As we move into October, everything seems to be well at Arsenal.
Seven straight wins, Alexandre Lacazette & Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang are on song and much more.
One of the major highlights of Arsenal’s season, however, has been the performance of Alex Iwobi.
Like many Arsenal players, Iwobi divides opinion, but this season, he’s undoubtedly been one of Arsenal’s better players.
But how has his game improved of late? Find out in this tactical analysis of his start to the season.
Alex Iwobi Last Season
Last season was very turbulent for Iwobi.
His performances weren’t consistent and although he wasn’t poor he wasn’t a standout player either.
One reason for this was the way he chose to attack teams.
Even though he plays out wide, for many Arsenal fans who’ve watched Iwobi come through the ranks, it’s clear he’s a player who would probably do better centrally.
This can be seen in his heat map from last season, as he tended to drift inside when on the ball:
Although it could be seen as a good thing as he’s getting himself involved with play, ultimately it held Arsenal back an awful lot.
This was seen against Manchester United last season.
With his starting position almost always out wide, Iwobi became quite predictable last season.
Defenders were able to force him inside into traffic where his options would be exhausted.
However, this season, he’s made a slight change in his attacking approach.
Subtly More Direct
As you can see from the heat map above, Iwobi has spent a lot more time outwide this season.
However, the most important thing here is that he’s getting into the final third more often.
With this, Iwobi has been able to have a bigger impact on games and contribute to Arsenal’s attacks in a much better way.
He showed this against Chelsea in August.
When looking at Iwobi’s game, this is a development that can help him and Arsenal massively going forward.
However, before we get to why, it’s also important to mention how this has directly improved Iwobi’s game.
End Product
One of the biggest criticisms of Iwobi over the last couple of seasons has been his end product.
Before this season he had ten goals and ten assists since his Arsenal debut in 2016.
However, this season getting into those more dangerous positions more often, he has been amongst the goals at a better rate.
So far this season, he’s scored once, assisted two and has been key to Arsenal scoring five other goals.
We saw how effective his in-to-out runs can be when he came on and changed the game against Watford on Saturday.
Conclusion
At the moment, Iwobi’s form should be hard for anyone to ignore, including Unai Emery.
He made such an impact off the bench as almost a silent assassin, and the way he found those spaces, he could return to the starting Premier League team soon.
Offering such if Arsenal wish to attack that way, it’ll be interesting to see Emery’s selections over the coming weeks.
Either way, whether it is off the bench, Iwobi just needs to keep it up.
The positions he’s getting himself into will help him improve that end product even more and should help Arsenal score even more goals this season.
