Arsene Whinging -4- Aston Villa 0-3 Arsenal: Indepth tactical analysis

 Arsenal head to Villa Park

So far then we’ve

1. Identified the weaknesses of Arsenal along with examples.
2. Signed some players to cover those weaknesses
3. Devised some tactical systems to ‘mix it up’ but keep in the Arsenal spirit and philosophy of playing attractive football. I’m not exaggerating when I say that my teams on Football Manager are based around one principle: outscoring the opposition. That doesn’t mean having a shoddy defence and leaking goals in the quest forward, it means knowing when to retreat and when to attack.

The Match

Arsenal shape/tactics

Let’s start then, intuitively, with the formations. I chose to keep the 4-2-3-1 shape (which I term ‘narrow’ so I can save the tactical system in-game, 4-2-3-1 already existing obviously), which I will remind you features an attacking troika behind Van Persie who has the ball played to his feet, being the focus of passes up front as the ‘target man’. Fabregas sits in the centre, although he scampers from box to box, and functions as the main playmaker. The idea here as well is that he will arrive late on the edge of the area and lash it at the goal, which worked well in the friendlies preseason. Hazard acts as a forward who cuts inside, using his technique and flair to support play and get the occasional shot away when he can. Wilshere acts as a secondary playmaker advanced up the pitch, involved intimately in attack. Nasri acts as a trequartista, a deep-lying forward with an eye for flair. Vidal functions as a solid ball-winner who will still be involved in the passing game. Sagna and Clichy are given attacking licence as wing-backs. Squillaci gets the nod ahead of Koscielny and Djourou to partner Vermaelen at centre-back.

Villa have the home advantage but take a cautious 4-4-1-1 formation (which we shall remember is one of my ‘prepared’ tactics for a conservative situation). Whilst it looks on paper that the focus will be through the centre, the pace and crossing focus of Ashley Young and Matt Jarvis (nabbed from local rivals Wolves in the summer) will necessitate a wider focus. This shape means they will look to dominate the midfield- so it’s 5 versus 5 in midfield, just distributed differently. I’m happy with this contest and also intrigued- I anticipate their full backs to be quite cautious and merely support the play, which should leave room for manoeuvre with Sagna and Clichy being able to silence Young and Jarvis. Whilst Hazard, Wilshere and Nasri will be involved in wide play, our principle wide players will be Clichy and Sagna, depending on how far I can play them up the pitch.

I expect, therefore, that Villa will sit deep and counter-attack at pace. Therefore, I set Sagna and Clichy to manmark Young and Jarvis tightly- the blessing of this is that my players are as quick- if not quicker- than their wingers. Vidal and Fabregas should help too in this wide battle, although they may be occupied by the bullies of Reo-Coker and Petrov.

Stephen Ireland I consider a bit of a tactical misnomer- they will want him to attack the goal more than create opportunities for others. This should play into my central defence than disrupt my midfield game, which I feel is a tactical mistake by the AI.

The result?

As you can see, we dominated the game from the get-go. Possession, shots, we looked like the home side. Our only cagey area was bookings, with Squillaci and Sagna picking up yellow cards- that the Aston Villa attack had no result except to give 2 of our defenders bookings is good enough for me. We also had a much better shooting record- it may be sub-50%, but 5 shots on target and 60% of those resulting in goals is a realistic and good record. It reflected our domination of the game and possession, although as I suggested this may have been Villa’s plan (leave us in possession, steal the ball with Petrov/Reo-Coker and break quickly on the flanks)- which is basically what happened. As we can see here, the possession was firmly stacked in the midfield battle and in the Villa half:

The only area we didn’t excel Villa in was our own half, which is quite good really as it indicates we moved the ball into midfield quickly. This was helped by the central passing focus of our team, although both Clichy and Sagna offered a good wide threat (the former perhaps performing better, I will look at these below):

As you can see, most of the passing happened in the middle of the park, and most encouragingly most of it forward.  Some sideways passes are necessary in the 4-2-3-1 shape, with the involvement of players from various bands of the formation (for example Clichy surging forward). Importantly as well, there were several passes into the Villa box, and even inside (and you may notice a very long one from the top of the centre circle to the right-hand edge of the penalty area. These diagonal movements were the key to our goal scoring opportunities:

Match up the two diagrams and you can see the assists which led to the goals. As you can see here, these passes into the box were very effective, as compared to shooting slightly from range, here you can see our missed opportunities:

Furthermore, every shot which resulted in a goal was taken with the goal opening to the players’ right.

Next, let’s compare our aggressive shape [including heat map], which functioned higher up the pitch and pinned back Villa:

Here we have ours:

 As you can see, we sit high up the pitch, allowing quicker attacks. The players kept the shape well, with only a small gap between the defence and the midfield, a necessity in modern football (so as that opponents cannot exploit the lines in between). Various substitutions are why this is rendered as having 13 players, with Arshavin having to come on for Nasri (more on that later).

Compare this with Villa’s, and I’ve also included the distances they’ve had to run for illustration: see how much harder the midfield, and Carew up front alone, had to work than the defence who had to sit deep and defend for much of the match.

Now we have the effectiveness and directions of the movement up the pitch and past opponents. We were simply more expressive:

As you can see, this movement occurred all over the pitch, with no one area really getting more than another.

This is compared to the Villa selection below, which not only ran into offside more, but also was confined by all but one to the wide areas of the pitch. Whether this is because of the Villa focus, or because of the winning of the midfield battle is up for debate. It’s also significant that ‘big man’ John Carew made 1 attempt to run past an opponent and was caught offside.

This wide directness was a feature of the play. Let’s compare the distribution of the 2 goalkeepers, Brad Friedel for Villa:

And Frey for Arsenal:

Frey only made 2 passes into the opposition half, and those only marginally within the centre-circle. Friedel meanwhile booted it forward consistently into the midfield battlezone. Frey simply had a better pass-rate because of this, although Friedel was mostly successful despite this longer focus. Because of my colour blindness I can’t tell very well, but I think that Friedel (from the diagram) was more successful when he took Frey’s shorter approach. Friedel was also required to simply make more passes, some out of desperation (out of the pitch) outside of the area, signalling a reliance on passing the ball back to the keeper when pressured.

Midfield Battle/Comparison: Fabregas vs Petrov

The two captains! Both occupy the same position, central midfield. Although there’s little debate over whom is more talented.

Compare their passing style/record:

Petrov passed less, showing he was less involved in play, although most were forward, and this is positive. Fabregas meanwhile moved everywhere, playing sideways, back, out of the defence, forwards. He was the focus of a lot of interceptions, showing he was being marked and targeted. He also picked up an assist for a pass for Hazard’s goal on the 52nd minute.

Were Villa, simply, poor then? They certainly were in their area of focus: look at Petrov’s passes and they show their focus on moving the ball out wide, perhaps the clue as to why they are forward and positive for the most part. Their crossing record was, simply, woeful: check out Young’s ratio:

3 out of 16 completed. Their early crosses were all intercepted or blocked, and crossing successfully from the corner is a different story.

We weren’t that much better in the wide positions- Sagna was silenced and had a pass-rate under 70%:

As you can see, he did better when he stayed in his half or supported the play than when he got up there as a covering winger.

Clichy did better, launching lots of longer efforts down his flank, but this isn’t surprising as he was paired up there with both Fabregas and Hazard (especially the young Belgian forward), whereas Sagna was in tow with both Vidal and Nasri (from the 38 minute onwards, Arshavin, but he had a very poor passing game, see below).

Clichy (left) was, generally, superb.

Here’s Arshavin’s map:

As you can see, the story of the day was a solid defence and a sharp attack overcoming Villa, who had no real tactical answer to my system, except that Walcott and Arshavin were both relatively ineffective, although Walcott came on late and had a mixed final 20, coming on to safeguard RVP’s fitness. Nasri’s injury was not serious.

Next: Spartak Moscow, my first European game with this club