Arsenal: Pressing the first job of Mikel Arteta

Mikel Arteta is seemingly set to become Arsenal head coach. To make immediate improvements, he must fix the high press that currently lacks organisation and cohesiveness.

It seems as though Arsenal have made their choice. After the weekend’s 3-0 defeat to Manchester City displayed the gaping chasm between them and the elite teams in the league, the club is ostensibly ready to do something about it. And it all starts with hiring a new head coach.

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That man, it seems, will be Mikel Arteta, who has been widely mentioned as Unai Emery’s replacement throughout the media this week. In fact, the London Evening Standard even report that the announcement could come this week, prior to Saturday’s match against Everton.

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If Arteta does indeed take the dugout in the coming weeks, he will have a whole lot of work to do, as he witnessed first-hand in Sunday’s drubbing, sat to the right of the man who had masterminded the demise of his future team.

And while there are plenty of technical, tactical and personnel areas that he must address to produce improvements to the team, there is one aspect of Arsenal’s performance that must be fixed before all else: the cohesiveness of their pressing.

Both Unai Emery and Freddie Ljungberg have attempted to implement a high-pressing defensive strategy, but the results have been mixed, to say the least. As this piece by Nick Wright at Sky Sports details, Arsenal allow teams to progress up the pitch at the second-fastest rate in the Premier League and rank fifth-worst for the number of upfield metres they allow per attack. The teams worse than them are Newcastle, Aston Villa, West Ham and Crystal Palace, not exactly good company to keep. And these statistics are supported by the eye test: teams find it very easy to play through Arsenal.

There are many reasons for this. The industry of the players is a problem, especially in attacking midfield and on the wings, playing two centre-forwards, as has been the case for much of the year, does not help either, while perhaps the most pertinent cause is the deep-lying position of the defensive line, leaving too much space for the central midfielders to cover.

This is a very simple explanation of a very complicated tactical aspect, but you can summarise Arsenal’s defensive issues in the lack of structure and organisation. And this is not just the centre-backs, but the entire team. Players are pulled out of position too easily, vast spaces are left unattended allowing the opposition to break into, and the initial press when turnovers are committed is so lax and unattentive that opposing teams can take three or four players out of moves with one or two quick passes.

Manchester City are renowned for the organisation and connection of their press. As soon as they lose the ball, every player knows how to react to the situation to recover possession and prevent a counter-attack — incidentally, this is the difference between City last season and this season: they have stopped shackling counter-attacks successfully. This is what Arteta bring to the Emirates.

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There are many changes that Arteta must implement at Arsenal. The team is a mess, the tactics are even worse, and there are years of poor coaching, poor culture-building and poor recruitment to overcome. But if there is one aspect that he can change in the first few weeks to have the biggest impact, it is the high press. This is the greatest tactical problem of the team at present, but can Arteta solve it?

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