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Set piece evolution will have to come from Arsenal eventually

Suburban Gooners Logo Suburban Gooners Logo When Mikel Arteta started busting out “best at everything” lines in yesterday’s press conference, it immediately invoked Stormzy’s ‘Shut Up’ song and I had to have a little chuckle.

I think from the transcript I read from the official site yesterday, there must have been at least half of the questions related to set pieces. I mean, I get it, because we beat United by scoring from two and a lot of noise had been made this season about it. Gabriel scored the winner against the Scum, we got our first goal last weekend against West Ham from it, plus against Sporting last week too. So perhaps that’s why the media have been going a little ‘zone in’ on our potency from set pieces. But it don’t half make for some pretty boring reading ahead of an in-form Fulham team tomorrow.

I’d like to say we got an update on injury problems, but Arteta would only say that we had another session today (Saturday) before they would make a decision. I haven’t heard too many murmurings online, but gut feel to me is that I think at least one of them will be back tomorrow. I certainly hope so, because Fulham at home are a very different prospect to previous year’s. Arteta mentioned it in his press conference yesterday and said that he’s on record being very complimentary about Marco Silva and his team. There was the inevitable talk about ex-Arsenal players and of course Arteta spoke fondly of Emile Smith Rowe. I can understand why – he’s bagged three goals and two assists this season and along with Iwobi on five goals and three assists, as well as Nelson on one goal and one assist, the ex-Hale End boys are making their mark in West London.

Marco Silva will certainly be pleased with their involvement, although there’s at least one that he can’t call on tomorrow, because Reiss Nelson is out as he’s on loan from us. Other than Nelson, they also have Tom Cairney serving his three game ban for being sent off against the Scum two games back, as well as Andersen and Harrison Read. They will have Lukic back to anchor their midfield, which will be a welcome from Silva and I thought he sounded rather bullish in his pre match press conference, talking about how Fulham scored from set pieces against us last season and we didn’t manage that feat against them. He also talk about how no team is ever really surprised by another in the Premier League these days and I kind of get where he’s coming from; you have so much data and analysis in these elite clubs that they will all have detailed dossier’s on every single side that they face in the season. Even an amateur like me can go on to FBREF and find enough info about how Fulham play to get an idea on their approach (more on that tomorrow I think), so for these teams that can invest thousands on teams of people to do analysis, it’s no wonder that there are few surprises for where strengths and weaknesses are.

I do think the constant iteration and evolution of approaches is something that teams need to try to second guess though. For example, we’re currently doing this thing with set pieces where we start everyone at the back post and just as the kick is taken, the players move into position. It’s a good way of dealing with teams that zonal mark because you’re free and it creates disruption for those defenders trying to work out who they are going to duel against in winning the header from corners, but eventually teams will work out the best approach for this, which then means Arsenal and Jover will need to move on to the next evolution of how we approach attacking corners.

For this weekend, it will be something Silva is wary of, but he’ll be feeling pretty good based on his teams form. They beat Brighton at the weekend and their second goal was from a set piece. The third was a strike from Iwobi that is of a man who is enjoying life at the moment and it was a pretty tidy finish, but the game itself looked like it had Brighton creating lots of chances. That’s what we have to hope for tomorrow because last season we were rubbish on New Year’s Eve. It was one of the few uncharacteristically poor games from us and I remember at the time saying that our Premier League title hopes were over that day. Thankfully we went on a monumental run to pull ourselves back in to the fight, but with Liverpool absolutely nailed on to beat Everton today at Goodison, I think anything other than a win for us tomorrow probably is curtains. You can’t keep slipping up if you’re not the team with the buffer that Liverpool have – our margin for error has basically been close to zero for a couple of weeks now.

And over the international break when we were looking at this run of fixtures, I feel like a few of us Arsenal fans (me included) were looking at it as a favourable run. But when you actually get to the eve of the game it suddenly doesn’t feel like it. Forest were a team in form and so that game looked scarier than it (thankfully) was. United we expected to beat, but on the eve of the game and at halftime you realised it’s not going to be such smooth sailing. Then the same has to be said about a Fulham side suddenly in sixth. They had that weird result against Wolves that has certainly blotted their copybook in recent weeks, but they’ve beaten Brighton, Brentford, Newcastle and Leicester at home this season, so they’re no slouches at The Cottage. We need to go there and lay down a marker though; that goes without saying.

Hopefully the fact they played on Thursday and we played on Wednesday means that we have a wee bit of a marginal game in terms of fatigue and Silva mentioned it in his press conference, but he said that it is not an excuse, but you do hope that it leads to a little more sluggishness from them. Think how we played against them last season – that’s how we need them to start but we are going to need to be a lot better.

I think I’ll pause for today on that note and come back to you with a little more on Fulham and what we’re up against tomorrow. Catch you all then.

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Gooner born in 1982 from Harlow, Essex, now living in Uxbridge. I say what I see - frequently wrong, but hey, it's just an opinion piece, right? Leave a comment and let me know what you think.