how committed the Arsenal press was on the day. Wolves did a pretty solid job of coping.

👉 The bench

Perhaps the biggest reason to feel bullish about Arsenal’s year-over-year improvement is the bench. This is basically a serious mid-table squad in itself, and was missing the likes of Merino, Kiwior, Vieira, and Tomiyasu.

Swap out Nketiah for a nice winger and big dreams will be utterly logical.

On that topic…

👉 I’m yelling Timber

I don’t usually wade into #take territory, but before the preseason started, I shared one:

My lukewarm take is that Timber is gonna render himself undroppable for large periods of the season.

It was telling that Arteta was so anxious to use a cold Timber as his first sub here. I think he’s smitten with him. (Can relate.)

He had that sicko little moment deep (and then overdid it), but I’m so curious to see what his running can offer up high. This overlap felt genuinely additive to Arsenal’s existing skillset:

A lot of the interesting tactical questions rest with Timber this year, as he has a few different modes to call upon. If he is a “vibes” player moving forward, like he was above, he will add to the creativity and forward thrust. If he is a pausa player, he solidifies a lot of lineups that may require Zinchenko or Jorginho otherwise.

If we’re to face a certifiable back-five formation, there’s every reason to believe that Timber could invert from RB and the rest of the players could be diamondy again.

I’ll be watching him with great interest.

👉 A brief thought on Merino

By now, you’ve seen the news. The Merino deal is official.

From the oracle:

🚨 Arsenal strike agreement in principle with Real Sociedad to sign Mikel Merino. €33.5m + €5m add-ons. Personal terms done for 28yo to join #AFC from #Sociedad on 4yr contract + option of 5th in club favour.

The fee feels a touch high given contract situation, leverage, and how he retains his value — but feels low in terms of straight-up player quality. Four years to a reasonable-minutes guy who turned 28 in June is totally fine. £28.3m sounds just fine too, doesn’t it?

(One day I’ll write a piece about how impressions of players can be anchored by the initial reporting of fees: the currency, whether add-ons are combined, how achievable they are, etc. How often did we hear that Darwin Núñez cost €100m? I can scarcely remember hearing that it was “£64.2m upfront plus bonuses.” But I digress.)

I was going through my files and saw that I forgot to include this duel with Tchouaméni in my scouting report. Edu’s BBQ regrets the error.

Whatever nits there are to pick, there is something I really like about this deal, as well as the one for Calafiori. It presents a clear “theory for the case” for how Arsenal, and not others, can win the top prizes. The club is pushing its stack of chips into the middle of the table on Arsenal’s clear advantages, instead of spreading them around on the theories of others. No half-measures are being taken. Amongst top, high-possession clubs, Arsenal can be the most aggressively pressing, physical, imposing, tall, set-piece dominating, bullying team in the world. If it works, it’ll be hard to replicate.

This is more compelling than “we’ll be like Man City, without financial doping” or “we’ll be like Real Madrid, with less star pull” or “like a more disciplined Chelsea” or “like Brighton with a budget.” And that identity can trickle into everything.

You’ll still want a balanced team, and there’s plenty to learn from other operations. But there’s level of clarity here that feels nice.

I think people are gonna love Merino.

👉 Brief thoughts on Villa

My thoughts after the big defeat against Villa — Arsenal’s only league loss in 2024 — weren’t very complicated.

The gameplan worked a treat in the first half; the ball just didn’t go in
The team was very tired in the second half

For me, it wasn’t a case of structural deficiencies or even a lack of certain skills on Arsenal’s behalf. Adjustments could be made. But it was a very human loss.

That squad had Trossard at LW and Zinchenko at LB. For tomorrow, here’s what my preference would be, though I don’t necessarily expect it to happen.

For this to work, Ødegaard would have to drop low and be high-touch. Saka, Havertz, Jesus, and Martinelli would have to be really active with probing runs, and Timber would hopefully get ahead of the ball into little pockets to receive. You’d want to find times for Jesus to pin a CB and then Havertz to run through it. You also want to have as many twin-striker runs in the box, forcing the likes of Torres to defend crosses and set pieces. This Arsenal defensive line also mitigates a lot of the deeper risk. The worry is that this XI doesn’t have enough passing range.

Most of that Timber decision comes down to his health, however, so I won’t be mad not to see him. I wouldn’t be surprised by a rerun of the lineup from the last match as Arteta looks for some stability in the early going, whatever my reservations.

Still, it’s a much fuller, more rested team to face Villa.

Merino coming in.

Huge match coming up.

A week left in the window, with potential surprises ahead.

Fun times.

Be good.

❤️🔥

Edu's BBQ

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