How Arteta's Genius Change Saved The Tie

All right then, my pedigree chums. This was how Arsenal lined up against Bayern Munich. No real surprises here. It’s a 433 we’ve seen all season. Except no, of course, it’s not actually a 433. Arsenal adapt this based on the team they’re playing. And their main adaptive strategy was a Declan Rice actually sat in a double pivot with Georginio, with Erdogan sort of instructed to be a little bit further forward. The plan here was then they had four players, nice and deep. They could bait by and press and then go through it. Except straight away this. Clearly it wasn’t going to work because Bayern might be down bad in Germany. They might be down so, so bad. But they’re still Bayern Munich. In the quarterfinals of a Champions League. They pressed Arsenal in an incredibly disciplined 442 and basically used these four players to cut off these six players from Arsenal. The white players would stop the balls going out to the full backs, and Kane and Musiala would just not press the two centre backs. They were allowed to have the ball here and they would use instead there shadow cover, which is something we’ve talked about on the channel before. It’s where you basically mark, not by marking but mark by process of blocking off the pass. Look, this nicely illustrates it, to stop the ball going to Rice and Georginio, but this is Arsenal. Loads of teams try and do this to them. They’ve got a very clear plan for how to deal with that and instead what happens is it’s not a double pivot. Martin Erdegaard then feels free to drop as deep as he likes to get on the ball. Then all of a sudden you’ve got two players trying to mark 3. The angles don’t work anymore and that’s how they play through you. But again this is Bayern Munich at the quarter finals of a Champions League and a new Arsenal were going to do this and they had a solution for it and that solution was so, so you know Kiwi all here. Yeah, the the solution was to just came off Whenever Arsenal gave this ago, Leroy Sani would just leave him and then they would all shuffle over one and then now again you can’t play through the middle. Now of course you can see the problem with this. You’ve now left a man completely free. Arsenal could get the ball to Kiwi or anytime they want when they’re building out. But by in had calculated this risk and they did not fear him. They were like, look, you’ve got Georginio and Rice and Erdegard and Ben White and Saliva and Gabriel if you want to give it to Kiwi or out of all those players. Crack on lads. So genius move number one by Arteta was to find a way to get Erdogan Rice on the ball even through all of this pressing and marking. He did that by allowing both the fullbacks to move all the way up, the wide players went slightly narrower and then having Martin Erdogard and Declan Rice basically pull out into the fullback positions. I genuinely had to do one of those cartoon rubbing my eyes bits when I saw this early on in the game. That is back four with Erdogan right back and Rice at left back. And as changes go, it’s really good this one because both the binds wide players are supposed to be watching the full back. So you’ve effectively pushed them really far back allowing your best progressive passer of the ball and your best progressive carrier of the ball to now get on it in space. Now obviously Son is a very widely player and didn’t really get baited into this. He was still quite happy to leave career and just move on to Rice here instead as he was supposed to do. But Serge Gnabry? He can’t leave Ben White, so that forced him all the way back down that side and let Erdogan just have so much control of the play from this deep position. Like the guy’s heat map in this match is insane. And given the territorial dominance Arsenal had in this match, how far back they were pushing by and the amount of times Erdogan is receiving it wide and in his own half is absolutely nuts. Even his pass map in this game is quite bizarre, like if we overlay that as well, you can see all the successful passes he made. It’s like this little sort of cone, or I can’t remember what shapes are called like curve from wide right to the outside of his box. You can see him sort of like floating away from Bynes defensive structure to get on the ball where the space was. Now yes, obviously in an ideal world you do want Martin Odegaard to be getting on the ball in this part of the pitch, but if you can’t do that, the next best thing is to just get him on the ball full stop. And that’s how Arsenal scored. This is the build up to Arsenal S first goal. You can see Ben Whitey’s pushed all the way up forcing Abri back suckers there as well. So buying a pinned in down that side and then right back mark near the guard gets the kind of time and space here that he’s never ever going to get here. Something just quintessentially Arsenal about what happens next because they need a centre forward right? A proper goal scorer who stays between the width of the post. They’re never going to win anything without one of those, right? Well, the only reason they score this goal is because when it’s turned over, they’ve got a 3V2 advantage here. Because Kai have it is free to roam wherever he wants and comes across because he thinks he can be helpful there. If he was just loitering around the penalty spot. This goal does not happen. But this is the best thing about football, right? Because Arsenal have made these changes which have completely undone Bynes plan for stopping and they’re now playing through. They’re dominating the game. They have their foot on Bynes neck and perversely this was the worst thing that could happen. And that’s because one of Bynes major problems this season is that they’ve struggled to dominate games the way you would expect buying to dominate games. If they’re gonna have most of the ball, it can sometimes struggle to break teams down as they’ve got to go toe for toe in possession with their opponents. They can struggle to assert their dominance but they have still got a number of players who are brilliant at being really fast and really direct and doing counter attacking football. It’s just that when you are the biggest team in your country you almost never get dominated enough that that actually happens. But Arsenal, of course they did manage to dominate them and press right the way up. And weirdly, that made by an incredibly dangerous in the space behind. Like, I’ve seen a lot of discourse about whether it was Gabrielle’s fault or Raya’s fault for that first goal. Should he have left it? Should he have come that far? But if you look at where Arsenal are went by and clear that ball, it’s not even just that they’re on the halfway line. They’re practically camped in the final third. David Riot won’t just be on a late for this, he’d be on like 5 alarm chili and six espressos making sure he closes that gap if the ball goes into it. So I don’t think actually either of them were at fault. This is just very precarious situation and Gabrielle is unlucky that the past misses a teammate, but also unlucky that it lands a buy in when they are dreaming about getting into this kind of situation. Now we’ll say the second goal is one of the most UN arsenal goals to concede that they’ve had all season. Like they lose an individual one-on-one battle here we all this side just gets turned and run away from. And then they’re a bit indecisive in the challenge. Everybody sort of jumps in, but nobody does it, particularly dedicatedly, committedly. You know, the kind of word I mean, and then they end up fouling him. But just one thing about this, right? I think everybody’s missed. I just want to rewind this. So this is Arsenal pressing structure, right? The reason I said at the start of the video that buying kind of taught them a bit of a lesson is because Arsenal were really brave with this and they got a spot on and it was very effective and buying still and exploiting it to get that second goal. So just like by an Arsenal also pressed and defended in this 442 shapes. You can imagine this is then moved right up because buying have got the ball at the back and have added all the buying players who were involved in the build up. Manuel Noyer the goalie. Then you’ve got Delict and dire. They split the two center backs in this situation and the fullbacks Davies and Kimmick, they stay really wide. Then you’ve got a single pivot here of Lima and what they were doing was like similar in concept to buying, but very different in execution. Because you had Erdogard would just sit on Lima cutting off the ball to sort of the playmaking midfielder straight away and then have it would kind of stagger himself and go and sit on delict and sort of jump between him and Noyer. Now with Saka and Martinelli staying on the fullback straight away, you can see Bynes only real out ball here. The safe one is to Eric Dyer. But just like with Kiyo over here, Arsen were like, well, okay then one, he’s on the wrong side, so it’s going to be really difficult for him to play forward on his weaker foot. And two, that guy used to play for spares, so we think he’s so as soon as the ball would go out to Dyer, then Erdogard would jump off Lamer closing him down, leaving him in. Everybody say it with me, his shadow cover, so he still marked even though he’s left him. They would put Dire under pressure and try and turn the ball over and that again was really effective. Also got a really good chance of doing this exact thing in the first half, but again, buying a kind of wise to that right before the goalie have set this up perfectly again, like here is here to God watching Lamer and ready to jump on Dyer who is completely free. Havich is cutting off the ball to Delict. Rice is even pushed up so they can’t use Goretzka to get out this way. There’s soccer in attendance of Davies and you’ll use your imagination. But obviously Martinelli’s on the other side with Kinnock. Havich does his job, steps forward to put Neuer under a bit of pressure to force him to play that ball to Eric Dyer. God damn it. Leaving clicked in his shadow cover. And then Manuel Noyer just does this from there. Buy and get the ball on the right hand side, play it forward, Curio gets turned, they run into the box and that’s how they get the penalty. You don’t see this happen to us in the Premier League because from back to front I don’t think anybody’s capable of doing that to them. And of course if I was doing a video on the genius way by Munich beat Arsenal, I would now be saying Bush bitten. Thanks for watching. Don’t forget to like Cher and Aboniran. But I’m not because it didn’t beat Arsenal, because Nicola Arteta still had more changes in him that managed to salvage a really good result here from what could have gotten away from them. And that change was in his substitutions. Now you might be sitting there going, Well, of course it was Adam. It was Leandro Trosado for the goal. He was a substitute. Or perhaps you mean Gabby. Hey, Zeus, who set up the goal. He was a substitution as well. And no, no, they were they were not the genius changes. They were the obvious changes. The genius change right there, Arteta looked at, buy insurance out of possession shape and said all right then, you don’t think Kiwi was any good on the ball and you’re going to leave him unmarked. I’ll replace him for someone who is good on the ball, then what you going to do? Bitch? He doesn’t even wait. He just brings him on at half time and from there Arsenal are in almost complete control and he was happy to get the ball out wide and do some stuff with it. But primarily what that led Arsenal to doing was getting into this sort of nearly perfect. I just need to reach across 325 shape and the impacts in Chenko had from this position was just really good because he passes the ball so well from these areas. He was finding Jesus really easily because they had early garden habits. They kept pulling wider and wider to remove that midfield screen. Jesus would then drop and receive and then Arsenal had the ball in in really good areas. It worked really well but it wasn’t quite getting them the goal. But if those two goals should have shown Arsenal what playing by and at this level is all about, then that equalizer from Arsenal should have shown everybody what this Arsenal team is all about. Because the reason Arsenal wanted five players here was to stretch by in as much as possible and they brought Truss on on the left hand side. And this up until the goal is his heat map. And what you will no doubt know is straight away is he is hugging that touchline he’s barely moving off at. His job is to make sure the Kimmick stays wide so there’s room in the channels for habits or whoever floats in there to get on the ball. And yet if we look at the moment he fires in that equalizer, he is absolutely miles away from the one position he’s supposed to be in. Why? Well, it’s because this Arsenal team are not scared of this buying team. Doesn’t matter what the previous results were, all those five ones or the fact they kept getting counter attacked on. They believed in their ability to keep the pressure on and get a goal. Havit and trussage should be on the left hand side. That is where they’re supposed to be playing. That’s where the space is in case Arsenal do turn it over, but they don’t care. They don’t. They don’t want to wait for that ball to magically come back to them as a team. They want it back now and by in like so many teams in the Premier League just couldn’t live with those numbers. They couldn’t live with that determination, They couldn’t live with that willingness to go and fight for the ball. It gets turned over and from there it’s individual brilliance. There’s been almost no space in or around the box all night, but Jesus is so good on the ball he draws like 5, buying players toward him. In a panic, Eric Dyer lunges in when he really shouldn’t. The space opens up and somehow, because I’ve watched it back and he doesn’t look, presumably through the power of telepathy, he knows exactly where Trossard is. No, you are. You’re right, he probably did just give him a shout that that is a distinct possibility, but I like my idea more. He rolls it across Trossard, gets equalizer and I think if you had 10 minutes more in this game, maybe Arsenal go on and win it. I certainly don’t think they were in any danger of losing it. And yes, of course it’s going to be really difficult for Arsenal to go away to buy in and win that game and get to the semi final. Especially when, as we’ve discussed, they’re probably going to play in a way that will sort of lend itself to what Bayern really wants to be doing. But I just think when you look at the determination and the individual moments and also Artetas on field management, that is a team that can’t just be buying or not only will be buying, you know what I mean? But can go all the way in this. I am now going all the way to shop to get myself some lunch. So thank you so much for watching this year. If you have enjoyed it, please to consider subscribing to us here on 442 Champions League, Premier League, European Championships. We will have our trousers down excited for it all. New issue of the mag is on sale now but they’re still upstairs. I forgot to bring them down so you’ll have to imagine it. You can go get that from the description below or in a newsagents like these to do in the olden days. You can get me on Twitter at Theory CLER Y442 socials in the corner of the video. And until tomorrow. Yeah, I’m doing another one tomorrow, actually. Until then. I will see you later. I do really feel like I’ve forgotten to mention something here. Like I had to tell you something really important and now it’s just completely gone out of my head. You’re right. No, you’re right. These outros are getting worse. I’m going. Goodbye.