What's up with our away form?

[Longy]

Its that stupid blue kit !

Play in the black one from now on.

 

[IslingtonBornandbred]

I saw an article recently from a young manager working in England and he said one of his tasks on his coaching course was to analyse a team. He put the game on to watch and started writing things down on his notepad. At this point, a much more experienced and well decorated, "famous" coach entered the room and said "what are you doing" threw his notepad across the room and said "just watch the game will you, and then write your opinion down about what you think".

In light of the above, and without any statistics, graphs, formulas or pie charts I'm going to list the things that I feel are our major weaknesses and issues that keep repeating themselves over the years, especially away at these lesser teams.

• We are too easy to play against. Teams know they aren't in for a tough game against us. We aren't going to kick them, we aren't going to go toe to toe against them. We can out play smaller teams but they know out of all the big clubs, we are the easiest to bully.
• We struggle to hold onto leads. There's a notion that even if we are winning by two goals, we don't kill the game. A couple of corners later and it's 2-2.
• We have an A-Plan and that's it. When we go wide, we aren't going to hit the touchline and cross the ball in. Our player's are more likely to pass the ball rather than get 1v1 and try and beat the man and whip a cross in
• We are lightweight. We can be overpowered. Not aggressive enough.
• Teams aren't scared of us. They've seen the blueprint over and over again. Start quickly. Be physical. Put the ball in behind them. We're a soft touch.

Teams know we can outplay them, but they know that it's very likely we won't always turn up or match their intensity and desire away from home. The goals we are conceding, the Watford one, the United one, the Bournemouth one, the one tonight with Cech...these are all circus goals...once a season stuff, yet it's happening regularly. Over the last 10 years, the common themes are the above.

 

[Big Poppa]

I wish we could blame the woeful form on bad referee decisions, unlucky and so on.

But the fact is in most of the away matches, we did not deserve the win.

Like today, we had the possessions. But we barely generated any chances. Let's be honest, if their players were not so s***, they could have another 3 goals.

I'd also like to point out we went into Stamford bridge twice and played really well, and thoroughly deserved the two draws. Different situation I know. But we are really struggling against weaker teams at the moment and it is costing us top 4.

It's not just against the weaker teams. We haven't won an away game against any of the current top 5 since that 2-0 win at Man City in January 2015. That's over 3 years ago. We have taken only 26 points from the last 78 available away from home. It's an issue that's gone unaddressed for the last 2-3 seasons.

Our possession game without purpose makes us extremely vulnerable. We just end up playing the ball side to side in front of the opposition posing little threat while they set traps and invariably exploit our positional indiscipline when we lose possession. Alexis gave a great interview recently with Henry where he explained his frustration and why he kept coming so deep to get the ball. He wanted to get the ball early from midfield into space, on the run so he was facing up to the opposition. Instead we only play to feet after 15/20 passes and by then he has his back to goal and is easier to defend against.

People might think I'm making Xhaka a scapegoat here but he's one of the primary culprits of the safe risk-free passing game that inhibits both our defence and attack. His first touch is often to steady himself rather than set up a quick release to a forward. It's not only Xhaka though, this has become a facet of our play.

I see it in Iwobi, El Neny, Ramsey, and at times even Özil. There's a lack of directness that makes us passive and impotent. Nobody drives at the opposition full backs which means they can remain compact and squeeze space in the middle. To exacerbate that, we never set out to physically impose ourselves on the opposition. All our work is with the ball and only the ball. This makes us easier to defend against because we aren't looking to force errors, only originate chances.

Wenger's inability or unwillingness to address this is infuriating. His belief that there is no difference to playing away as there is to playing at home despite having managed in England for 23 years is either pathological self denial or incompetence of the highest order. He is not coaching the invincibles any more, and I wish he would see that.

 

[Preacher]

This thread should be more popular than squad cost debate thread.

Sad, that it isn't.

 

[A_G]

Even with average away form this team would be right in the thick of the CL race.

 

[krengon]

It's really weird, to a point you can't just say it's an anomaly. I remember a few years ago our away record was great(maybe even better than our home form during that period)

Another major issue is how many points we've dropped from winning positions against midtable teams and lower.. off the top of my head I recall Swansea, West brom, Bournemouth and Watford. Once we are in the lead against these kinds of teams that should result in a win the majority of times and hardly ever result in a loss.

 

[Jae]

Bunch of bottlers away from home, it's not like we haven't got a team capable of winning quite a few of those matches.

 

[Divided_Pie]

Yeah we've conceded some insane goals, today two of them.

Think that is what's changed from having a very good away record in recent seasons, we are giving the ball away a lot more. Good article on it here from a couple weeks ago. Alexis was the biggest culprit, but it goes way beyond him.

http://news.arseblog.com/2018/01/arsenal-give-the-ball-away-like-a-mid-table-club-by-the-numbers/

Interesting article - particularly this bit:

"With Arsenal, the majority of the bad touches, dispossessed, and bad passes were from Alexis Sanchez (396 of Arsenal’s 3128 turnovers as defined above, 13%). But from my view, the problem looks systemic. Xhaka has 336 of these events (his are mostly bad passes) and Bellerin 265. Granted, they get a lot of the ball but they are also supposed to be more careful with it because they are playing deeper. Compare them to Özil 229 and Lacazette 220. Özil especially, because he averages 69 passes per game and most of them are in the attacking zone where teams typically try to win the ball back more aggressively."
​

I think we DO have a player who can keep possession against pressure - Jack Wilshere. Wenger should play him deep, in place of Xhaka, IMO. Against Sp**s he played him further up the pitch, which not only limited his ability to use this talent, but also forced Özil out wide where he is less involved and less effective. Poor tactics by Wenger.

I'd like to see Jack in Xhaka's DLP role, with either Ramsey or Elneny beside him, depending on the competition.

 

[c00lguy]

I'm not sure, because it wasn't too many seasons ago that we were struggling a lot at home whilst doing much better away.

 

[Big Poppa]

I'm not sure, because it wasn't too many seasons ago that we were struggling a lot at home whilst doing much better away.

This is an almost entirely different group of players though...

 

[celestis]

It's really weird, to a point you can't just say it's an anomaly. I remember a few years ago our away record was great(maybe even better than our home form during that period)

Another major issue is how many points we've dropped from winning positions against midtable teams and lower.. off the top of my head I recall Swansea, West brom, Bournemouth and Watford. Once we are in the lead against these kinds of teams that should result in a win the majority of times and hardly ever result in a loss.

Our away record was elite till Dec 2016 .

 

[serenitynow]

Its that stupid blue kit !

Play in the black one from now on.

This. Everytime I can remember us wearing this eyesore of a kit, we've dropped points.