Arsenal: 3 improvements to make in winter break

1. Be more clinical

While Arsenal’s control of matches has improved under Mikel Arteta and their high press is better organised and executed, perhaps surprisingly for someone who developed their coaching skills under Pep Guardiola, creating chances has been difficult.

During this two-week break, working on the speed of the attacking play is vital. Many times, Arsenal create openings to drive into, often with Mesut Ozil between the opposing midfield and defence. But the movement off the ball is poor, the pass is mistimed or misplaced, the move either slows or breaks down entirely, and the chance to create a goalscoring opportunity has gone. That ruthless cutting edge to slice through teams in the final third is missing.

Much of this comes down to the quality of the players. But Arteta can improve things on the training ground: work on particular passing routines when in three-on-threes; encourage his players to move the ball quicker when breaking forwards; instruct attackers to make specific runs off the ball to exploit specific spaces, each run intertwined with those around them.

Chance creation has been a major problem for Arsenal under Arteta. They have control, but they lack that clinical edge that all great teams possess. Work on the training ground over the next two weeks can change this.