A glimpse of the mountain top

An Arsenal blog from a coach’s perspective

I wonder how many goals Arsenal have scored this season that were not scored by our striker.

I never really research stats, but here goes. I’ll be right back.

Ok, got it. We’ve scored 37 in all competitions and 26 were scored by players other than the striker. 

That’s plenty enough mathematics for me. You can work out the percentage if you want.

What I want to do is point out that in regards to the striker position, football has changed and not many people are talking about it.

There are fewer and fewer strikers in world football who get 20+ league goals a season. In all leagues.

If you don’t have one of those, then you have to either whine, complain or wish you did or you could do something about it.

There are, of course, benefits to both. We’ve had seasons where Aubameyang did it, but we were nowhere close to challenging. Arteta was one of the first coaches who came to the conclusion that you do not need to rely on a player who is not really ever going to score 20+ goals in the season, but that what really matters is that the teams have enough attacking threat throughout.

And I certainly do not have the energy to find out how many teams win major trophies with a star striker versus sharing the load, What is evident is that wingers in particular have become far more prevalent in goalscoring charts. From a coaching point of view, there is great intelligence to putting a goalscorer out wide as Manchester United found out last season. They are not double marked by arguably the opponents best two defenders. There is more space, far more room to run with the ball out wide.

Real Madrid haven’t tried to force players to replicate Benzema but very smartly have put their midfield and attackers in their best positions and let them share the load. As we have seen, Bellingham is the top scorer and he has been given somewhat of the free role in attacking phases of play. In him we can see how a player can score so many goals if he is elusive. Essentially, he cannot be marked by any one player.

I think the ultimate goal at Arsenal is to have all three attackers scoring 15 goals and getting 15 assists each. Saka and Martinelli have come up with these goods and yet there is so much focus on our striker position.

I’d love to find out that having a more prolific striker and most certainly one with an aerial threat would be super helpful, but I had an epiphany that I should’ve had far earlier whilst watching Arsenal play Burnley.

As usual, we had at least 422 corners and as usual, the ball was delivered directly into the 6 yard box at least seven times. Saliba’s goal is actually a whole lot more difficult than it looked but my guess is that at some point in the last month, Arteta has put a little more pressure on the defenders to score more often from corner kicks. The delivery is ordinarily good 75% of the time and we have so many of these opportunities. If you add on the plethora of crosses that we seem to be having more and more of, there are opportunities for a huge variety of players.

The corner situation is most interesting to me. We have had at least five tall towers in that 6 yard box all season long. Jover is getting a lot of credit as we are the best in the league at scoring from set plays but as much as that is a good stat, I’m really not sure that our percentage of goals to crosses would even put us in mid table. I’m not sure how you feel but I’m honestly surprised when we score a header. Whether it be a corner or a cross, I’m surprised.

I hope that Arteta has put pressure on the tall towers because the tall towers that the opponents have have a 50-50 chance and are winning far more than we are. In fact, with us taking the kick for the cross, you’d think that it should be more like 60/40 in our favour.

If we still manage to sign Gary Mc Goalthreat this January, I’m sure that we will have far more players than Gary score far more goals than he can. 

All this may sound obvious and the same for every team, but it’s simply to point out that for as much pressure as we put on the center forward to score more often, our center backs for example, are actually getting as many, if not more opportunities in the game, than our striker.

I’m currently not in the camp that wants to spend too much time applauding Nicholas Jover. Much of what he does actually confuses me because I think there is a better way. 

As much as the tall towers could do better from set pieces, there are opportunities for almost every player during every game.

Watching Zinchenko score I’m reminded that he has at least two efforts every game that he plays. Declan Rice has at least two opportunities and our two number eights have at least double this.

It looks like Arsenal‘s biggest success this season has been learning a new way of playing. We have attempted to control games so as to manage fatigue and injury and the first part of it we have done very well. Many are saying Arsenal have not ‘clicked into gear.’ If you think about when this click happens, it is normally when you are three goals ahead. Everybody on your team gets an injection of confidence and seems twice the player. Everybody starts playing with more freedom and looser. You start seeing one touch and far more creativity as failure has little fear.

I think that Arsenal will ‘click into gear’ when they start becoming more ruthless as most every Arsenal game looks more like a defense versus attack drill.

Well done again to Saliba and Zinchenko. Saliba’s header is so easy to head over and not many players would have even thought to try what Zinchenko executed.

Those 3 goals were a little extra. On a day where regular wasn’t enough we put the car in 6th gear on enough occasions to take care of it. 

Moments of elite level football that give us a glimpse of the mountain top that Arsenal will get to shortly. 

POSITIVES:

+ If Ramsdale did not have similar lightning reactions then David Raya would get more flowers for some of the saves he has made recently. The ability to drop to the ground at that speed is more of a modern goalkeeping trait. Goalkeepers have become more athletic. That is probably because of more time and focus spent on speed agility and quickness as it was when I was younger. That save that Raya made in the first half was absolutely a sliding doors moment.

+ I feel like somebody in my position needs to give solutions rather than complain about Havertz. I have mentioned before that we are rarely finding him with aerial crosses and he is often available. I think it is also fair to mention that he arrives too early. If you think about when you play football, it is far easier to spot a moving object than a stationary one. Havertz doesn’t look like scoring a header when he does have opportunities because he’s doing it from a standing position. Making later runs would make his life much easier. 

Something else I noticed about him will probably bother Arteta. I know that our coach is big on the position of your body when you receive the ball. Havertz in the penalty area doesn’t have his body in a threatening shape. If he had his hips framed towards the goal, then he would have the one touch shot possibility. Not always possible, but certainly the optimal shape.

+ At half time I was making the suggestion that Saka and Martinelli needed to switch wings. Because the game was like one of those old school playground games of headers and volleys it would’ve been more intelligent to put them on their favourite foot in order to cross with more accuracy. I still maintain that this would’ve been smarter. If Havertz could time his runs and Rice attack the box more then a Saka left foot cross from the left or a Martinelli right foot cross from the right would see a whole new dimension added to our attacking game. The option of Havertz and Rice running on to crosses cut back in the air will deliver goals and also make their defensive line try to cover this allowing more room for those closer to goal.

+ I noticed that Martinelli got his head up as soon as he got a step on the defender. He seemed reluctant to cross it but Martinelli getting his head up more frequently needs to be applauded because it’s one of the only pieces missing from his game.

+ We had a very interesting first half view here in the United States as Peacock decided to let a 15 year old film the first half from the upper tier. To be fair to the 15 year old, he gave us a good full field tactical view. I spent much of it keeping my eye on our Rolls Royce. He reminds me of something that I’ve just seen.

As I said, I am writing this whilst simultaneously watching the enigma of the Dave Matthews Band in concert.

If you can visualize what it would look like if you were ever invited to watch a rehearsal for an artist about to do his concert. As you can probably imagine the band would just saunter up onto the stage and three or four minutes later, when one of them gave a signal, they would start playing. You may not know the Dave Matthews Band as very few in Europe that I’ve ever asked seem to know them, but they are massive in the United States and Canada. There comes a time in the career of an artist where they could walk out onto the stage in stained white underpants and perform the concert backwards, and everybody would still go nuts. That’s what it’s like here at this concept. The band just walked out like they were doing a rehearsal. Barely acknowledged the crowd and just took their sweet time to do a final tuneup before they started. This level of fame and confidence is very much how I perceive William Saliba. Unfortunately I do not get to go to the games but he comes across as a player that could warm-up like Diego Maradona did by doing a few ball juggles interspersed with him putting the ball 50 yards into the air and trying to catch it between his legs on the way down. I see no arrogance in him and I don’t see it in Dave Matthews either. They just both have the swagger and talent that makes something that everybody else makes look very complicated, look rather easy.

He has started to take a liberty during games yet always gets away with it. Other players cannot do this. They would be chopped down by a frustrated opponent  five minutes later, but because he already has the respect of everybody, we just accept it.

As you will likely know, there have been athletes in the United States that have been so incredibly good, that they have played two professional sports in their career. Michael Jordan being one of them, Saliba comes across as someone who would fall into this category.

Somebody will probably offer him an NBA contract when he’s 35 and the opportunity to be the kicker for an NFL team when he’s 39 and he would likely tell them both no and decide to live in a shack on the beach in Antigua with a bevy of single ladies massaging his 3ft calves. His agent will show up twice a year and ask him to stare into a camera and say ‘Oui’ a few times to advertise his aftershave and ‘bon chance’ to advertise his clothing line.

+ Again, I have absolutely no interest in researching if there is ever been a player who has scored seven goals for a club in a year and all of them assisted by the same player. Some players just have a relationship on the field that is hard to fully understand but is based in such a strong belief in each other. As Leo said after the game when he sees the ball going to Saka he makes a run. Such a compliment. What is also a compliment to Saka is that he was again fairly quiet, but even in the game where he is fairly quiet, he makes a difference and gets yet another assist. It was interesting that in the second half we went almost exclusively down the left. I would imagine that is so we don’t risk injury with Saka and run his legs off.

And then there is this. So impressive.

+ Everybody takes digs at Zinchenko’s ability to defend. I think it’s also fair to say that, though he has at least one brain fart every game as he did at the very end of this one, that his lack is exaggerated by the elite level of defending in our other defenders. if he was playing left back for Aston Villa, then I’m not sure it would be such a thing.

If we are going to take a dig, then we have to speak well about what he does do defensively. I’ve noticed that he has a better defensive posture one on one since he was nutmegged and is not being dribble past. I bet if there is a statistic floating around out there for percentage of headers won by a defender who is 5 foot 10 or smaller that he could well be at the very top of the list.

I would absolutely love for him to have a chance to play left eight. 

Not only is he one of the most technical players in the Premier League and capable of likely playing anywhere but he is also very hard to read. He has a high level of deception to his personal choices that we need in order to dissect low blocks.

His shooting seems to be always on target, even though it is often blocked and so there is another facet of Arsenal‘s upcoming improvement that has not really been utilized or relied upon yet. I wish that his goal was the winning goal in the last two minutes of a game because it was worthy of that. You can’t really lose your mind if you score a spectacular goal when you are home against Burnley with half an hour left so I felt for him a little.

+ I think that it is fair to state that Leo Trossard suits Arsenal better as a striker than Eddie. Pointing back to what I said at the beginning of this piece, from the coaches point of view he cares a lot less about who scores and a lot more about the need for the team to score. 

NEEDS:

+ Fabio Vieira may have handed the opportunity for game time against weaker teams to another. His challenge was a modern day red card. If the player wouldn’t have gone down and rolled around like he was snipered then it’s one of those that is unlikely to be a red card.

HOPES:

+ Sometimes, a lot of the time, I find it hard to know if a player from a smaller club can play at the highest level. Sometimes I’m convinced. When I watched Mitoma. When I watched Xavi Simons. When I watch Charlie Patino. When I watch Alexander Mitrovic but it looks like his chance has passed.

I haven’t seen enough of Luca Koleosho to be sure, but every time I’ve watched him, he glows. He won’t stay at Burnley long. Is his ceiling a team like Crystal Palace or is it higher? Could he jump levels and play for a team like Arsenal. I’ve not seen a player (nearly) beat Saliba this season which is quite a feat. He seemed to have balls which he’d have to have to play for Arsenal.

When Partey signed, I said we’d want two of him. I think most want Rice at 6 and Rice at 8. When I see Sander Berge I wonder. Not quite Declan Rice, but who is. 

Not convinced by either player but worth a conversation.

FINAL THOUGHT:

I thought Burnley were rather impressive. Bold on the ball and extremely well organized. It took three very good goals to penetrate them.

I suppose that what this tells me is that Arsenal have extra gears. If there are 10 gears then we have only hit 6 of them. 

We’ve seen a glimpse of the mountain against City and maybe another but Arsenal are top of the league, top of their Champions League group and the glimpses are just glimpses.

Mike McDonald

Former Highbury regular. Moved to TN, USA in ’99. Married with 3 kids. Coached in UK and US for 27 years.
Mike McDonald Soccer Academy in Morristown TN, Olympic Development coach, Regional Premier League Champion.