Midfield - Passing Problem?

[berric]

You can start a midfield of 2010 Xavi - Iniesta - Busquets here and I'm sure Tets would find a way to make it not work.

 

[blrgooner]

The problem is three fold:

1) Arteta: he simply hasn't been able to coax a good midfield passing game out of us in his whole time here. If there's one characteristic of his coaching so far it's that, we just don't have a coherent way of working it through the middle; players aren't calm enough on the ball to pick options through the middle, Arteta clearly teaches them a risk-averse way of "resisting" the pess.

2) More sophisticated opposition pressing: Not going to get into an argument with the 'league hasn't improved / pressing hasn't improved on a global level in the league' negationists here, but there is no question that the problems Wenger was facing from oppositions in terms of pressing and complicating the construction of attacks from the middle are radically different on average than the ones Arteta is facing. Sophistication of pressing and level of pressing / instruction to press higher has gone up and changed drastically throughout football over the last 10 years, and even Wenger was starting to suffer from this more and more later in his career, hence why he fooled around with 3 at the back formations, hence why there were times where our midfield was wholly dysfunctional under him at times (recalls 15-16 when Cazorla was hurt and Ramsey and Flamini / Coquelin was the midfield partnership and we could not work it through the middle whatsoever)...his last season we ranked 5th in possession, pretty unheard of for a Wenger side in England.

3) Personnel: I've seen Lokonga get hyped up a bit in his thread but he's simply not ready to be an option resisting the press at this point in his development, and Thomas is a DM who is not a natural option to build attacks either, making Lokonga and Thomas a pretty low-end pivot for construction of attacks and building up from the back. We miss Xhaka here whether people like to admit it or not. Though obviously personnel and coaching are interrelated phenomenon and it is undeniable that we are not getting the best out of the personnel in this aspect.

Agree with this. Except point no 2 can`t really be an excuse for Arteta. Any improvement in opposition has to be improvement for all the teams in the league and its Arteta`s job to identify a solution for that. So I would say point no 2 is just a specific aspect within point no 1.

 

[Maybe]

Ignoring the system we play and just looking at players, I have a feeling that our midfield was much better with Douzi, Torreira, and Ramsey around. We've invested 100m since then just to downgrade. All the new players look like half-solutions, even glorified Partey didn't impress that much

 

[AbouCuéllar]

Agree with this. Except point no 2 can`t really be an excuse for Arteta. Any improvement in opposition has to be improvement for all the teams in the league and its Arteta`s job to identify a solution for that. So I would say point no 2 is just a specific aspect within point no 1.

Yeah, I mention it because the initial post used Wenger midfields as a comparison point. But I agree. It's not an excuse. It's just a bit of context re: the comparison point made.

 

[krackpot]

For all of this finger-pointing towards Arteta, we had 4 bloody seasons to replace Xhaka after Wenger left.

We are just trying to bypass our own CM by putting less and less people there. But why can't we just buy a good midfield for a change?

I think one good CM would be enough, as Partey/Xhaka can cover the other position.

 

[scytheavatar]

For all of this finger-pointing towards Arteta, we had 4 bloody seasons to replace Xhaka after Wenger left.

We are just trying to bypass our own CM by putting less and less people there. But why can't we just buy a good midfield for a change?

I think one good CM would be enough, as Partey/Xhaka can cover the other position.

That's modern football for you, the modern day CM is vastly different from the days of Vieira and Gliberto. Teams want to build up from the flanks and will bypass the CM no matter how good their CMs are. We can have prime Vieira and Cesc playing for us now and Arteta will still want us to bypass our own CM.

 

[krackpot]

That's modern football for you, the modern day CM is vastly different from the days of Vieira and Gliberto. Teams want to build up from the flanks and will bypass the CM no matter how good their CMs are. We can have prime Vieira and Cesc playing for us now and Arteta will still want us to bypass our own CM.

But we don't cross the ball, and try a lot of through balls, which means that we are idiots!

Through balls: You can see how Liverpool and $ity use their (obvious) superiority to good effect.

1.	Liverpool	53
2.	Manchester City	47
3.	Manchester United	37
4.	Chelsea	34
5.	Arsenal	30
6.	Leicester City	26
7.	Tottenham Hotspur	25
8.	Wolverhampton Wanderers	23
9.	Leeds United	22
10.	Norwich City	20
11.	Aston Villa	18
12.	Brentford	18
13.	Brighton and Hove Albion	18
14.	Southampton	17
15.	Crystal Palace	14
16.	West Ham United	13
17.	Newcastle United	11
18.	Burnley	10
19.	Everton	10
20.	Watford	8

Crosses: We barely cross the ball, so I don't know how we are focusing on our flanks.

1.	Manchester City	287
2.	Liverpool	284
3.	West Ham United	276
4.	Burnley	273
5.	Aston Villa	256
6.	Southampton	240
7.	Leeds United	236
8.	Everton	224
9.	Manchester United	220
10.	Newcastle United	210
11.	Brentford	208
12.	Brighton and Hove Albion	208
13.	Chelsea	207
14.	Watford	203
15.	Tottenham Hotspur	192
16.	Norwich City	190
17.	Wolverhampton Wanderers	188
18.	Crystal Palace	185
19.	Arsenal	176
20.	Leicester City	154

We barely cross the ball, and try a lot of through balls. Our strikers are bad at heading and holding up, but still we want to bypass our CM and focus on the flanks.

Crazy. Crazy. Crazy!

 

[Big Poppa]

You can start a midfield of 2010 Xavi - Iniesta - Busquets here and I'm sure Tets would find a way to make it not work.

I'm still waiting for him to play a midfield 3 - not even for 90 minutes, just for a spell in a game when we're losing control of the middle area.

It grates how much we rely on our back 5 for creating chances and our front 3 for finishing them, while midfield plays such a passive role at both.

The only thing it almost guarantees is that we'll concede fewer goals from counter attacks, but at what cost?

 

[Riou]

Surprised we have one of the lowest number of crosses, tbh.

Though I imagine 175 of those 176 crosses are from Tierney alone, so his absence could explain that

 

[Big Poppa]

Ignoring the system we play and just looking at players, I have a feeling that our midfield was much better with Douzi, Torreira, and Ramsey around. We've invested 100m since then just to downgrade. All the new players look like half-solutions, even glorified Partey didn't impress that much

Arteta gave up on Guendouzi and Torreira for non footballing reasons I think but when he had a chance to give minutes to AMN & Willock he went for Ceballos and Elneny who were never going to be long term solutions, and inexplicably decided to build around Granit Xhaka.