Chelsea v Arsenal match analysis reveals Wenger’s mistakes and Chelsea’s strengthes

Last time Arsenal and Chelsea met, The Blues were in middle of the table and eight points behind Manchester City at the top. The final third of that match saw Chelsea three goals down as Conte introduced 3-4-3 formation and never looked back again. That was the end of September and, after yesterday return clash with Arsenal, The Blues are running away with the title.

Coming to Stamford Bridge Arsenal had to win the game in order to keep themselves in the title race. It was always difficult as they were on low morale after shock defeat against Watford at Emirates. Injuries to Santi Cazorla, Aaron Ramsey, Granit Xhaka and Mohamed Elneny away with Egypt squad made it even tougher challenge. In the end, Wenger had little to chose from. He opted for Oxlade Chamberlain alongside Coqueline and Mesut Özil in the midfield. Iwobi and Walcott were kept on wings while Sanchez kept his place as a central forward. Rather unusual pair in the center of midfield had to face the best center midfield pair in the Premier League – Kante and Matić.

On the other side, Conte had no worries regarding his first eleven. No injuries, no suspensions and only doubt was Willian or Pedro. In the end Spaniard got the place as the right sided attacker.

Chelsea doesn’t change the first eleven, and they didn’t change their approach to the match against Arsenal compared to the previous game when they faced Liverpool. Conte has full confidence in his team when the opposition has the ball and Chelsea was happy to give it to Arsenal.The host came out of the dressing room with clear idea to sit tight and get Arsenal on counter attack.

Wenger, on the other hand, doesn’t seem to have the nerve, desire or confidence in his team to sit out the match and play counter attacking or any kind of patient football. He is all about possession and that is what he wanted on Stamford Bridge.

When Chelsea had the ball in their defensive third Arsenal was resolute to press them tight and win the ball high up the pitch from the first whistle. Once they were in position to set up an attack, Arsenal were pushing the defensive line very high. At the beginning they started with Özil on the left and Iwobi in the center, presumably to keep physically stronger players against Kante and Matić. Shortly after they conceded they had reverted back to Özil in the middle.

17 players in about 20 yards of depth. It is difficult to find space if there is no space even whe you face a lesser team than Chelsea

Above we see Arsenal in attacking third looking to find a way around Chelsea defence. Central midfielders are connected with red lines while attackers are blue. You can see how Walcott was cutting inside while Iwobi holds his position on the left touchline to keep five men defence stretched (full back Gabriel holds the other side). Throughout the match Özil was exchanging place with Sanchez trying to drop deep and unsettle the defence. However, the central area was covered with two disciplined defensive lines. As none of creative players or attackers on Arsenal team sheet were particularly inspired, the visitors found hard to get anywhere despite pushing numbers forward. Note also the space where almost both teams are positioned, it isn’t more than 20 yards in depth.

In circumstances where Arsenal had to meet the top team in the league after a loss, and they needed the win to keep their hopes for the title alive, they often committed eight to ten men on Chelsea’s half. After going a goal down their desire to get an equalizer pushed them even more forward. However, the pressure really got to them as none of their advanced players had shown any inspiration to threaten the hosts.

Arsenal relentlessly pushed forward looking for an equaliser, however, they left Diego Costa and Hazard 2v2 with their two center backs. A source of constant counter attacking threat to their own goal

The image above really illustrates how Arsenal’s impatience and pressure were benefiting such an organized team Chelsea is. As whole squad pushed forward very high they really compressed the space (those 20yds from previous image) reducing themselves possibility to move around Chelsea’s defence. As Arsenal defensive line is very high up the pitch, and both full backs advanced into the attacking zones, whenever Chelsea managed to win the ball in their half (15 times), they had 2v2 opportunity in the center of the pitch. From these positions Chelsea was able to create numerous counter attacking opportunities since Koscielny and Mustafi couldn’t cope with Diego Costa and Hazard. Once Pedro, Alonso and Moses got higher up the pitch as well, Arsenal was often a man short while defending.

The true strength of Conte’s side. Even when third of the team changed their positions within seconds, the overall organization remained uncompromised. 

If we take a look again at the same situation we can see another feature of Conte’s team. David Luiz has stepped up into the midfield to make a clearance, Moses recognized it and didn’t run forward to his “normal” position at the right wing. The same process went on with Pedro who held back his run forward in order to keep the team shape intact. This might be a small adjustment but it tells us how well organized Chelsea is. They are very fluid in their movement when situation calls for it and in few seconds a third of a team change their lines but the team overall organization remains intact.

This kind of concentration in defence gives confidence to two forward players who can then be fully creative and free to play to their instincts. In the end, Hazard scores a wonder goal few moments later.

To conclude, Chelsea wins again due to their impeccable team performance while Arsenal crushes under the pressure unable to create anything substantial while the game was still in their reach. Without the patience to shift Chelsea around and organize slowly they pushed forward in numbers disregarding the counter attack threat. This in the end only helped Chelsea to achieve one of the easiest wins this year.

While the difference in individual quality between two London teams isn’t so great, the difference in team organization, ideas of how to break the opposition and concentration to stick to the plan shows who is really the team and who is much less so at the moment.

A detail that cost United the win against Arsenal, Man Utd v Arsenal match analysis

Before the match at Old Trafford, Arsene Wenger met Mourinho 14 times and failed to get a single victory against his side. Everything he thought about for the Saturday game was useless and, in the end, he was saved by a bit of luck and good intuition. Two changes gave him an assist and a first goal against Mourinho in nine long years to claim a point in a match with Man Utd.
THE CONTEXT

Arsenal came to Old Trafford without defeat since Day 1 of the Premiership wit three wins and two draws in last five matches. Wenger’s team was a clear favourite against the hosts that didn’t connect two wins in a row since August. To make it worse, United had to face Arsenal without suspended Zlatan Ibrahimović and without both starting center backs, Eric Bailly and Chris Smalling. Nevertheless, Mourinho was encouraged by a win in League Cup against Guardiola’s City and two matches in Premiership without a loss. Thus, he ditched six men defence he employed to get some kind of result against Liverpool and Chelsea, and went for relatively open match against Arsenal. Well, to his standards at least.

Although he didn’t park the bus, Mourinho didn’t want to risk too much either. It was yet another difficult game for him since a defeat would settle him back after carefully nurturing his team shaky confidence level in recent games.

MANCHESTER UNITED – DEFENSIVE ORGANIZATION

United didn’t rush mindlessly into pressing Arsenal and covered spaces in the middle

Above you can see how he, mostly successfully, closed the middle of the pitch forcing Arsenal to build up down the flanks. He was defending zonally oriented on a man while Arsenal was transitioning to the middle third.

He did press Arsenal on his half, however, he did it very selectively. There were two triggers for Man Utd to get out of their defensive shape and close down on opponent in their half.

First trigger were deliberate long balls from their own defensive line. United doesn’t dwell on the ball in their half if they can avoid it. Even less so when opposition is pressing high. Without Ibrahimović upfront, Mourinho instructed his defenders to clear the ball into specific areas. Mainly down the flanks and near the touchline. Reasoning behind this is that receiver of the pass will have less space to cleanly trap the ball. This was the trigger for whole squad to raise their defensive line. Rashford was first man to chase the ball ensuring the receiving full back/defender has also minimal possible time to turn towards United goal and pick his next pass. In meanwhile, midfielders ensured to man mark anyone who could receive that pass. Theoretically this would give Man United a chance to clear the ball on their own terms and react to it with a possibility to win the ball high up the pitch.

Another pressing trigger was largely a reaction to Arsenal actions as United players would defend from front to chase down any back pass to Peter Čeh. The point behind wasn’t really to win the ball high, but to force an opponent to hoof the ball in an uncontrolled manner and then regain the possession since Arsenal lack any strength or aerial ability in the advanced positions. Theoretically, that would allow United to win the ball deep/medium position while opening routes for a quick counter attack when they still had their attacking players in advanced positions against unbalanced defence.

ARSENAL COUNTERING UNITED ZONAL DEFENCE IN MEDIUM BLOCK

While Arsenal managed to get into the middle third, if Sanchez couldn’t think of something to do with the ball, they were largely without an idea against quite deep and staggered UTD defence

Above you see one of solutions that Arsenal provided to avoid the marking in middle third. One of the weaknesses of man oriented zonal marking is that defender will follow the opponent in his zone. Arsenal is using this with clever off the ball movement from Mesut Ozil and Chilean Sanchez. While Ozil leaves his position in middle towards the right channel, Pogba follows him opening the space. This, in turn, is used by Chilean who drops deep from his central forward position. Depending on reaction of defence, he might have time and space to face goal side or, at least, pick a back/sideways pass.

Arsenal used reverse movement as well to the same effect. At times it was Theo Walcott who would make horizontal movement from right wing position into the centre of the pitch. This would either pull away his marker Darmian or make an overload in the middle. If Darmian followed, a space would open for right back Jenkins to exploit.

MANCHESTER UNITED – OFFENSIVE ORGANIZATION

Due to high value of points in this game (more for the confidence of the team than table position), United was quite reluctant to commit too many men to offensive. This was surely influenced by presence of Theo Walcott who can exploit the space if given. Thus, Darmian largely stayed back together with Michael Carrick to cover for counter attacks. This meant Mourinho had only two central midfielders and Juan Mata to connect their midfield and attack. Despite this, the work rate and off ball ability of Mata/Herrera proved quality more important than quantity.

While Arsenal was quite solid on defence, the quality of Mata and Herrera provided numerous troubles for them. Above animation is an example of typical movement those two made. Herrera was able to find space and use the ability of Martial’s one trick (cut inside) to receive the pass and unbalance the defence. After Herrera got attention from defence pulling out of the line one of the centre backs there was space behind that was open for Mata to exploit.

This cooperation in the end resulted with seemingly easy finish from Mata from inside the box. However, while it looked pretty straight forward clear chance, it took great deal of composure and technique to connect with such a fast ball. You will notice it was gain a third man’s run that concluded Man United move.

Unlike Mourinho, Wenger was trying to unsettle United defence with number of players in the offensive third. While Sanchez was very effective in a deep lying striker role coming deep to pick a pass, he had no support Mata provided to his team mates. Whenever Sanchez went deep Ozil and Walcott went infield often joined by Ramsey. Unlike United, that failed to give an advantage to Arsenal as their runs were predictable and United defence always had an answer due to deeper stance.

To conclude, United did very well to both, limit Arsenal and create in front of their goal. Visitors were saved by a bit of luck and hunch from Wenger who, midway through the second half, introduced Olivier Giroud and changed the fruitless approach. In the end, Mourinho might be held accountable on the fact he left Rashford on the left flank when Oxlade-Chamberlain was introduced. It was young forward who was supposed to mark Arsenal winger in right back position when fatal cross to Giroud was swung in. Either way, Murinho didn’t get what he wanted despite a solid performance and his team is still looking for confidence although this game seemed a step in right direction. Arsenal on other hand, had a poor performance, especially in the second half and lost the opportunity to challenge the very top of the table. Yet, it is a long season.

EPL: Arsenal v Chelsea Demolition Derby

Highly anticipated London Derby between Arsenal and Chelsea turned out to be a “Demolition Derby” as hosts trash Chelsea with confidence. Although Chelsea went into the match with psychological edge as they won three of last five encounters at Emirates and didn’t lose any, recent form showed Arsenal unbeaten in last six competitive games. Chelsea, on the other hand, lost to Liverpool and needed an extra time to go through next round of League Cup against Leicester in midweek.
In terms of line ups, Arsene Wenger opted for Coquelin and Cazorla in deep midfield roles and left Granit Xhaka on the bench despite some great performances in recent weeks. Since Cazorla was dropped deeper in midfield, Alex Iwobi found his place on left wing and that was pretty much it. On Conte’s side of the pitch, Oscar lost his place and was replaced by Fabregas as center midfielder while rest of the squad was left untouched compared to previous EPL games.

From the beginning of the match Chelsea was set up to defend very deep avoiding any pressure on arsenal midfield trying to force the ball to the wings provoking the crosses to rather small forward line. Seems as Conte’s plan was to invite the opposition deep into attacking third and upon seizing the ball searching for direct balls to Hazard and Costa who would hold onto the ball until rest of the squad arrives if immediate counter attack wasn’t possible.

However, early mistake from Cahill who was caught in possession quickly disturbed greatly the away team. Before they knew it, Arsenal was already two goals up and Chelsea had a mountain to climb after only a quarter of an hour.

Five players in midfield are nice luxury as you can give Hazard a bit of time to rest. However, if you also defend deep and put no pressure on the ball, you essentially invite the opposition to pick their passes and off ball moves. Arsenal is not a team that wouldn’t take those opportunities

Above you see the screenshot of teams few seconds before Walcott scores second goal for Arsenal and can observe all the problems Chelsea has with their defensive plan.

First, defence is sitting very deep above the box, but that wouldn’t be a problem if anyone from the midfield bothered to pressure Cazorla. He has all the time and space to pick his next pass, and above all, he is already facing Chelsea goal.

Besides deep defensive line and no pressure at all on ball carrier, there is another flaw intrinsic to Chelsea game plan. As they basically wait for Arsenal to kindly turn over the ball, Hazard is exempt from defensive duties since he is waiting to burst forward in counter attack leaving Azpilicueta 1 on 1 with Bellerin. Since Chelsea essentially plays with five in midfield Conte can afford himself to spare Hazard some of defensive duties, however, the rest of midfield has to work much harder to get to ball if Conte wants to get away with Hazard’s role.

Few passes later ball indeed comes to Bellerin on right who then assists Walcott and Hazard tries to cover the ground but is too late since his initial position is off and rest of midfield fails to apply pressure on ball carrier.

Maybe even bigger problem Chelsea had taking the ball out of their defensive third and forming their attacks in any sensible way. This was largely due to great team pressing from Arsenal, but again, Chelsea itself, assisted their rivals.

Positioning of full backs is crucial for building the possession from the back. Ivanović should stand at least 15 yards up-field to create more space for back three. Chelsea shoots it’s own leg by letting N’Golo Kante to be a man who connects midfield and defence

If you want to play from goalkeeper and gradually move the whole team from defensive to middle third, you need to provide space for your defenders to play around the opposition pressing. However, if you look at above screenshot you see Ivanović and Cahill in 5 yards of space. This allows Iwobi and Oezil to close down three Chelsea players. Ivanović should be at least 10 to 15 yards ahead of his position which would move Iwobi away and give much needed room for Kante, Cahill and Luiz to operate.

It is difficult to understand what was Ivanović thinking, however, it wasn’t an isolated incident but a pattern that went on through whole first half. With Arsenal determined to chase down every ball, this put the defence under a lot of pressure and lost balls in their own defensive third and when Arsenal didn’t get the ball, it only produced rushed clearances that Arsenal had no problems mopping up.

One can’t think that Chelsea or Conte doesn’t know how to position themselves when building up from the back, it is speaking a lot about mental state of Chelsea players as they came on the pitch. Another thing that is completely down to Conte is that Kante was designated player to connect defence and midfield. This was the case in match against Liverpool as well and while Ngolo is great defensive minded player, at the moment, he simply doesn’t seem to be the one who can keep the ball under pressure nor the one who can control it and evade the pressing by dribbling his way out. This makes Chelsea builds up play much worse than it really should be if Oscar, Fabregas or Matić were the ones to fill the role.

In meanwhile Chelsea conceded another goal after losing possession deep in the Arsenal half and Conte finally changes the system to 3-5-2 during the second half. Highly risky endeavour but it is Conte’s preferred way he used with Juventus and Italy. As the game was effectively lost he probably wanted to test what the team has learned in the training ground and it wasn’t worse than the start of the game. However, since he couldn’t get all the players he wanted during the transfer window, there is still a lot of work before we se proper Conte’s Chelsea.

For any Blues fan it has to be hard to see their team struggling especially as they looked very good in the beginning of the season. Match against West Ham went very well and team did play “Conte football”. However, for some reason, Conte replaced Oscar as deep lying playmaker with Kante and this left consequences on the team’s ability to transition from the defensive zone into the middle third.

Although Chelsea was ridden with mistakes and wrong choices throughout the match, it doesn’t really take anything away from the great performance by Wenger’s Arsenal.

They went on aggressively and took everything Chelsea had offered. They closed down their transition and exploited all the mistakes. Iwobi was particularly good with his direct and quick short passing showing that despite tender age he can contribute massively to the Arsenal play style. Another important thing for Wenger will be the way Granit Xhaka has stepped in his role of defensive midfielder offering his passing range and long shots to Wenger and Arsenal team. If they were criticized for weak center back pairing before, it seems that with Mustafi alongside Koscielny, their defence is improving as well.

EPL: Arsenal v Liverpool 3:4 – Analysis

No doubt Arsenal and Liverpool played a match of the season at the Emirates on Sunday. It remains to be seen how long this title will hold, however. Season opener is always a tricky affair as no one wants to lose, luckily, both teams went for a win and the match didn’t disappoint.
Arsene Wenger had some tough time deciding the starting line up as he was missing six players. Welbeck, Mertersacker and Gabriel were injured while Oezil, Giroud and Koscielny are still not in shape after EURO. In defence he had little to chose and new signing Rob Holding made a début paired with unproven Calum Chambers. Only real surprise was on left wing where another unproven player, Alex Iwobi, took place ahead of Oxlade-Chamberlain in the starting line up. All in all, Wenger was forced to pick severely weakened central defender pairing while deliberately sidelineing Oxlade-Chamberlaine.

Similar problems in defence had Juergen Klopp who was missing new signing Joel Matip due to injury while Mammadou Sakho was out of squad for breaching the discipline during the pre-season. Last year’s starters James Milner and Daniel Sturridge were also missing. However, unlike Wenger, Klopp did his shopping during the summer and had new signings Ragnar Klavan, Georginio Wijnaldum and Sadio Mane to replace injured players. By the end of the match it will prove decisive as all players that made a début for Liverpool proved crucial for victory over Arsenal.

No doubt Juergen Klopp was very angry as poor positioning from Moreno undones whole concept of controlled transition into middle third

As expected, both teams opted for high pressing game from early on. You can see above four Arsenal players locking down six Liverpool players which lead to a lot of problems for visiting team. At times Liverpool had trouble getting out of their defensive zone having to rely on long clearances more than Klopp had hoped for. This might be the reason Wenger went for Iwobi instead of Oxlade-Chamberlain as Nigerian is much harder worker thus more useful chasing down opposition defence. Whole lock down on above screenshot is down to Alberto Moreno who is way too central congesting the space and making it easier for Walcott to mark himself and Klavan. As this is not bad enough, his poor positioning clogs the midfield as Wijnaldum is directly affected by Moreno’s positioning so he is restricted to occupy more central position as well.

Wijnaldum’s role, as well as Henderson’s is to drop deeper when Liverpool is pressed high and help them establish numerical advantage to transition the ball from defensive into middle third. Whole Klopp’s idea gets destroyed by poor positioning from left back.

When out of pressing Liverpool organized transition with four players in a square. While full backs maintain the width, wingers go central

While high pressing triggers Wijnaldum’s and Henderson’s runs deep, deeper opposition triggers forward runs from full backs as you can see above. Liverpool has a solid base of two centre backs and two midfielders who create a box to control the transition into middle half of the pitch with numerical advantage. While width is achieved by pushing the full backs high, wingers Coutinho and Mane get into central positions to occupy the centre backs. This image also tells an important role Firmino plays for Klopp. He has relatively free role to roam left and right.

As match progressed in deeper in the first half Arsenal scored after Henderson lost the ball deep into his half to Alex Iwobi who assisted Walcott. Five minutes after the goal were best football Arsenal offered in the match with crisp passing and quick runs from central players, particularly Aaron Ramsey. However, Liverpool regained their composure and put their foot on the game rather quickly. After a masterful free kick in the injury time they were back and second half looked very promising.

If you compare this screenshot with the one above you will find a lot of similarities. It shows basic idea of free roaming central forward and overload on left side of the pitch

Although Liverpool pressed high in first half, they did it with even more energy after the second half had begun. Only four minutes into the second half comes the moment Klopp will be especially happy about. As you can see in picture above, Liverpool positioning in attacking third is very much same as in second still shot, albeit on the left side of the pitch this time. Free roaming Firmino changes places with Coutinho and passes him a ball from left into the central area. Coquelin and Elmeny fail to close him down and Chambers is forced to leave the defensive line opening space behind. Skilful pass finds Wijnaldum who exploits that space and Liverpool is through. Subsequent cross from Wijnaldum finds his partner in midfield and Lallana who scores with great finish.

Although skills to pull the move off are down to players, the move itself is conceived and done by Klopp on training pitch. At that point Liverpool stole the ball from Arsenal and controlled the game completely. While Arsenal tried to get back with more pressing Klopp’s team employed more direct balls and threatened even further. Quarter of an hour later they were three goals clear of hosts and it looked like the match was over.

Despite the fact Arsenal managed to get two goals back, Liverpool wasn’t really in danger of letting points go. Well, it was, but not from well executed team play by Arsenal. In conclusion, Liverpool showed they play as a team more than Arsenal does at this early stage. Also, the quality of players Klopp brought in, compared to those Wenger could muster together, was too much for London team.