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Arsenal’s not-so-secret on set pieces

Suburban Gooners Logo Suburban Gooners Logo Happy Saturday folks. I hope wherever you are and whatever you are doing you have something enjoyable planned.

Me, I’m going to get myself out for a run, then I’m going to settle down to watch some football at home this afternoon, as the Management and the mother-in-law are in London watching Black Sabbath: The Ballet.

The hope is that there can be another weekend of hate watching with Chelsea up against Sunderland at three, United hopefully getting done at home to Brighton at five-thirty, then at eight-o-clock we’ve got Liverpool away at Brentford. I suspect in reality we won’t get anything go our way, but at this early stage of Saturday morning it’s nice to dream.

What isn’t a dream is the fact that whatever the results today, we shall still be top by the time our game kicks off against Palace at two and yesterday Mikel Arteta was of course all smiles and calm as the journos handed out their flowers about how well Arsenal are playing right now.

What a difference a month makes, eh? Because a month ago we were too passive in our attacking, we didn’t ’go for it’ enough against teams, we relied too heavily on set pieces and that was to be our downfall. Now everyone is queuing up to ask him what the secret of the success is on our marvellous set piece record. And of course, he divulged his secret sauce:

Hard work.

Who’d have thought it, hey? Arsenal and Mikel Arteta work really hard, on a consistent basis, at set piece routines and have been doing so for years. In fact, for around about a decade he said and given our record is so much more exemplary than any other Premier League side, I can believe it. This is elite football. This is a sport where the tiniest of marginal gains can make a difference, where all of the teams are really, really good, so to best them you have to be near perfect. And the way to do that? Practice. A lot.

I really enjoyed the conversation that the Arsenal Vision guys had in the aftermath of the Atlético Madrid game where they talked about how even if we don’t score from a set piece, the fear of conceding one to us is enough to make teams act differently. They were walking in reference to the MLS run and not wanting to foul him because then we get a set piece, so in a way they were dammed if they do and dammed if they don’t, which is a really valuable asset to have when you are competing at the top: unpredictability. It feels like we have that at the moment and with the squad depth we have, I feel happy that Mikel has all the tools he needs to get wins – including tomorrow.

That doesn’t mean we will win, but we have all the players and options available to put us in a good position, which is what the pundits and ex-players think too. Jones Knows has us down for a 2-0 on Sky Sports, Sutton over at BBC says the same, Merse has done the same and Shearer has also said we’ll win. It’s pretty much a full house across the board and with Palace having less rest time than us, as well as being away and having not won in their last three games in all comps, you can understand why.

Oliver Glasner’s press conference was interesting, because he sounded very bullish in it, of course saying that Arsenal were a good and efficient team. But for every bit of praise he dished out, there was a touch of the ‘yeah but we…’ about his responses, so he’s obviously confident that they are going to get chances to score against us. You can see why given the xG they create, the form of Mateta and the displays we’ve seen like their home game against Liverpool in which 2-1 was a flattering scoreline for the Scousers. Glasner conceded that he didn’t think they would get seven or eight big chances tomorrow, but maybe one or two, which would be more than one or two than most teams have got recently. But given how well they’ve played this season you can see why he’d be confident they will and I suspect that yes, they’ll get more than any other team has this season, so we need to be wary.

Talk of course inevitably shifted to Eze and his return to playing against his old club and Mikel said that he would be fine, as you’d expect, whilst Glasner simply spoke about how they are actually better off without him, citing that xG stat I used already, as well as yesterday. It wasn’t in a style that was a bitter “we didn’t want him any more anyway” or anything like that, but more just to big up his existing players. I do think Ebz will have an extra bit of impetus to impress tomorrow though. As a human it’s only natural to want to show your former club that you’ve moved on to bigger and better things, but if I’m in Arteta’s shoes I’m telling him not to force anything tomorrow, because we all have the recent cautionary tale of Declan Rice’s previous two season’s before this one when we played West Ham at home. He had such a nightmare one last season that he was hooked at halftime by Arteta, which I think is the only time he’s done that to Dec since he arrived at the club. The only other times he’s come off has been fitness related, so it wasn’t a shame to see that perhaps the game had gotten in to his head a bit.

I don’t think that we’ll get that tomorrow from Eze. For one thing I think our form is very good and I think he’ll have the support of a number of players around him to try to get the best possible outcome. But I do think he’ll start and I hope he can get on the scoresheet too, because it’d be grand for the ol’ #narrative.

Other than that I think there’s not too much to report from both respective conferences. We just have to hope that the knock that Big Gabi picked up against Atlei won’t rule him out of tomorrow’s match.

Back tomorrow for a bit more of a tactical look at how the game might play out.

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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.