IVAN THE JANUARY GREAT

by .

Well hello there my dears – are you over the Spurs result?

I am. Kind of. Am I really? Maybe not.

I’m putting my Perspective FC glasses on and focused on Spurs fans prancing around like they just nipped us to the title after a fairly standard derby day draw. The levels are not the same.

We also have to be better about the catastrophization after every result. Two weeks ago Eddie was keeping Jesus out the side – now he’s not good enough for League 2. If you were buckled in for the season expecting us to win every single game, you’ll be having a thoroughly miserable time. If you think it’s easy catching City, then again, you’ll be disappointed because they are still really f*cking good.

There are some jobs that need to be done over the next three months.

1.New players need to settle

The start to the season has felt unsettled because we’re moving to a new way of playing – Arteta wants to be formationally fluid and he wants to be able to rotate players in and out without missing a beat.

We are missing beats.

You only get better by practicing in a live environment and unfortunately, the instant success we want on the pitch isn’t a reality in football.

Pointing at Pep and what they’re doing at City is pointing at perfection – Arsenal is working towards the level they’re at, but we’re not there yet, and it is unrealistic to think we’re closing the gap this season.

Get angry at that notion, bang the table, but no one else in the league has a better idea at the moment. Even peak-Klopp only managed to wrestle one EPL trophy from Pep. You could ask for a new manager – but the chances someone else could take this group to a higher level are slim and there are plenty of Premier League examples of the-big-thing getting the move then quickly moving to the fraud bin of Premier League football. Even proven winners have to take jobs in other countries.

Our strategy is to improve as fast as we can and wait for the City blip – because it will come.

2.Chance creation

We’re not creating chances like we were last season and that needs to improve. Part of that can be attributed to the newness of the squad. We have a lot of new players trying to find their feet in key positions.

We’re settling a new number 6

We’re settling a new keeper

We’re settling a new left-sided 8

We’ve only just reintroduced our starting 9

I don’t doubt the ability of any of the players – so in the medium term we’ll be fine. We just have to give them time to work each other out.

3.Cut out the dumb

We have been doing dumb quite a bit this season. Our defending as a team is really good in general. But each mistake we make seems to get pounced on. There’s been no forgiveness in the system. Individual errors are running RIFE at Arsenal, particularly at home. We have to focus, find out if North London Forever or Win the dog need to go, then get to grips with clean sheets once again.

Individual errors are easier to solve than systemic problems with tactics (Emery’s system for example was never going to work), we’ll get on top if this problem soon.

4.Manage Player Fitness Better

We’ve been struggling with injuries since preseason. Arteta is a beast in training, he doesn’t believe in pain, and we’re suffering with leggy performances and soft tissue injuries. These issues usually kill us in the backend of the season, they’re hurting us at the start this season. If we want to be competitive, players have to be rotated, and they have to have their bodies respected.

Again, we are overflowing the problems because of the Spurs result. Most of these problems will get solved when the players learn to play with each other. But at least we’re clear-ish why they’re happening.

We have Brentford tomorrow – the only player worth talking about right now is Ivan Toney. The heat on his signature is ramping up because he’ll likely be leaving Brentford in January.

This is our phase 5 striker moment… but it won’t cost us Haaland money.

Ivan Toney has had a bad year, he was caught gambling, he did wrong. We have to assume the time out is being used to get him corrected on gambling.

The next thing we have to hope is that he can come back to the form he left.

14 non-penalty goals put him 8th in the league last season. Everyone else above him played for a Big 6 club. 14 non-penalty goals is unreal for a team like Brentford. Add to that the 6 penalties he scored, because, you know, all goals count.

The player has what we lack – a bit of nasty in our forward line. He’s world-class in the press, he’s the only player I’ve seen occupy William Saliba, and he’s brilliant in front of goal. Not the mention how sophisticated his link play is when he’s playing as a loan striker.

Toney offers us something we don’t have in the final third from an aerial perspective as well – he might be sub 6 ft, but he’s one of the best players in the air. The thinking, I would assume, is in a system with players who can hit a pin from 60 yards, his aerial strength could be very, very useful.

Arsenal will have to compete for him against Chelsea – the only worry there is them jacking the price. Todd B won’t accept spending at least 450% more on a player than he should which could see the deal get pushed up like it did for Declan Rice.

I expect £60m will do the job – if we get him for that, we’ll have got a very fair deal for a player that could bang.

So what do we need to hope for? Brentford having a good run for the next 3 months. We have to see their forwards do well, we need to see them wracking up points, and we have to hope they don’t have any bad injuries. If all that comes together, I think we’ll be in for his signature.

Right – I’ll be back with more League Cup chat tomorrow. Get on our Brentford Before The Whistle right NOW. x

831 Responses to “IVAN THE JANUARY GREAT”

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  2. Nigel Tufnel

    Raulishuss,
    Great comment about big chances created, and Trippier example.
    I’ll tell you now, if you study big chances created and results, you will see it is the most useless stat in the history of football. There are other stats that are questionable … but big chances created gives you nothing to analyze or take away.
    Only a fool would harp on it constantly. It’s truly meaningless and faulty.
    If anyone is trying to make sense of the stat and trying to tie it to results, you’re wasting your time.

  3. Nigel Tufnel

    Somebody saying that Havertz “does nothing”- knows nothing about football, and does not even notice CM play while they’re watching.
    Obviously a CM who has no goals or assists “does nothing ” to this kind of limited fan.
    That would make.you a children’s level watcher who observes about 20% of what’s happening in games.

    Why bother watching 100 minutes when you can just watch highlights and be done in 2 minutes, and having the same shallow level of understanding?

  4. AFC Forever

    Nigel

    Football is becoming obsessed with stats. So much so nobody trusts their eyes anymore. Stats on their own are used by politicians to lie to everyone. They avoid the need to provide any context and hide the truth. It’s a lazy way to make a very poor point. A stat is just a number without context applied. It’s like saying the goalkeeper who makes the most saves is the best goalkeeper.

    As I stated above at 13:07:28, with full context, Odegaard is doing ridiculous. numbers that have conveniently been ignored. He is a fantastic player. If people can’t see that then that’s their prerogative but there won’t be a top coach in football who doesn’t recognise just how good Odegaard is. He has definitely improved playing in a slightly more advanced position.

  6. Luteo Guenreira

    We should just sign two world class players at every position, and they each play half a season. Hopefully they can all last at least that long.

  7. raptora

    Arteta on if Smith Rowe brings something different to the team: “Yeah, he’s very vertical. You see when he’s running with the ball, the capacity he’s got in short spaces, his arriving in the box.

    “He’s got different qualities to do that attacking midfielder. It’s great to have him. We need him at his best. Now he’s starting to get some rhythm and minutes, which is great for the team.”
    ______________________________________________________

    He was talking about verticality vs Sporting when we scored 4 goals and now after the game vs Brentford he’s saying that ESR is very vertical. With Odegaard we’re missing that ability to get in and around the box with powerful dribbling same way KDB does it over and over again. Emile has that, Ode doesn’t.

    ESR’s form is not where it should be but it’s obvious what Ode gives and what Emile does. Emile is strong, powerful dribbler, very dangerous in and around the box. He has more risk to his game unlike Ode who is very safe.

    Ode plays at the edge of the box and a little outside of it. He combines with his teammates a lot but his passing has become quite predictable. There isn’t much surprise with him. We are attacking slowly and labored.

    The real difference between KDB and every other AM in the world, is that he knows when he has the opportunity to press the TURBO button and just bulldoze through the whole defence to pass to a player on an empty goal. Obviously, he’s also great at doing it.

    ESR can do that but is not there right now physically and his form is far from where it could be.

    Odegaard is an excellent player but he’s sucking the ball so much that the whole team has to play his way. And as a consequence, we’re playing slow, predictable football with 75% possession of the ball and 3-4 good chances per game.

    No wonder Saka gets doubled by the opposition as Odegaard (or White) are not a threat making runs behind him.

    A top AM can pass to Saka then make a run and produce the killer pass KDB style.
    A top AM can go for a 1-2 and penetrate the box centrally with power and purpose.
    A top AM improves everyone around them.

    Vieira is better at creating top quality chances compared to Odegaard.
    Smith-Rowe as well.

  8. Luteo Guenreira

    Assuming the worst and all the players mentioned are unavailable tomorrow, what kind of line up are we looking at?

    Raya
    White-Tomiyasu-Gabriel-Zinchenko
    Odegaard-Jorginho-Havertz
    Jesus-Nketiah-Nelson

    You still have to fancy the 3 points against Bournemouth though right? Spurs won 2 nil at their ground a couple weeks ago, no wins but have drawn 3 games so far against the likes of Chelsea and West Ham.

    Feel like a draw tomorrow would be a really bad result regardless of injuries. The days of being happy with a point just cause it’s an away match in the PL are behind us. Let’s get a comfortable win.

  9. raptora

    We can deal with the problem by limiting Odegaard’s ball-hugging. Thing is that with Ode playing, we need a solid defensively LCM and Kai is quite decent in that regard. But I’m not sure if it’s possible to play ESR/Fabio + Ode. Maybe with a healthy Rice we can try that and see if it works. I’m not surprised Kai hasn’t scored a goal yet. It’s not like he’s had more than a couple half chances.

  10. raptora

    Odegaard is also so fkin rooted to this right hand side… Goodness sake, ask the opponents some questions. Move a bit, try to destabilize them… No.. Same old, time and again.

  11. Guns of Hackney

    Bournemouth have this in the bag. That frontline is weaker than France’s at the Somme.

    What on earth is going on at arsenals training ground, and more importantly, why do they have Dr Shipman working at the club?

  15. salparadisenyc

    This space and the critique of player and performance without touching on system is weak sauce.

    Arteta is as rigid as they come, we’re not dealing with a ‘Wenger go out and express your self’ type of manager. Arteta is having 1 on 1 technical talks after the side balls a goal in if he’s. not seeing what he wants FFS. Hugs the touch giving instruction as we go constantly tweaking the dimensions.

    Reason Ødegaard is not always looking for that golden thru ball and taking more shots, it’s been instilled in the sessions. We are not playing with a Fabregas or Ozil type 10 that everything is going to flow thru. There is a reason we signed Thomas Partey and now Declan Rice for the mad money spent on both to pin it, so we can have 2x more threatening options on either side of the mid. Xhaka playing further up last season was the best we saw of him.

    First and foremost we need to get thru this early season injury crisis which is the biggest worry, has literally undone a great transfer window. Next Jorginho will be out.

  16. AFC Forever

    Sal

    “This space and the critique of player and performance without touching on system is weak sauce.”

    That’s a polite way of saying it. The amount of bullshit spewed on here in an attempt to harshly critique our players is quite something. As for, “He’s a ball hugger, who sucks the ball too much”, rap has a pretty sick immigration if he’s visualising Odegaard taking part in gay porn.

  18. salparadisenyc

    Luteo

    Solid lineup considering, hope Tomiyasu isn’t looking for the injury table we going to need him and likely this weekend.

    Mental we are this stretched after 2 rounds of mid week action.

  21. AFC Forever

    On a serious note having watched the Brentford game I have no doubt some of our squad players can come into the team. As I said earlier, Nelson, Kiwior and Tomiyasu look more than capable & with several players having not trained I suspect we might see them. With Jorginho I would be tempted to start with a double pivot with Partey & Rice out.

  22. Habesha Gooner

    I hope Nelson gets a start tommorow regardless of whether Saka is fit or not. On the left with Jesus central and Saka on the right would be the best option if not on the right with eddie uptop and Jesus on the left.

    He has impressed me when ever he has been given a chance.

  23. AFC Forever

    Habesha

    He’s improved a lot. Very good out of possession. Think his performance Wednesday deserves a start. Sounds like Trossard is out, not confirmed about Martinelli. I prefer Jesus down the middle, then right, but not left.

  25. Topside Northbank

    Saliba, Rice and Saka travelled with the squad to Bournemouth.

    Just saw a clip team arriving hopefully at least two are fit to start.

  27. Pierre

    AFC
    “Football is becoming obsessed with stats”

    Says the man who earlier in the day posted lines and lines of positive stats on Odegaard..

    AFC
    “Despite playing higher up the pitch, Odegaard is still involved in most of our team moves.
    But the big advantage is he’s getting on the ball in more dangerous areas. He had 1.6 more touches in the penalty area per 90 minutes as a result.
    Only Bruno Fernandes (259) has been involved in more attacking sequences that end in a shot than Ødegaard (225). He is third behind Erling Haaland (38) and Kevin De Bruyne (33) for the number of involvements in open-play attacking sequences that end in a goal, with 32.Of all central midfielders in the Premier League last season, Martin Ødegaard had the highest direct shot involvements; where a player’s only involvement in the team move is taking the shot (63). So, while he still plays a very important role in building moves and helping progress up the pitch, there have been 63 occasions, approx. two every game he plays, when he has a shot having played no part whatsoever in the team’s move. This means he is often a second striker when Arsenal have the ball.This resulted in an improvement in his goalscoring. Ødegaard had his best season, beating every other central midfielder in the entire Premier League with his 15 goals. He is now taking more shots (2.8 per 90, up from 1.7 in 2021-22) and posting more expected goals, with 0.30 per 90 compared to 0.16 last season, almost double his previous numbers. His expected goals increased, 15 goals have come from a remarkable 9.93 xG.His stats on all areas of the game are at ridiculous levels now. No player in the Premier League can better his tally of eight secondary assists; the pass before the assist. Only Fernandes (87) and De Bruyne (68) have created more chances for teammates in open play than Odegaard (58)”

  28. MG42

    GoH
    “Bournemouth have this in the bag. That frontline is weaker than France’s at the Somme. ”

    Comment of the day and would be funny if it weren’t so true.

  30. Mark

    Pierre,

    I do enjoy your posts. You’ve been posting for a few years now , still entertaining and still holding your own. Hardly post these days myself, but still scan the chat when I have time.

    It’s an opinion site , and you express yours well.
    👏🏾