Arsenal Vs Newcastle United: It’s all about angles

Arsenal’s problems of playing through the high press continued against Newcastle United on Saturday afternoon. Their issues stem from the midfielders and the lack of angles provided.

The first half of Arsenal’s deserved but somewhat uneasy 2-1 win over Newcastle United on Saturday afternoon was a little worrying, to say the least. Newcastle were the dominant side for large portions of it and Unai Emery was forced into some major midfield surgery to right the obvious wrongs that his team were suffering from.

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Usually, when this team has troubles on the road, it is because of their work in defence. This time, it was in attack, or rather, in their ability to provide a foundation to attack in any sense of the word.

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Rafa Benitez completely overhauled his approach against the top sides on this occasion. Against Manchester City and Chelsea, he played with an extremely low block — Newcastle averaged 20% possession across the two matches — and looked to soak up the relentless waves of attacking pressure and then counter attack. But against Arsenal, rather than sit deep, Benitez instructed his players to employ a soft press, not allowing the Gunners to work their way through the midfield and build any attacks.

This is a problem that the team has suffered from for many years. Santi Cazorla has been the only individual — perhaps along with Jack Wilshere — who has the quality and calmness to receive passes under pressure and release teammates into space and he hasn’t played since October 2016 and has now left the club completely. In his absence, there is no midfielder who is noticeably effective at conducting play even when they are under pressure to do so.

Against Newcastle, it was the turn of Granit Xhaka and Matteo Guendouzi. Neither had the positional intelligence, the spatial awareness, the reading of the game, the vision and then the skill with the ball to be able to circumnavigate an average at best Newcastle pressing scheme. This was a Pep Guardiola inspired press that Arsenal were trying to play through here.

The problem was a simple but difficult one. Neither was able to create the angles required for the centre-backs and full backs to find them in space. It’s not that there wasn’t space to exploit, but that because of the positions of the Newcastle strikers, stood in between the centre-backs and central midfielders, neither Guendouzi or Xhaka could move in a way that provided a lane to be supplied via.

And then, as soon as Lucas Torreira was introduced at half-time for Guendouzi and Xhaka was freed into a slightly more advanced role, suddenly, everything started to click. The passes were slicker, quicker and more accurate. There was movement off the ball. There was a positional rotation between the attackers. The man on the ball had several options to choose from, not just limited to one or two optimistic passing opportunities. The team, in its entirety, created angles for another.

As Arsenal and Unai Emery learn how to circumnavigate, play through and even evade completely with longer, more direct passes, opponents’ high press, they must astutely understand and execute angles. Playing around pressing attackers is all about angles. It is something that this team is yet to master.