Losing away to Nottingham Forest, Arsenal put an end to many suspense in one fell swoop before the final round started.
Because Arsenal lost three points, Manchester City won the Premier League title three rounds ahead of schedule. Many friends began to summarize the process that Arsenal occupied the top spot for 248 days, but failed to win the championship.
But in fact, starting from the three consecutive draws a month ago, this ending will not be surprising, not to mention Arsenal’s injuries in some key positions at the end of the season, which makes it logical to miss the championship.
However, not long ago, he vowed that Arteta, who wants to fight with Manchester City until the last moment in mathematics, lost to Nottingham Forest and helped his opponent to finish relegation one round ahead of schedule. His "big job" was very "interesting".
Of course, it’s interesting in a negative sense.
In this game, Arsenal formed a 343 wingless formation.
Viol, Gabriel and Ben White are three defenders, Thomas, jorginho, Odegard and Zaka are the four midfielders, and Trossat, Jesus and Saka are the three strikers.
Of course, with and without the ball, Arsenal’s position will change when the opponent’s attack direction is different, but this is the general division between the front, middle and back.
After the game, when asked why the defence was adjusted so much, Arteta gave the answer that "we faced many problems this week, and some players only trained for half an hour yesterday".
The implication is that you are forced to "live the whole life".
However, Arteta is not without methods to put out a traditional four-guard defense line.
Zincenko was injured, and Thirny was there all the time, but he couldn’t perform the tactical play of receiving the waistline in the full-back as skillfully as Zincenko did.
In this way, either forced Thirny to execute tactics, or because he changed to the traditional full-back tactics of going straight up and down, so in high probability, Arteta took the initiative to "live the whole life":
Since Thirny can’t play adduction tactics well, he simply doesn’t want this full-back position. Anyway, Zincenko adduction is equivalent to a lower back, so simply put an extra lower back, and then let Thomas, who can run and fight than jorginho, pull and defend like this:
However, the situation on the field is always more complicated than the idea on the tactical board.
After the opening ceremony, Arsenal’s structure in the center and backcourt was obvious. When there were three defenders and four midfielders, the four midfielders changed their receiving positions and running directions according to the situation:
Before the threat was made, the defensive end made a mistake first.
In the 7th minute, Nottingham Forest directly hit the right behind in a big space. viol worked very hard, but he still couldn’t bite Gibbs White:
After carrying the impact of the forest, Arsenal finally played something on the offensive end:
Especially this rib attack, it really shows the advantages of more people and more points in the middle and front court:
However, during this attack, a hidden problem was also exposed: the right half of the fans gathered and played so lively, but what about the left half?
When Jesus and his teammates go through the right rib together, they should attack the door from the left. Where is the man who outflanks the back?
As can be seen from the lens of this frontcourt attack, it is Zaka who contains the forest defense line on the weak side:
Of course, this season’s Zaka performed very well, and the offensive talent was set off by Arteta’s tactics, but compared with before, did Zaka have any bright play in this game?
In Arsenal’s constipation attack, can you think of a threatening attack in which Zaka participated?
Is this a personal problem for Zaka? No, because the attack from the back row is the same as the attack fixed in the core area. Is the difficulty the same?
This is Artta’s problem.
So in the first half, the most common scene of Arsenal’s attack was that Jesus, Saka and others fought for their lives in a narrow area in the right half, and they played individually:
It’s like receiving a special offensive task that can only be cut in from this side. As for the previous route and transfer from right to left, the first half completely disappeared, and even if it was a cross from the right, the outflanking in front of the door and the weak side was completely insufficient:
That’s probably what it looks like when you break an arm.
If it’s just an offense that doesn’t work, as a result, in the 19th minute of the first half, Odegard made a mistake to help Forest score a goal, and at the same time, it also strengthened their determination to put a bus in the backcourt:
It is more difficult for our side to attack, but the opponent’s defensive counterattack is more determined:
Therefore, in the first half, the biggest gain of Arteta’s big job was that they got 80% possession rate in the data, but the offensive attack could not be penetrated and the defense was not stopped.
After coming back in the second half, Arteta obviously made some adjustments in the dressing room, which is reflected in the fact that Jesus no longer often pulls to the right half, but stays in front of the door, thus giving Arsenal some meaning from the right cross:
But the whole left half of the fan is useless, because even if the space is obvious, Zaka and Kiviol on this side can’t use the space in the bottom line area:
The whole attack width can’t be opened, and the threat attack can only be hard chiseled from the right:
So in the 60-minute interval, Arteta overthrew his starting layout, replaced viol with Thirny, and covered the right road with Thomas, so he still insisted on his own content, except that Thirny was better than viol:
But in the last half hour, it is more likely to score the second goal from yourself or forest:
So after a big show, I lost 0-1 away.
In fact, from the result, the champion basically belongs to Manchester City. Even if this game wins the forest, Chelsea has no hope to intercept Manchester City, so it is nothing more than the difference between one day earlier and one day later.
However, compared with leaving suspense to the last moment of mathematics, the process of Arsenal losing the game and the process of many games being either flat or negative at the end of the season actually exposed a bad tactical trend of Artta:
I don’t care about the defensive end and the defensive turn.
In the draw with Liverpool and West Ham United, he gave the reason that he didn’t kill the game, let the relegated Southampton score three goals and play with Brighton.
If you can’t see the above games clearly, this game, with Thirny, directly cuts off the position of the left-back for the sake of its own system and attack, and creates a nondescript 343, resulting in a loss of evidence in attack and defense and playing such a game.
His master Guardiola used to play full-back, but this season he played stones’s top. He didn’t even say that he would directly cut a position on the back line. Arteta went further than his master.
Although he lost the championship, Arteta took Guardiola to extremes.
