AbouCuéllar
Author of A-M essays 📚
He should've tried to bypass with some long balls, however problem is all our forwards are weak as f*ck, and are unable to keep the ball for more than a second on their own.
A big problem is also that our long-balls were really inaccurate and poorly timed, today. Luiz a big culprit, and Holding being **** on the ball the bigger one. There was space for passes behind the Liverpool line, the diagonal to Wili was on loads, but Luiz's passing was frustratingly inaccurate.
Elneny can't pass and Xhaka doesn't have the composure to get his head up and make a pass like that under pressure, those are of course big problems too in trying to bypass a press. Our forwards not being strong is kinda irrelevant, if anything Auba and Wili are great out-balls because they make good, well-timed runs and have pace.
The comment about Ceballos vs. Liverpool last season is silly, it was under incoherent Em*ry, Ceballos will find it hard like any player against Liverpool's press, but it's plain to see he handles it far better than Xhaka or any other midfield currently in our ranks, and he created our two biggest chances (really not convinced Laca was offside on the first terrible finish).
We were lucky for a while with this formation, just like Emery was lucky at one point, but there's absolutely no football there. Again, my opinion is based more on the West Ham game, but this game today was just a confirmation that we've started the season with a completely wrong game plan and a couple of lucky results wont change that
Apples and oranges. Arteta has absolutely rode his luck and the results absolutely have belied the performances so far, but there is a coherent plan there, there is real instruction, which is why the players are all behind him and convinced that he is a top manager. Watch a video of our goals playing out of a press, it's got the massive, undeniable handprint of a manager effectively teaching good juego de posición in countering a press. The 3-4-3 in defence and 4-3-3 in possession has also been a very astute reading and use of our personnel, and well taught and translated to the pitch.
Arteta is doing what he can with his personnel, it's totally different to incoherent Emery and his early-season luck, or even the lucky run we had under Wenger in the first half of 13-14, where we similarly well out-performed our xG/actual performance level/actual level of tactical instruction.
Nitpicking there are a few times he has been arguably too conservative--Olympiakos, 2nd half against Leicester after having that approach come back to bite us in another match before which we should've learned from (forget which, but there was a precedent)--and today I winced a bit when I saw the lineup, but to be fair the idea to keep it close and bring on more attacking talent basically worked, Lacazette just bottled it, so while I still would've liked to see Dani from the start and maybe Saka for AMN, it's hard to be too critical.