PL: Arsenal vs Chelsea | Saturday 26th December | KO: 17:30 GMT | Sky Sports

[rockofcashel]

Not necessarily, guarantee you wouldn't understand me if I talked the way I usually talk. I'm from rural Ireland tho, so it's not like I'm from Dublin or anything like that.

I'm from Tipp.. so I'd understand ya haha

 

[GeorgiaGunner]

Did anyone notice Werner btw? Guys meant to be an elite striker.

He’s crap. Bayern and BVB are obviously class, but the Bundesliga is way overrated IMO.

 

[GeorgiaGunner]

The pen was fine.

Xhaka would score his about 1 in 100.

Saks would score his about 1 in 30.

Xhaka was probably trying to slot his under the wall lmao

 

[bergholt]

Xhaka was probably trying to slot his under the wall lmao

I think he was just trying to tee it up for Saka, just accidentally hit it a bit hard.

 

[Red London]

In terms of Werner, I saw two issues in his game before joining Chelsea, even though I would have still been really excited to sign him- and wont be surprised if he eventually turns it around.

Firstly I was wondering how he would work out up front in the Premier League, as a lone striker. He loves operating in the left channel of the front line (reason why I saw him as a good replacement for Auba). He is more of a striker you would see in Fifa, really fast nimble and energetic with some clever dribbling. But I rarely see players like that flourish in the PL as a lone striker, they certainly need some sort of hold up game, or the team needs to be specially structured to get them the ball facing the defenders rather than their back to it. That's why he is being deployed as a left winger, but then when it doesnt work out and he cant get close enough to goal you're relying on him in a different way. He isn't a top winger he's kind of like a second forward. If I was a Chelsea fan I would be intrigued to see a two striker formation where he pairs with Giroud/Tammy (probably giroud for his hold up play and ability to bring other players into the game with his selfless work- Tammy is a bit more selfish).

Secondly, although I dont have an amazing sample size I saw that he's not a lethal finisher. He seemed to miss a lot of sitters when I watched him and that has certainly carried that through to his time at Chelsea. You could make a compilation of his misses already. He's more of the kind of guy to get a lot of chances due to his movement and tenacity but not be as lethal as other players. Similar to Cavani at PSG, Auba in his first season at Arsenal etc.

Altogether I think Chelsea made that signing more because of his profile and price point than how he tactically suits the side, probably the same with Havertz to an extent. They needed a top class target man (unfortunately being linked with Haaland now) rather than this sort of player. Because then you find yourself playing a £50m striker wide left even though you have a top player in Pulisic for that position...

 

[Sniper Mik]

I back it because it does actually tend to even out over the course of a year. It’s not meant to be used with such a tiny sample size of one game.

The penalty Jorginho missed is worth like 0.75xG which explains a huge chunk of it. It’s literally just a shot counter that’s a bit better than saying “we had x shots with y on target.”

Not really a stat worth getting annoyed about once you look into it, I’m a recent convert.

We had a pen too. Thing is if you take out pens for both sides, we still had 5 good chances from inside the box. Chelsea had two headers and the goal. And xG statisticians say headers have low xG value. And I didn't even consider the Smith Rowe chance cause technically it wasn't a shot. Something which xG completely ignores.

 

[Melquiades]

Strong performance. Chelsea were ****, but there were actually multiple Arsenal players on the pitch playing with confidence and swagger and trying to attack and be creative, and we were the better team. Been a while since that was the case when not playing Molde or Dundalk.

- first things first, the controversy about the penalty was absurd. The VAR shot kept repeating the shot toward the Chelsea goal which didn't show obvious contact, but the best angle - shown only once I think - was the shot from behind the Chelsea goal and you could actually see Tierney's foot vibrate as it was clipped by James. Clear, obvious penalty and you almost felt there was something nefarious in the repeated showing of the inconclusive angle over the non-showing of the very obvious and conclusive angle.

- biggest difference in this game was that the team had 3 young players with tons of movement running all over the place up front instead of Auba/Willian/Pepe jogging around aimlessly and only trying to do something once the ball was at their feet. This should be the structure going forward and if ESR is benched for Willian in the next game it will be a disgrace. Saka is a delight.

- Tierney was massive. I've questioned his ability going forward but he was driving the play in the right direction all game. Best game in an Arsenal shirt?

- Xhaka, to his credit, after 15 games of being absolute garbage looked like the player he is advertised to be tonight. Maybe the suspension was good for him? Was actually looking forward with his head up trying to make quality attacking balls into space, which we haven't seen from him in ages. The free kick was a unicorn moment that won't be repeated but the multiple quality attacking balls could be and if he did that every game nobody would be complaining.

- Rob Holding is getting called up to England soon and a lot of peoples' heads will explode when it happens but it will be well deserved. Outstanding performance.

- Elneny was absolutely horrific in the first half but recovered a bit in the 2nd half. Partey can't come back soon enough.

- Pepe le Poo. Blech.

- the Rolls Royce/Kia title of the Pablo Mari thread couldn't be more accurate. Looks strong, elegant, and accurate for a stretch of play and then turns into a slow flailing pylon in a horrible moment. As nice as some of those better stretches might be, consistency and reliability is the best trait in a CB and he is sorely lacking in that regard.

- you can say a lot of bad things about Lacazette, but in the most woeful stretch of Arsenal play in recent memory, he's been the one overpaid veteran player who has been working his ass off every game and doesn't deserve to be lumped in with the Willians of the world.

 

[ERLIS_theGOAT]

Yesterday I forgot to mention how good the youngsters were, i.e. Saka, Martinelli, ESR. They had an unquestionable impact on the game. Tierney, Mari, Holding and Bellerin also had a good game. Laca too. That penalty save from Leno also was epic. Overall, it was a great team performance.

 

[Tir Na Nog]

How we constantly got Tierney free on the overlap yesterday.

Martinelli constantly coming centrally meant that James had to come more narrow in order to keep an eye on him. While ESR constantly gave Kante/Kovacic (or later Jorginho) a headache in terms of his positioning, similarly on the right Saka would come centrally too. This would force Chelsea to have all their players be more central and the team shape to be quite narrow allowing Tierney to overlap as Pulisic is not one who's comfortable tracking back all the time.

Also we were getting more bodies in the box when Tierney had these crossing positions. Tho we didn't really capitalise, we were far better at creating these dangerous situations.

We were able to constantly have Tierney in this situation because of how many players we had centrally dragging the Chelsea right defensive side more centrally which meant Tierney only had Pulisic tracking back to contend with and he was never gonna have much issue with that. Alternatively if James decided to stay wide then Martinelli has a free run, or if Kovacic doesn't track ESR then he can take up dangerous positions between the line and with plenty of passing options.

Also whisper it, but Xhaka is far far far better than Ceballos and Elneny, or most other options at passing crisply into players between the lines or out wide to the full-back overlapping. Elneny plays it safe, Ceballos is similar but general very erratic with his passing, he's just not efficient enough and not progressive enough.

 

[dashsnow17]

ESR and Saka the future of Arsenal FC you heard it here first

 

[dashsnow17]

Correction: ESR, Martinelli and Saka

 

[berric]

How we constantly got Tierney free on the overlap yesterday.

Martinelli constantly coming centrally meant that James had to come more narrow in order to keep an eye on him. While ESR constantly gave Kante/Kovacic (or later Jorginho) a headache in terms of his positioning, similarly on the right Saka would come centrally too. This would force Chelsea to have all their players be more central and the team shape to be quite narrow allowing Tierney to overlap as Pulisic is not one who's comfortable tracking back all the time.

Also we were getting more bodies in the box when Tierney had these crossing positions. Tho we didn't really capitalise, we were far better at creating these dangerous situations.

We were able to constantly have Tierney in this situation because of how many players we had centrally dragging the Chelsea right defensive side more centrally which meant Tierney only had Pulisic tracking back to contend with and he was never gonna have much issue with that. Alternatively if James decided to stay wide then Martinelli has a free run, or if Kovacic doesn't track ESR then he can take up dangerous positions between the line and with plenty of passing options.

Also whisper it, but Xhaka is far far far better than Ceballos and Elneny, or most other options at passing crisply into players between the lines or out wide to the full-back overlapping. Elneny plays it safe, Ceballos is similar but general very erratic with his passing, he's just not efficient enough and not progressive enough.

Awesome post. The worrying thing is that most of the forum knew that having a player doing what Emile did last night is absolutely necessary.

Having just one player strolling around the channel opens plenty of forward passing options to Xhaka (and probably Partey). It's worrying that it took so long for Arteta to try this out again after the same formation gave us a positive display vs Sheffield.

However, it's good that it happened and we'll see how it goes.

 

[CaseUteinberger]

How we constantly got Tierney free on the overlap yesterday.

Martinelli constantly coming centrally meant that James had to come more narrow in order to keep an eye on him. While ESR constantly gave Kante/Kovacic (or later Jorginho) a headache in terms of his positioning, similarly on the right Saka would come centrally too. This would force Chelsea to have all their players be more central and the team shape to be quite narrow allowing Tierney to overlap as Pulisic is not one who's comfortable tracking back all the time.

Also we were getting more bodies in the box when Tierney had these crossing positions. Tho we didn't really capitalise, we were far better at creating these dangerous situations.

We were able to constantly have Tierney in this situation because of how many players we had centrally dragging the Chelsea right defensive side more centrally which meant Tierney only had Pulisic tracking back to contend with and he was never gonna have much issue with that. Alternatively if James decided to stay wide then Martinelli has a free run, or if Kovacic doesn't track ESR then he can take up dangerous positions between the line and with plenty of passing options.

Also whisper it, but Xhaka is far far far better than Ceballos and Elneny, or most other options at passing crisply into players between the lines or out wide to the full-back overlapping. Elneny plays it safe, Ceballos is similar but general very erratic with his passing, he's just not efficient enough and not progressive enough.

Thanks for posting some more meaty analysis and not just player criticism

 

[Arsenal4life14]

How we constantly got Tierney free on the overlap yesterday.

Martinelli constantly coming centrally meant that James had to come more narrow in order to keep an eye on him. While ESR constantly gave Kante/Kovacic (or later Jorginho) a headache in terms of his positioning, similarly on the right Saka would come centrally too. This would force Chelsea to have all their players be more central and the team shape to be quite narrow allowing Tierney to overlap as Pulisic is not one who's comfortable tracking back all the time.

Also we were getting more bodies in the box when Tierney had these crossing positions. Tho we didn't really capitalise, we were far better at creating these dangerous situations.

We were able to constantly have Tierney in this situation because of how many players we had centrally dragging the Chelsea right defensive side more centrally which meant Tierney only had Pulisic tracking back to contend with and he was never gonna have much issue with that. Alternatively if James decided to stay wide then Martinelli has a free run, or if Kovacic doesn't track ESR then he can take up dangerous positions between the line and with plenty of passing options.

Also whisper it, but Xhaka is far far far better than Ceballos and Elneny, or most other options at passing crisply into players between the lines or out wide to the full-back overlapping. Elneny plays it safe, Ceballos is similar but general very erratic with his passing, he's just not efficient enough and not progressive enough.

We saw this a lot when Arteta first took over, Auba would come inside and David Luiz often pinged balls to Tierney and it was pretty effective for awhile, It worked well on Chelsea because they didnt defend well as a unit.

 

[EmeryCouldnt]

We had a pen too. Thing is if you take out pens for both sides, we still had 5 good chances from inside the box. Chelsea had two headers and the goal. And xG statisticians say headers have low xG value. And I didn't even consider the Smith Rowe chance cause technically it wasn't a shot. Something which xG completely ignores.

Same with martinelli’s chance in the first 4 minutes.

 

[razörist]

 

[DUFFMAN]

Love how we beat a team who could have went second and its down to how bad they were.

Nothing to do with our grear play nullifying their whole outlet and plan.

Arsenal fans, I swear to god.

 

[Mitch]

Alex Scott's football knowledge and analysising of matches puts majority of Sky,BBC and BT punditry teams to shame.

Also helps thats shes almost as easy on the eyes as a young Graham Souness.

 

[OSBK]

He’s crap. Bayern and BVB are obviously class, but the Bundesliga is way overrated IMO.

He aint a winger. And the only time chelsea looked dangerous is when he was on the pitch. Quality player, he will come good

 

[Big Poppa]

Like I still can't get my head around what happened with the lineup, the tactics, the game plan. Was Arteta so threatened he just went "**** it, it's my last resort..."

Martinelli, ESR, Saka... so friggin glad they got the chance and took it. And Tierney... future club captain right there - honestly though, just give it to him now - dominating the left on his own, whether in defence or attack.

Covid and injuries happened