BANG THE TABLE ANALYSIS
The most unArsenal thing happened yesterday… we won our first game of the season, at Old Trafford, in a game pretty much every Arsenal fan I know predicted we’d draw.
That. Is. Magnificent.
3 points is all that matters. Caring about the performance is a righteous path, but only if you think we’re not going to get better. Picking on individual players is definitely something I’m going to do, but it’s not because I believe what the players did yesterday is what they’ll do for the rest of the season, it’s because they have to get their act together fast so we can win the lot this year.
If you are griping today, it’s out of love, but you have to know this… you’re being a little bitch.
But… as the biggest bitch on the block, I will go two-footed on the performance because it was utterly dreadful at times. An eyesore. So many flashes of the worst parts of last season.
However… if you’ll allow me, can I sneak in another positive before I drop acid rain from the sky? Arteta has not been a lucky general. He’s been opposite. He’s the guy who takes himself out of action with recoil from his own weapon. There’s a film calledThe Cooler with William H. Macy, the premise is Las Vegas would hire unlucky deadbeats to stalk winning tables to cool their winning momentum. That’s Arteta over the past 5 years. Close, but never a jackpot kind of guy. Yesterday was a page-turner. We didn’t deserve three points, we were playing at a tough venue for Arsenal, and we left with three BIG points. Three points Slot would have got last season, Pep the season before… could this be a turning point? Will Arteta become a Lucky General worthy of a place in a Napoleon regiment (totally get that Napoleon was deeply unpleasant, but I can’t be qualifying things like that all season, ok?)?
‘18 years? 22 years at Old Trafford without winning before I came. Now I go into the dressing room, we won and they’re not happy. It’s a good sign. ‘
Napoleon not holding back there. We’ve only won there 4 times in the Premier League era, each time, 1-0. Context is a wonderful lubricant for toxic positivity.
So, let’s get back to some hearty negativity, what about the performance? Not great. Arsenal lacked chemistry all across the park. New players had the noxious smell of a new 1999 Ford Ka with a heavy plastic interior, not the fresh zesty hit of Ferrari leathers you got with Cunha and Bryan Mbeumo. United seemed to have the better of us tactically, cutting through our midfield with relative ease, with 3 or 4 basic tactics we’d usually correct without the need for a halftime team talk. We were baited into pressing, United would escape and ping a diagonal with Mbeumo ready for one vs one action, with a pacy overlapping fullback. It felt like an early strategy of Arteta when we had Kieran Tierney and Auba as outlets.
I don’t want to speak of referees because by Premier League standards, Simon Hooper was unspeakably inconsistent, but he wasn’t negligent. He allowed an elbow on Zubi early on to pass, but then became really strict when Zubi clattered the same player when challenging for a high ball. But overall, we were second best when it came to duel winning in the first half. The midfield was pretty absent. Zubi didn’t control the tempo of the game and Declan was relatively anonymous for large chunks of the game. Martin Odegaard was playing as more of a 10, I appreciated his gumption, but the output was quite poor. Maybe he was trying too hard? Whatever it was, it wasn’t KDB heading into his prime. But there’s a shift in mindset, and he looked VERY fit.
The defence was also not in lockstep. Saliba was particularly poor on the eye test front, even if his hard stats looked impressive after the game. We can give him grace because he’s unreal and he’s not had a lot of time next to big Gabs.
Arsenal is a choreographed team, and sadly, the dance looked like the sort that’d get a hard no from Simon Cowell in round one. Yes, that’s because there’s newness in the starting 11. But we had a LONG preseason. No Club World Cup. And Liverpool and City had their own issues with no break in performance.
Attack-wise, it was pretty bland. Too many touches in midfield and out wide. Bad decisions. Poor ball striking. Not enough speed to anything we were trying to do. I barely noticed Saka all game and what I did notice of Martinelli was deeply forgettable. He looked like a man who’d been given some intel from Ornstein about his replacement. There was a point in the second half when we’d had two shots on target, Calafiori scoring from 6 inches after Bayindir flapped at a corner, and one from Martinelli who hit the slowest shot you’ll see all season. His bicycle kick was commendable, but poorly executed. He looked like a nearly man again. Saka was bad and, as usual, he couldn’t rely on the left-hand side to gareth bale him out. Are we really going to exit the window without a serious upgrade?
The main man we were all looking forward to seeing was Gyokeres. Against the backdrop of United’s three attackers, who we’d all pined for at some stage, it was going to be interesting to see how the Swede fared… and if you saw it, you know, it was a disasterclass of a debut. It was like watching Ali Dia who pretended to be related to George Weah doing his first run out at Southampton.
This was his pass map.
His touch was heavy. He wasn’t good in tight spaces. The one time he did stretch his legs, his cross was overhit by about 40 yards. He created zero chances and had zero shots. 3 touches in United’s box. 12 sprints. He was getting mugged by De Ligt of all defenders. He looked distinctly like the second-rate striker he’d been labelled as by Edu.
Now, this is his first proper game, he’s a human. But this needs to work. You sign 27-year-olds with the expectation they bang. He doesn’t get the same runway Sesko and Ekitike are going to get at their clubs. I am done with the puff piece ‘you should have seen the look in his eyes’ nonsense. If Arteta had £250k over 5 years on the table for me, I would have had the exact same look in my eyes. We need an extraordinary season from him, not relentless running and eagerness.
That performance was of course not all on Gyokeres. He had shocking service from everyone. My lingering worry is that this player is a finisher, if the service isn’t there, he doesn’t have ‘magic out of nowhere.’ I was also quite concerned about how poor he was in the duels. He only won 29% of his ground duels, and an embarrassing 17% aerially. Kai Havertz came on for him for 30 minutes and won 50% of ground and aerials, had nearly as many touches, and just looked way, way better.
‘You’ll look silly for saying this if he scores 3 against Leeds’… no, I won’t because pummelling teams like Leeds is my expectation of him. Being a good target man that gets 3 shots off and scores 1 against United is what we have to demand. I want Haaland output from a player with similar attributes, otherwise, what was the point?
Gyokeres is far, far better than what he showed yesterday. His reality is simple, get it together. No one has time for a bedding-in period this season. Man City’s new signings looked f*cking electric. Liverpool’s have settled into their system with ease. Man United, one of the worst rich teams on the planet last year, settled their two stars instantly. I’m gonna be the guy banging the table all season… we need to be at the level from day one, and we can’t afford to indulge older players needing to be coached because they were preferred to players with higher ceilings because of the NOW impact.
Same with Madueke. Arsenal backed themselves into a corner by telling the world we put all the money down for this right sided midfielder who sometimes plays on the left. The defensive drop when he came on for Gabriel Martinelli was painful to watch. He was nowhere near the level and he offered us very little going forward. ‘Game day one’, yes, I’m hearing your complaints of fairness, but I don’t care, that performance was below the level, and we can all feel it.
Do I have a single good thing to say about the game? Yes.
David Raya was world-class again. Was his first half perfect? No. But who cares. He came up with the BIG saves that kept us in the game like David Seaman and Jens would on the way to Premier League wins. He’ll have 5 games like that all season when we drop the level and he’ll have to step up in the same way. To exit that 90 with a clean sheet was really impressive. His command of his area whether catching or punching showed why he’s the best in the league, and that save from Cunha when he slashed a shot across his goal was unbelievable.
I also want to project hope onto the way Arteta yanked his fullbacks early. It is absolutely clear that fullbacks, at the highest level, deal with more body stress than most other players, and Arsenal has a history of breaking them. Arteta taking off White and Ricky when they were looking jaded felt like maturity. MLS should have started, but he’s been switching off during preseason, so I understood. But Timber, my word, what a f*cking player. Best defender at Arsenal? Yes. Best fullback, left and right side, in the league? You’re damn right and I have no compunction to play your ‘that’s hyperbole’ games. He is the best player outside Jesus in tight spots, he’s a leader, he has the coolness of a lightly iced cucumber, and he gave us the composure we needed to see the game out. What a talent!
So, where do we go from here? Straight to the training ground. Arteta needs to show the players how bad they were and he needs to get a reaction. We have one game to get things in working order before we go to Anfield for another monster litmus test. What I have to remember is this: I’d have taken 5 points from our opening three. We have 3 points already. Get a win against Leeds and we’re in great shape regardless of the score. That’s a good place to be. I’d rather lead this season than chase. An away win against United gives us the chance to whip up some of that momentum heat we lacked last year. The most dangerous thing in sports is momentum and confidence. We won’t have confidence after yesterday, but Leeds and Liverpool could deliver that and send us on our merry way.
Final point, and it’s a boring one. I liked that we stayed out of the dark arts. No timewasting, no stupidity. We didn’t give Simon Cooper the chance to make himself the centre of the world. We need to keep it that way, because PGMOL is looking to gut our title challenge early. Don’t let them.
Ok, that’s me done, let me know what YOU think in the comments, and ffs, sign up for the membership so you can get the On The Whistle, you know, early and stuff. x
## MANCHESTER UNITED (A) - ON THE WHISTLE
Pedro
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Aug 17
MANCHESTER UNITED (A) - ON THE WHISTLE
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