Arsenal: 4 tactical issues with Xhaka & Partey

The inevitability of Granit Xhaka never ceases to amaze. Returning from a knee injury an entire month ahead of schedule, he took his place in the Arsenal midfield alongside Thomas Partey in the defeat to Everton.

It was their first start together since the North London Derby win back in September, yet their reunion wasn’t expected to be penciled in until as late as February.

Not due back until the time that Partey is away with Ghana at AFCON, variations of the midfield with Sambi Lokonga were thought to be how Arsenal would look for a few months more at least. For the most part, it was a welcome surprise.

Before the season began the preferred duo in the team was these two. Both flawed, when they found form together it was the closest Arsenal had come to a rounded midfield. Since Xhaka’s injury it’s been the Belgian whose come in and, for the most part, he’s exceeded expectations.

4 tactical issues facing Arsenal and Mikel Arteta with Granit Xhaka & Thomas Partey as a midfield pivot

Not involved in either of the two most recent Premier League matches, he had to watch on at Goodison Park as his team fell apart with midfield progression no more than a foreign concept. While Xhaka and Partey as a pivot has the potential to be functional for Arsenal, as seen previously, that did not come to fruition against Everton.

On show were a host of tactical deficiencies that limited Arsenal across 98 minutes, prompting calls for Sambi to come back into the team in place of, well, either of the two.

With Southampton to come on home soil on Saturday, the previously set in stone starting lineup that Mikel Arteta had comes under discussion once again. At present, the more deserving member of the midfield to miss out is Partey, who quite possibly has had his two worst games for the club consecutively.

It’s not sure what route Arteta will take, but at this moment in time there are four tactical issues with the Partey and Xhaka pivot that came to the fore in the 2-1 loss.

Now, that isn’t to say either should drop out – even with Sambi waiting in the wings – or that these areas can’t be solved, just that they are aspects that require examination for fear of further setbacks.

1. Control Hard to Gain With Partey’s Confidence Shot

Partey being bereft of confidence and therefore exceedingly sloppy in possession is not a tactical note as such. But the byproduct of that is having an impact on performances and preventing Arsenal from being the dominating side they aspire to be.

He looks terrified. For someone held in such high regard by supporters and considered the engine of this team as recently as late September, how his form has dipped since is a source of genuine concern.

Normally astute ball control and competent passing, it’s now the simple balls he’s failing to execute. Visibly discontent with himself at Old Trafford, while he cleaned up his pass completion against Everton he continued to insert unnecessary pressure on the side in key moments. Additionally, he lost nine out of his 14 duels in the game, an incredibly uncharacteristic trait of his, further accentuating how little belief he has in himself.

All of that is killing attacks and effective recycling of possession. If the ball is in the attacking third you need Partey to mop up any opposition attempts to break out. Meant to the man preventing transitions, he’s instead helping instigate them.

Any momentum and foothold the team wants to gain is decreased in potency when one of the key figures is seeing balls bounce off him and passes misplaced.

(Xhaka’s passing accuracy was far worse against Everton, but some mitigation is applied)

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2. Xhaka in a Back Three Negates White & Gabriel

As with all the current tactical concerns, there is space to improve on them or change them entirely. Against Everton, Xhaka started picking up positions, perhaps out of pure muscle memory, that did little to aid Arsenal’s cause.

Back in the team and back on the ball, the Swiss is someone who yearns to have the pitch in front of him. He wants to see all the action play out ahead so he can pick the passes he feels will be most threatening or at least likely to springboard an attacking move.

Investing £77m in Benjamin White and Gabriel, it felt counterproductive to then see him drop in between the two at Goodison Park to do just this. Arsenal went out and spent big on two quick and progressive central defenders who take on chunks of this responsibility. Happening on occasions in the game, at times it was as if Xhaka was coaching them on how to perform the role.

On the positive side it shows initiative and willingness, yet the overriding negative is that it prevents Arsenal from being able to squeeze the pitch and the opposition. The whole point of bringing White and Gabriel in was so that the defensive line could push up to congest the pitch and be more physically able to handle transitions and recycle possession.

When Xhaka did this at Goodison Park – and it isn’t necessarily a criticism of him as it could be instructional – Arsenal had their distances too wide, with Bukayo Saka in particular left isolated out on the right.

Picking up that position negates the very reason for having White and Gabriel.

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3. Lack of Speed & Mobility in Midfield

That old chestnut. One of the chief reasons why many supporters have been so keen to move on from Xhaka and approach the midfield area of the pitch in a different manner is, indeed, mobility.

Craving an energetic option in the heart of the pitch who can hassle, harry and avoid being as deep to compensate for a lack of pace, Sambi has been the perceived next step on from Xhaka. Even Ainsley Maitland-Niles has brought legs into the midfield when he’s played.

There is no point going in hard on Xhaka, who can quite literally do nothing to change this: he’s never been mobile and he’ll never be mobile. What exacerbates the issue at the moment is that he’s also not match fit.

Arteta is woe to ever substitute him, so another 90 minutes against Southampton will almost certainly be followed by another 90 minutes against West Ham and so on and so forth. But this aspect (or non-aspect) has limitations on what Arsenal can do.

Blowing Tottenham away in September, it was the transitions, two from deep, that killed the game. In the other matches where Arsenal have torn teams apart early on with energetic high intensity – Aston Villa, Leicester – Xhaka wasn’t in the team.

There is a link without there being total confirmation, but one of the poorest first halves from the side where everyone wanted to be behind the ball unfolded at Goodison Park with only momentary high pressure. While that doesn’t pin all the blame of Xhaka, an unfit midfielder playing 98 minutes of football who is on the ball most of the game doesn’t help.

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4. Reverting to Predictable Build-Up Play

Seeing Xhaka and Tierney in the same team brought back memories. How often would we see that pass sequence in the game, then?

There was some of that on show in the game, and Arsenal’s only goal came from a move that culminated in Tierney receiving the ball high up on the left and whipping it in for Odegaard to score, yet everything else aside from that was mind-numbingly predictable.

Xhaka and Partey can bring out the better qualities in each other, but how Arsenal approach games and the patterns they look to create are more one-dimensional as a pair. Granted, they haven’t played together in a while with one of them barely fit and the other crippled with self-doubt, so fluency is hardly going to pop on the grass straight.

As this team attempted to shift away from the previous Xhaka and Partey pivot, albeit completely enforced, there ends up being some muscle memory reactions in the players not too dissimilar from the football played last season.

And, at Everton, it felt an awful lot like the previous campaign: relatively neat and effective build-up play out of phase one and then not much invention, idea or patterns in phase two onwards.

It’s also something the opposition is familiar with. There are data points aplenty to pour over in preparation to facing a Xhaka and Partey midfield, not least as the pair are only just reunited there with neither at their best either physically or in terms of form.

All of the above does not infer that the duo can’t and should not play together, but they are points that need to be looked at or addressed for Arteta moving forward.