Straight into things:
Headline: Releasing the tightness
Man was that needed.
After a run of games where all the chances found a way to not be finished, it is nice to both create several very good chances (6 big chances) and to finish them running up a big scoreline.
The team over the last month had looked tight, they were snatching at their chances, overdoing things, and looking like they needed perfection to get the ball in the back of the net. It could be a results-oriented analysis (it probably is) but that seemed to be significantly less of a problem today, with the stress melting away, especially after the third goal.
The last two goals came in garbage time but even still before that Arsenal played with a renewed sense of urgency early. The tempo of the game was higher than it has been in a good while with more one-touch passing around the surprisingly high press that Crystal Palace brought (I do think that Arsenal looked to draw them onto them more here as well).
This had Arsenal playing a bit further from their own goal but they had more times where they were attacking into space with speed. In this match, Arsenal had 6 direct fast attacks, of the 10 shooting sequences that started more than 40 yards from goal, 8 of them had Arsenal’s speed of attack over 3 yards of progressive distance covered per second.
There were still times that Crystal Palace got into shape and forced Arsenal to try and break them down but here, Arsenal were able to counter that with speed. Getting the early goal certainly helped but that still probably didn’t change the game plan too much for the visitors, they just couldn’t slow Arsenal down.
I have started looking at trying to capture the speed of the movement more and this was a time where I think that is handy, in the later part of both halves Arsenal really upped their tempo, in the final 22 minutes of the first half Arsenal played 26 quick passes (1 second or less on the ball from receiving) with the final 22 minutes of the second half showing a similar trend with 34 quick passes.
I don’t know if this was something specific that the team wanted to improve on but to my eye both of these periods (and the match as a whole) produced a display that was much crisper and decisive.
Stock Rising: Daivd Raya
I feel like I have lots of stocks that rose today but I am going to pick out Raya for the praise today.
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