Arteta Must Increase Martin Odegaard's 'Zone Of Influence', And Improve How Arsenal USE The Ball

Arsenal must use the ball better and in this two-part mini-series I'll be exploring how that can be done. Now lots of these ideas and slight criticisms are topics that I've brought up on the channel already and I'm going to start in this part one video in relation to how Arsenal can make the turnover count and also having players who can operate in bigger zones of influence. What do I mean? Well I'm going to get into that today before moving on to part two where I'm going to touch on the need for greater flexibility in the on-pitch roles of Arsenal's players. But we're going to start with part one and compounding the turnover, really making it count. Arsenal, in my opinion, are the best counter-pressing side in the league. In terms of stats this season Arsenal have allowed their opponents the second lowest passes per defensive action in the league this season and that's significantly lower than Pep Guardiola's Manchester City and in comparison to the other two big man-man presses and aggressive suffocating presses in the league, namely Brighton and Tottenham, Arsenal have a considerably less expected goals conceded than those two sides. So what it shows is that Arsenal have a very aggressive and very effective suffocating man-man press when they opt to go that way but we do not make this ascendancy count. There's been a lot said of course about how good we are out of possession but for me I'm going to critique the follow-up on that and what we do when we do turn the ball over and it does transition into our possession. We have the ability to really kill sides with one turnover, put the wind out of their sails but that's only if we do it right and we have not seen that regularly enough yet and it's because our decision making in whether we look to play fast or retain and secure the ball after winning it back isn't mature enough yet. Thus it often feels like we have to really toil for a goal even if it feels slightly inevitable that we are going to get that goal and this lack of maturity in a way is what's keeping us from blowing teams away at times or winning the key moments. To flesh out my point a little bit more I'm going to start with analysis of the Spurs game at home for Arsenal because the game when I was watching it I don't think it should have got even to the second half. There was a flawless immaculate man-man press deployed by Arteta and we saw that suffocation of the Tottenham initial build-up that we really did require early on but it was after the turnover and the transition and that we didn't use the ball smartly enough. We either gave the ball straight back to Spurs by trying to play a killer pass, often it was a sort of a clip ball over the top to one of our outlets and playing it into those channels that van der Ven and Romero really love to defend and this just incited a more chaotic transitionary period of play that we really needed or when we did choose to get our studs on the ball and not to retain possession we didn't pin Spurs in so we did not compound how good we are at winning the ball back high up with decisive moments and good decision making that's what we failed to do or when winning our duels in the defensive transition and giving Spurs no way out we didn't suffocate them efficiently enough and it felt like for me the occasion slightly permeated through into the Arsenal players decision making and then look ultimately we can't keep up that level of pressure in our press for a whole 90 minutes and in the second half Spurs all of a sudden could start to build through the phases more with Madison dropping into their fluid 2-3 build-up shape and allowing himself, Bissouma, Sarr all to play suddenly with themselves facing the goal they could also play their own outlets in behind more reliably look and the game should have been won by Arsenal in the initial press but they didn't and we we didn't make it count and that's why it got away from us and it ended up being a 2-2 draw we allowed Spurs then to grow into the game and to be fair to them and to be fair to Postacoglou they played very very well because they're a very good on ball side of course with Ange but that's all well and good what can Arteta and what can Arsenal do to make us more efficient in creating situations to kill the game and making the most of the turnover in the transition I've been talking a lot in my dialogue about Arsenal about the balance that we have between ruthlessness and patience and what we choose to do and when well Arteta has given this Arsenal team two contending tactical ideas the big space setup and the slower more methodical approach that I really went in depth on last video and I think these two contending ideas that we certainly need has had a detrimental effect to our on the ball usage certainly in the short term as the team sort of gets up to speed as to what's quite demanded and required for them but other than this there's got to be something more it can't just be experience and it can't just be allowing the players to have more time on the pitch because it's also about ensuring that when we do turn the ball over and choose to attack quickly and try and like I said kill the opposition in a moment that it falls to the right weapons in our team to make it count and it falls to the players who can act over a big zone of influence now what do I mean by this phrase and term zone of influence because I think this as a phrase is so integral to the discourse around Arsenal and in particular in particular their attacking dynamics right now and what's potentially shifted from last season we often find Martin Odegaard receiving the ball a significant amount of times in his zone of operation but one that is relatively small very small in fact when you compare it to the other sort of centerpieces of other top teams attacks now logic prevails in saying that players who touch the ball the most for this is Martin Arsenal should have the largest zone of influence that's what logic says and this can be done in multiple ways whether that's with a player's own off the ball movements that give them the license maybe at the base of midfield as a number six to literally occupy different zones and different channels of the pitch or whether a player is giving the license to completely dominate just one channel in particular a large zone of influence may also be gained by how a player uses the ball and this refers to players you can play at a wide range of angles distances and attack different spaces with different methods of attack so I guess what I mean and what I'm trying to say is that players with larger zones of influence can either be profiles who can literally cover a larger area of ground or those who can make a number of decisive actions in different situations often not needing as many touches on the ball to find a preferable angle for them to play out for example and I mean in Martin Erdegaard we have an exceptional exceptional footballer one that I totally love but we have a small zone of influence where his tremendous sort of final action quality has become limited to finding pockets of space that now present him more as a goal scorer attacking the box from late for example drifting into central areas or just in that inside right channel but also on merit he has become this trendsetter of our attacks but from a very very specific area of the pitch now as I will get onto in part two this is not in any way shape or form a Martin Erdegaard criticism he should continue in the team but for me and what I really want to try and push in part two and I've started here is gaining this team and creating players who have a bigger zone of influence to show their qualities on the pitch and which Martin Erdegaard of course has the quality to do and I'll get into that in the next video think the Kevin De Bruyne's or Trent Alexander-Arnold's in their final ball or action quality that ability to expose different angles of the pitch even if they remain in a smaller zone in tandem with sort of the more touch heavy but still output orientated David Silva's, Bernardo Silva's even Ilkay Gundogan's who can all dictate the tempo of attacks with you know especially the latter two able to help in multiple phases and zones of play and this duo I think at Arsenal this tandem between decisive actions and large zones of influence in setting the tempo of teams attacks and really dictating the play on a wider scale is something that we lack at Arsenal but something we can absolutely acquire internally because at the moment for Arsenal to make the turnover count we are slightly dependent I think on who the ball falls to then what we choose to do with it whether we make the right decision and ultimately part of that just comes with experience but also needing I think the perfect conditions for us to look as as brilliant as we can be let me explain because we often need to be given the conditions to work the ball horizontally out wide shifting the opponent from side to side with also that space to carry down the lines before then moving more centrally in between the lines and combining with runners and scoring a goal that epitomizes this is Martinelli's opener against Liverpool last season and here we look absolutely devastating but I don't want to see just one set of attacking perfected that's good for a good team but not an elite team I want a team who of course can build up in this slow methodical and patient manner that Arteta is trying to create and a side capable of scoring out of absolutely nowhere with literally just one or two touches from the ball and topically this was done by our first goal against Lens yesterday evening with Saka playing into Jesus who created separation very easily and put a sort of brutal finish into the far corner on a side note this simplification of Jesus's actions is something that he needs to learn and he's so much better as a striker when he does this and part of the problems here is that lack of second phase presence at times and certainly the lack of that second phase presence on the left hand side where if you look other than Zinchenko who of course needs again the perfect conditions to be able to consistently invert from left back into midfield because of course at times he's he's forced to play as a left back in a nominal back four we have no pass heavy players on the left hand side and this is taking the example if Kai Havertz plays in that left interior left shadow striker role meaning that sometimes we have to funnel it out to the right hand side and I think in this dichotomy between right and left for us something that last season we certainly didn't see we we now all of a sudden this season try to overload the left hand side to exploit sort of a Saka 1v1 on the far side but we have a left hand side with let's say Martinelli and Havertz who move as opposed to wait for the ball they're not very ball dominant they're more space invaders and we need a not just the left side being one type and the right side being the other we need a mix over both sides and this is something that if we compare Arsenal this season to last season something that has been lost and again how we comprise our attack is something I'll get on in the next video you know I want players alongside Martin Odegaard who are able to open up the pitch play that foil to how deadly Odegaard can be in his own sort of zone of operation the players who delight in playing passes and moving creating chances at a number of different angles and thus make us more comfortable when building up the ball in in different directions I think players and the roles that they are given are integral to this video and the point of us being better in how we use the ball we want of course Martinelli as that explosive instant threat on that left hand side Havertz to be able to dominate the inbox actions as well as his sort of defensive side of the game and also I think have the heartbeat of our final third play and have the idea of sort of shared load and the creative and goal scoring functions from our attack can be shared at once by Odegaard, Vieira, Saka even Declan Rice we have so much flexibility and adaptability within us as I've stressed and really been preaching all of pre-season and this season so it would be a real real shame for this not to be tapped into optimally ultimately and look this is what the big space setup that I touched on last video is trying to get us to do find the runners out wide win the second balls embrace chaos when we have to when we can't when we can't control the games ultimately but we still lack the maturity in our attack at times and we are certainly not a team that can be devastating from every single angle and I will expand on this more and how sort of a greater level of role flexibility will improve our efficiency on the ball and in these sort of attacking situations how we make the most of the turnover and this will be more in relation to Bournemouth and the Lons game you know I'm also going to show and state that Arteta himself must be slightly more relaxed with moving pieces around and this follows on from sort of my video on rotation and something that now has become very topical I think after the Lons defeat so I'll see you then for part two of this sort of mini-series of how we can improve our on the ball usage but I think getting our killers into the positions making the most of the turnover having players who have a larger zone of influence is something that's very very key for Arsenal as a team moving forward in something that with a few simple adjustments well not simple but a few adjustments certainly can be done and it takes sort of these slight criticisms that when conditions aren't totally perfect are slightly exposed for us now and makes us a more complete footballing side so that's it for this video I really hope you've enjoyed and I'll catch you in the next one bye for now