Tuesday 22 December 2015

MY TAKE ON ARSENAL VS MAN CITY 2-1 .

now yesterday arsenal played city at emirates and executed their tactics brilliantly . first i would like to congragulate arsene wenger for drilling the team perfectly and executing the tactics on the pitch . i had criticized arsene wenger in the past for being tactically discreet but yesterday he did showed that he had a game plan and he is very tactically astute .
arsenal started the game with 4-4-1-1 . some people will say that it is 4-2-3-1 but let me tell you the tactics matter most on the defense than on offense .giroud was uptop alone with ozil behind him . walcott and campbell on the wings while flamini and ramsey sat in front of the back four . bellerin,mertasaker,koscielny and monreal were the back four for arsenal . while city had the same formation . they had aguero upfront with silva behind him . de bruyne and delph on the wings while toure and fernandiniho sitting in middle in front of the back four .sagna,otamendi,mangala and kolarov were the back four .
STARTING LINEUP FOR BOTH TEAMS
the game had a very good pace to it . both the team were playing deep and there was a reason to it . arsenal have weakness with mertasacker while city's back  two too lack pace and giroud is know to be a good supplier where he can lay ball in the path of walcott and campbell. the other reason that both teams wanted to stretch the game and get time to bring players back to have numbers behind the ball . now the game started the game at a decent pace with city sitting back and the hitting arsenal on the counter attack . now why i said that wenger was very good tactically was because first off he nullified the threats that city have on the pitch . first off he asked flamini to mark silva whenever he comes into arsenal half and close him down whenever he has the ball and deny him time on the ball . now the thing is that anything and everthing that city create or flow it goes through silva and he is the orchestrator and anchor for city . so arsenal made a point of stopping silva in the tracks and flamini stuck to his job . he folowed silva in his half and denied him time and space on the ball . so job one is complete for arsenal and  they were able to frustrate silva who would pick a yellow because he would want to give flamini back what flamini was doing with him . the second was to stop aguero for that wenger choose koscielny to do the job . first arsenal playing deep means that there was very little space for aguero to run behind the back four . secondly koscielny marked him very well . he came out of the defense to mark aguero and even come into mertasacker's zone to close down aguero . against aguero arsenal had a clear plan that koscielny would come out of the defense and mertasacker sit back and provide the cover . while monreal too tried to close down de bruyne but de bruyne chance in the first half made monreal to sit back and let de bruyne come onto him rather than go out and close him down . for the first time city could get behind arsenal's back four because arsenal tried to get too tight to them and it nearly cost them . it made arsenal to pull monreal back and be more patient and told him to hold off his position rather than go out chasing . PRESSING
now in the first half the game was evenly poised out and even though arsenal were doing the above things city were comfortable. in the intial exchanges they were the better team and there was a reason for that . toure was playing in the middle town but he had the lisence to go forward . the reason being that delph would come inside and cover for toure and which inturn allowed two things . first off toure could move forward and second kolarov had the space to bomb forward . city played decent football and they seem to carve out a chance when delph found toure in the box but arsenal averted the danger . now aguero playing upfront has its own drawbacks as well . first off the aerial route gets close down because aguero is no match for any centre back pairing where on he will win header against them . but city did make amends for this they crossed low so that aguero can have a chance but couldnt penetrate arsenal back four . untill 25 min city were playing on the counter but after that arsenal sat deep and asked city to open them and countered . now the before the arsenal's first goal there were signs of what could happen and there was a reason for that . even city tried to play long balls to aguero behind the  defense but mertasacker already had a yard or two on the goal side of aguero . secondly these long balls can be intercepted and needs to be precise which didnt frutify for city .
now as i had said earlier that flamini was marking silva i didnt found that with fernandiniho doing the same with ozil who has the similar role with arsenal as does silva has with city . first off city midline was considerable higher than necessary . secondly ozil was constantly finding space between line and even before the first goal he had created a chance for walcott who missed . giroud was constantly getting wide and trying to release walcott and cambell but was not finding success . arsenal were never going to get beyond city back four since they were sitting deep so walcott just used sagna as wall and found the wide corner . sagna was misfooted because he thought that walcott will go in his natural path down the line and cross inside . instead he scored a goal . the second goal was nothing that both teams were trying to do . they were trying to break each other in the  middle of the park and launch counter and on one such counter arsenal scored at the end of the first half . again ozil getting the space . the worst thing is otamendi losing the foot race against giroud which is hopeless for a 35 mil dollar player . ARSENAL ON OFFENSE
in the second half arsenal were going to sit deep and then hit on the counter . they did exactly that and were  hopeless not to finish the game by scoring the third goal . aguero playing atop was not working for city so pellegrini tried to change it by bringing in bony for aguero . by bringing in bony city could have somebody who could compete for the aerial crosses in the box and even though bony is not given that much credit and city never play on his strengths but bony is a very good assist or say he can lay off balls  in the path of players . city can play through and around him but never do that . secondly they tried to bring in navas for silva and give de bruyne the no. 10 role . toure was given the lisence to go forward and join the attack . but arsenal were content by sitting back and they brought all players behind the balls and defended with numbers . toure scored a very good goal but other than that they didnt had anything to show for their effort . 
last but not the least ramsey is a good player but spends too much time on the ball and has too many touches which slows down the game and most importantly it give the opposition the time to close him down and arsenal nearly paid for his mistake in the first half . he needs to get his head up quickly and find the pass and make his mind quickly . secondly he needs to make better choices on the ball . at time the players he passed the ball were under pressure already where on he could had choose to pass somebody other . plus if possible try to be more stronger cause it still boys against men with ramsey . 

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