Arsenal: 4 tactical mistakes Arteta made vs Crystal Palace

4. Albert Sambi Lokonga Was the Right Change Used Wrongly

After Saka was assaulted by James McArthur at the end of the first half Arteta was forced into a change of personnel, with Albert Sambi Lokonga coming on in his stead.

Whether he intended to make this substitution or not, it was the right one to shore up the midfield and push Odegaard closer to the goal. There were strong claims for someone like Gabriel Martinelli to come on instead, but it would have left the same gaps in midfield that were being exposed in the first half.

It should have been effective. Despite seeing most of the ball, Palace were creating very little in terms of threat and managing the transitions would have been the platform to regain control and push for a second goal.

However, while the individual errors Partey and Sambi made were not on Arteta, the spaces left between the midfield pairing can only have been instructional.

Sambi would drift into wide zones on either side and Partey remained as the solitary midfielder. It meant that transitionally Arsenal were horribly simple to play through with space to run into and numerical advantages handed to Palace on a silver platter.

Giant spaces between the players on the pitch, as noted with how isolated the wingers were, continued in midfield and the team was not set up in a manner to both sustain spells of pressure or keep compactness when losing the ball.

A substitution that had scope to work in theory (whether Arteta was forced or not) did not materialise as such as the same issues that emerged in the first half persisted.