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Match report – Player ratings – Arteta reaction – Video
I very rarely start with a line from the previous day’s blog, but I think today is a bit of an exception, so:
I have to say, as difficult as the Rice/Odegaard thing is, I’d be more worried if we had similar problems at the back. The solidity and continuity of the back four/five will be tested today, but we know what they’re capable of.
Yesterday’s 1-0 North London derby win was built on the defensive platform we have built over the last number of years, and while I think the back four and the goalkeeper are obviously the mainstays, what stood out to me most yesterday was how hard the entire team worked from a defensive point of view.
Not everyone was flawless, but that old cliche of defending from the front sprang to mind when I saw Kai Havertz closing down high up the pitch to stop them from getting the ball forward. Bukayo Saka and Gabriel Martinelli ran themselves ragged in both directions, Leandro Trossard buzzed around interchanging with Havertz, and even the two veteran midfielders – both of whom I think struggled at times – did their bit to shore up the centre of the pitch.
We know how Spurs like to play through the middle. They kept trying. They kept hitting a brick wall. It was sort of like an anti-Pavlovian response. They kept doing it and it didn’t work, but they didn’t learn anything from it. It was, in as much as anything can be during the stressful 90 minutes+ of a derby, quite funny.
Early on David Raya had to be alert a couple of times, and William Saliba picked up a 15th minute booking for ‘delaying the restart’ after he won the ball. The fact that this rule only seems to apply to Arsenal players is doing my head in, but if it’s a fact of life for us and nobody else, we’re going to have to adapt – regardless of how nonsensical it is to see us pick up yellows and reds while nobody else does.
We had the best chance of the first half when Trossard sent…
Source link : https://arseblog.com/2024/09/sprs-0-1-arsenal-defensive-discipline-provided-platform-for-gabriels-winner/
Author : arseblog
Publish date : 2024-09-16 06:27:06
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