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Is No Formation Arsenal’s Best Formation?
By Josh Sippie
Every time Arsenal take the pitch, there are some common themes. There is a goalie (shocker), four defenders and then Francis Coquelin in the middle of the base and Olivier Giroud front and center. But aside from the base and the spine, Arsenal have no real formation. With Mesut Ozil, Santi Cazorla, Aaron Ramsey and Alexis filling the rest of the spots on the team, they form no sort of formation.
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On paper, Alexis is the left wing, Aaron Ramsey the right wing, Mesut Ozil is at the No. 10 spot and Cazorla the central midfielder next to Coquelin but on the pitch, they hold no such roles. If anything, they form a revolving door that sees the four rotating in and out of positions depending on where the flow of the attack is taking them.
As such, to say Arsenal run a 4-2-3-1 or a 4-3-3 is a bit erroneous because the Gunners hardly run any formation at all and that may be for the best.
Arsene Wenger has always wanted to start as many central midfielders as he could. Something about them being the most talented players in football seems to make him want to fit them into every nook and cranny he can. As such, he runs with four of them and lets them interchange with each other as much as they want.
That is a really bold step for a manager. He is letting his players have more creative freedom than anywhere else in the world of football.
Aaron Ramsey spoke of the tactics after the game and what Wenger told him about playing on the right, which has already been established as a position that the Welshman is not keen on playing: “He told me to try and get in between the lines, not stay outside, to come inside.” As we see here, Wenger is encouraging a lack of width in favor of getting his central midfield cornucopia into attacking positions in front of goal.
Strategically speaking, this has several flaws to offset the potential brilliance. The first of which is a lack of width, which has been covered ad nauseum since the West Ham defeat. Having a rotating buzz-saw of central midfielders may buzz through the weaker defenses but tough, organized defenses could provide problems. Spreading the defense out with skillful wing play makes the defense thinner, weaker, and easier to penetrate from the front door. Arsenal do not have that.
The second problem is that those four players can tend to get bunched up together in the box, leaving nobody out wide to feed crosses if the fullbacks have yet to arrive. This also leaves too many bodies clustered around one area. This leads into another problem: it can push Olivier Giroud out wide.
With so many players clustering in the middle of the pitch, Olivier Giroud sometimes takes it upon himself to take the ball outside for a bit and give the team temporary width. Giroud is not a good winger. Not at all. He needs to be in the box but you cannot blame him for wanting to find space if three or four guys are cluttering up his zone.
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The lack-of-formation formation is not all bad though. It allows for some of Arsenal’s most creative minds to work together on the pitch. They have all been playing together long enough that they should be able to work cohesively and build some really attractive attacking play. It is kind of like cogs in a machine, when they all turn and work together, the machine can function.
Another pro to this formation is that, given its originality and lack of any real mechanical function, it will be really hard for opposing defenses to get a read on. You cannot prepare for an attack when your opposition has not necessarily given away any of their tactics until the clock is ticking.
Just like any other formation, there are pros and cons. Wenger likes to have his best players out on the pitch, even if that means playing them ‘out of position.’ If his solution is to give his four central midfielders the creative license to do as they please, then his innovation deserves to be commended. However, the jury is still out on whether it can provide sustained success.
Next: Arsenal must go after Victor Wanyama