Arsenal 0-1 West Ham: The Debrief
The last little hope for the season drained away
There is not a lot positive that came out of this match and with Liverpool beating Manchester City, the small hope of a title for Arsenal has all but the final mathematically been confirmed as OVER.
On the plus side, the teams chasing Arsenal continue to show flaws and had dropped points all over. City lost, Chelsea lost, Forest lost, and Bournemouth lost. Arsenal maintained their six point lead over third place and their nine point lead over fourth. The floor of this season even with it looking close to worse case is maintaining pretty high right now.
That probably doesn’t provide too much comfort for a match that was up there for the worst of the season but I have to be able to give my self something to keep going and maybe it will help some of you as well.
Enough of that I guess, lets dig in.
Arsenal 0-1 West Ham: The Graphics
Arsenal 0-1 West Ham: The Debrief
Arsenal Impotent in attack
20 - Shots for Arsenal in this match
This by itself looks decent and it is the third highest shot total that the team has had in the League up to this point. Looking a bit deeper and this is not nearly as good.
1.5 - Expected goals, this is just the 14th best figure for Arsenal this season
0.08 - xG per shot, this is the 2nd worst figure for Arsenal this season and a major departure from the team as a whole this season where they have maintained a very high average quality of shot.
10 - Shots blocked by West Ham here, having 50% of shots blocked is a clear indicator that Arsenal had a hard time creating clear openings, often times with 2-3 players between the shooter and the goal.
2 - Shots on target from Arsenal, this is the third lowest total this season
10% - Shot on target percentage, this is the lowest percentage for Arsenal and well below the 35% they have averaged this season.
Of these shots only one was a somewhat difficult save, the other shot was a very basic play for a Premier League keeper.
The real frustrating part of this match was that there wasn’t a problem of territory here, Arsenal had 81% of the field tilt and had the second most touches in the final third this season.
The problem was penetration.
79 - Passes attempted to within 25 yards of goal from open play, completing 43 of these only 12 were within 15 yards of goal.
Arsenal often felt like they were out of ideas as well, the first choice was feeding Martin Odegaard and see if he could conjure something or play a cross. West Ham did a good job of congesting the center here and really limited Arsenal from getting access into Zone 14.
11% - The percentage of Arsenal’s touches in the final third that were in zone 14
9% - The percentage of Arsenal’s passes in the final third that were in zone 14
The crossing didn’t really work in this match either and it was a tactic that West Ham seemed set up to deal with going with three center backs against Mikel Merino.
Here is how the Arsenal players looked crossing from open play:
Nwaneri 2/6
Trossard 0/6
Odegaard 0/5
Zinchenko 1/3
Rice 2/2
Sterling 1/2
Timber 0/2
Saliba 0/1
Not a good one for Arsenal.
Looking at the table above and you can’t help be struck by how dependent the team was on Odegaard in this match. That leads to a good time to transition to the next section.
Odegaard is asked to do it all and he can’t shoulder the load
76 - Total Pass Attempts, 5th among Arsenal players
78.9% - Pass completion percentage on 101.7% Pass Efficiency (actual completion compared to expected completion rate)
8 - Progressive Passes, 1st among Arsenal players
5 - Box Entry Passes, 1st among Arsenal players
12 - Deep Completions (not Cross), 1st among Arsenal players
543.7 - Progressive Pass Distance, 4th among Arsenal players
0.43 - Regular Play Passing GPA, 1st among Arsenal players
3 - Key Passes, 1st among Arsenal players
7 - Shot creating actions, 1st among Arsenal players
0.24 - xG assisted, 2nd among Arsenal players
3 - Shots, 2nd among Arsenal players
0.17 - xG, 3rd among Arsenal players
420.9 - Progressive Carry Distance, 2nd among Arsenal players
19 - Progressive Carries, 1st among Arsenal players
6 - Carry into Final Third, 1st among Arsenal players
1 - Carry into the box, 2nd among Arsenal players (that his 1 was tied for second is not great)
6 - Progressive Passes Received, 2nd among Arsenal players
12 - Final Third Entry Pass Received, 1st among Arsenal players
2 - Pass in the box Received
3 - Touches in the box, 5th among Arsenal players
13 - Deep Touches, 2nd among Arsenal players
2 - Times Dispossessed, 2nd most among Arsenal players
I went deep on this last night if you want to have a much longer and thorough breakdown of his match.
The TL:DR of this is that it wasn’t his best and there were frustrating moments from the game. It is also pretty shocking how much of a one-man team we are looking right now.
This is understandable with the number of injuries the team is dealing with in attack, especially because the team’s best player and one that works with Odegaard to often carry the load is out for at least another 3-5 weeks.
Saka and Odegaard are the elite creators in the team and missing one of them has a large detrimental effect on how the team is able to perform.
Adam made a good point that, while there is a strong argument that Arsenal should have had more depth because the season is long and brutal on players, top teams depend on their best players to create (and get on the end of chances). It is a massive hurdle for the team and one that it would be hard for any team to overcome regardless of the depth the accumulated.
Odegaard has been off of his best this season, he’s suffered a difficult injury, he’s looked off of it coming back, and is doing this in a team that has had a number of injuries around him in attack and at fullback.
Even with that, doing a bit of cold rational number observing it feels like you have to squint to see how the major complaints are problems vs him simply just not being elite at everything without any weaknesses.
He’s the captain and one of the best players on the team, so the expectations are understandably high it just seems that the pendulum on the vibes around his actual play has swung wildly from him being a bit overrated (he probably wasn’t the player of the season last year) to underrated (he is not shit and people looking to replace him in the squad or sell him are seeming off).
Declan Rice gets an early hook against his former team
31 - Total pass attempts, 87% completion percentage and 113% efficiency
4 - Progressive passes
1 - Open play key pass (0.13 xA)
24 - Passes received, 5 progressive
2 - Touches in the box
1 - shot (0.03 xG)
0 - Tackles + fouls committed
0 - Interceptions + Blocked passes
This was an uncharacteristically bad performance from Rice. In possession I think he was fine, he didn’t do anything great but it wasn’t particularly a problem but he didn’t do much to relive the burden on Odegaard from the other advanced midfield position. What was concerning was that it seemed that his off the ball work here was not up to his level and the thing that really makes him special.
He seemed to be moving at 75% power here and it was a factor that made Arsenal a bit easier than normal to play through.
I don’t love him as the advanced partner to Odegaard but when he is an all action beast I can see and understand the vision, accepting some of his on the ball trade offs. Here where he didn’t have that it was a trade off that wasn’t worth it and Arteta made the right call with the early sub for him.
Merino learns being a striker isn’t an easy assignment
He probably already knew that but it makes for a better subheading.
2 - Shots (0.44 xG)
10 - Deep touches
8 - Touches in the box
2 - Key Passes (0.14 xA)
4 - Aerial Duels won of 11 contested, 36% win rate
2 - Ground duels won of 7 contested, 28% win rate
This is a player out of position so I give him quite a bit of latitude on the judgement here. He did alright in this match but the idea that he would be more than just a guy doing a job is looking a bit optimistic and probably not something that Arsenal should bet on. This was a tougher ask than going up against the Leicester defense that had 60 minutes in their legs.