Arsenal vs West Brom: 5 Brutal Things We Learned

2. Zonal Marking Is A Festering Wound

I have never seen a single piece of tactical choices gone wrong so many times without being addressed. Never. Not in any tier of football ever. Simply because you, by definition, have to be damn insane to keep trying something over and over, expecting a different result.

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We have been moaning about Arsenal’s tactical scheme on set pieces forever. Literally, forever. And against West Brom, it reached a point of utter embarrassment.

Tony Pulis admitted after the game that he knew frontwards, backwards and sideways exactly how Arsenal were going to defend set pieces. He explained the scheme better than Wenger himself could have.

Not only did the Baggies bag two goals (the difference in the game) from set pieces, they bagged them in the same way from the same damn person! Two times Craig Dawson poked a ball off his head into the back of the net. And if you watch the video, especially on the first goal, you can see that if Dawson hadn’t scored it, four other baggies could have.

All Pulis did was flood a zone. It was that easy. And if it is that easy for a tame attack like West Brom to break down, then it should just inspire all sorts of confidence against bigger clubs.

Next up, a depressing fact.