Arsenal vs Villa: 4 tactical improvements from Arteta’s side

How much better was that? Heading into this fixture fearing the worst was a justified position to hold. Seeing Arsenal labour their way to a rough and rugged 2-2 draw against Crystal Palace just four days earlier, nothing short of a colossal improvement would do.

That is exactly what we got from Mikel Arteta’s side.

While only two changes of personnel were made from Monday you would have been forgiven for thinking the entire team, manager and coaching staff had made way for a new set. Every single aspect of the performance was vastly improved; each detail ran through with a fine-tooth comb and set right on the training pitch.

The end result was one of the most enjoyable performances seen from this team under the manager. Mere hours ago one overriding talking point was how Arteta had sucked the fun out of Arsenal: the football was drab and the approach uninspiring.

4 tactical improvements from Mikel Arteta’s Arsenal side as goals from Partey, Aubameyang and Smith Rowe secured 3-1 Premier League victory

Registering 14 shots in the first half against Villa, the most in a single half in the entirety of Arteta’s 97-game reign, was anything but. It was breathless.

As noted by James Benge, the Gunners clocked up a xG of 2.45, the highest total recorded in the first half of a Premier League match since the beginning of the 2017/18 campaign. That’s where the Opta stats go back to, so it could well be more than that.

On occasions such as Friday night the usual discussion centres around what measure was Arsenal being impressive, and what measure was Villa being poor. It feels entirely unjust to leave the pendulum in the middle as the former heavily contributed to the latter.

Arteta found himself under immense pressure for this fixture. To have come out of it with #ArtetaBall trending on social media tells you all you need to know about the richness of the performance. So, what went right from a tactical standpoint?

1. Keeping Distances Shorter

With the band of technical operators that Arteta has in his disposal, the approach in using them has been heavily flawed.

When Arsene Wenger transitioned into his Rosicky/Cazorla/Fabregas/etc era, the emphasis was on having his technical masters always within close proximity of one another to build attacking triangles that could scythe through opposition lines with ease.

It was more akin to that on Friday as the distances between the midfielders and forwards resulted in divine combination play that succeeded in sucking in Villa players before elegantly shifting the ball laterally over to the other side.

Bukayo Saka would combine with the excellent Alexandre Lacazette, whose one-touch play was a cornerstone of the fluidity in the display, with someone like Thomas Partey shifting the ball on to Sambi who’d release Emile Smith Rowe and Nuno Tavares down on the left. Such sequences were plentiful.

Looking at the Palace game as an example, Nicolas Pepe would be banished to the touchline with huge gaps between the central midfielders and No. 10, resulting in laboured patterns of play or desperate attempts to open spaces with individual flair and unsuccessful take-ons.

Here the group were tighter in wide and central zones with clever balances across the team that meant the switch pass was always on and third man runs kept Villa second guessing which spaces to fill.

With such a high level of technical player in the squad, instructing them to be within the ‘one-touch zone’ drags defenders out of position and opens up other spaces across the pitch making for more dynamic threat. It worked a treat against the Villans.

Continued…