Arsenal 2019/20: Their struggling positional play under Arteta- scout report

When Mikel Arteta left Manchester City to join Arsenal, many fans were excited to see how he would implement positional play and this Guardiola style of football at Arsenal. Taking over mid-season though, it was always to be expected that Arsenal would have to adapt initially, and coaching this style of football obviously takes time. Eight months on, Arsenal and Arteta have showcased that adaptability well, not always relying on possession to win games and being tactically astute defensively (sometimes), picking up good results against Manchester City, Liverpool and other teams high in the table. The poorest results of late have actually been those games where they have had the vast majority of possession, but have been unable to break down the opposition using positional play. With Arteta finding stability in some areas and starting to build his principles into this Arsenal team, over the summer it seems like this positional play will be a heavy focus.

This tactical analysis will review the positional play and rest defence used by Arsenal in three games: Aston Villa (a), Tottenham (a), and Wolves (a), and will also look at the key principles Arteta will look to build. Arteta has built the foundations already and seems to have settled into a preferred 3-4-3 shape, but these games best showcase the improvements needed in certain aspects of Arsenals in possession play.

General structure

Below we can see a simplistic view of Arsenals setup in a 3-4-3 against a 4-4-2 mid-block. Wide centre-backs stay deep in the half-space or will move slightly wider if needed. Ideally, the right inside forward will be positioned vertically from this wide centre-back as seen below, also in the half-space. The right wing-back will stay wide and look to pin the opposition winger in a wide area, while the central midfielders remain central and should look to make angles to receive the ball from a wide centre back. As a result, the oppositions second line is pinned centrally and wide, opening the channel for the half-space. Movements from players around here, as well as overloads, should then be used to take advantage of the value of this part of the pitch.

Various rotations around this structure have occured, with the most common seeing one of the central midfielders dropping in as a wide centre back in the half-space, freeing a wide centre -back to push higher. All of these will be covered in the course of the analysis.

Role of the central midfielders

The first aspect of Arsenals positional play that we will discuss is their central midfielders, and more specifically how the poor positioning of them is impacting their positional play often.

Positional play is all about overloads, superiority, and decisional problems (crises) for the opposition. Central midfielders play a large role in this, and in Arsenals 3-4-3 Dani Ceballos and Lucas Torreira have both struggled to create angles to receive the ball, and to recognise situations where they can help create overloads. Here we can see a good example of the effect a central midfielder can have, with this scene from the Aston Villa match.

The opposition press with