Do Arsenal have a mid-block problem?

Not systemically but it can be a problem and has often been the matches where Arsenal have played worst

After a loss there are a number of things that we often go through. Usually in the early emotional state we find players/situations/referees to blame, after a few days when we cool down a bit and are ready to get a bit more analytical and start thinking about the reasons behind it.

Against West Ham one of the things that they seemed to do really well was double up on the wide right that Arsenal attacked through and limit the opportunities that Arsenal could create through that area.

Taking a look at the defensive action map and this tactic becomes very clear.

This was very effective as Arsenal’s two most threatening players in Martin Odegaard and Ethan Nwaneri operated out of these zones and they were held pretty in check here to keep the threat that they created to a minimum.

Arsenal was able to create a bit from the area around the right corner of the box but it was not up to the usual standard.

This left Arsenal with one of their most impotent attacking outings of the season (Read more about in the debrief if you want a deeper breakdown).

This was a pretty nasty and effective midblock from West Ham and they did an excellent job in this match to game plan for what Arsenal wanted to do and implement a counter for it. In this match Arsenal didn’t have an alternative solution and found themselves often just floating in crosses or trying to play through a side where they did not have a numerical advantage.

To a certain extent there is a bit of a through line for when Arsenal have played the worst and it is often matches like this.

There just aren’t matches any more where teams press Arsenal out of matches and pin them deep. There aren’t too many teams that through superior technical ability keep the ball and play through and around Arsenal.

There are matches where teams drop really deep into their shell against Arsenal but Arsenal have become quite good at just attacking with wave after wave and maybe they don’t score but they will generate enough looks that it is often more through holding on then through great defensive play.

This has become a bit of a talking point online with people posting different stats about our record against teams and I think it is interesting to examine if there is a kernel of truth here to this intuition.

The first thing I want to point out is that I think both of these people have their figures wrong, I pulled the data straight from FBRef using the Stathead tool and instead got this:

Arsenal winning 45% of their League matches against these teams over the last three seasons and 40% of their matches in all comps. It is a bit worse if you cherry pick the end point to knock out some of the early wins but still off from what they said.

The numbers aren’t pretty, but they aren’t quite as ugly as I have seen presented with only winning 1/5 or 1/4 of the matches looking more like 1/3 or 2/5 depending on if you are looking at the League or all competitions.

I would be wary of drawing too many conclusions from this because in a way it feels a bit like finding the teams Arsenal have the worst record against and working backwards to an answer (this represents 40% of Arsenal’s 25 total losses over the last three seasons). I think it along with this last match present an interesting question about midblock (even if I would say that not all of these matches were “mid” blocks).

Arsenal’s Midblock Performance

There is no easy way to identify the matches that fit this definition. Even within the matches that we would think of like this you will see teams play in multiple ways and it will depend on the game state and the different situations that happen in the game.

That has never stopped me before and I am going to accept that the categorization is going to be imperfect here but maybe it will still help give us some interesting information about the team.

For this I am going to use average defensive action height as an imperfect proxy for how high a team’s block is. I am fully aware that this isn’t perfect but for the time constraints I have it is the available tool and maybe this could inspire someone else to get more creative and come up with something different and better.

For this I have categorized the following defensive action heights as either high line, mid block or low block.

Arsenal have played the highest proportion of their matches in the middle block range over the last three seasons with coming out 27% low, 59% mid, and 14% high.

This is how the data overall looks

There really isn’t anything that surprises me from this. The attacking volume numbers are overall the best against the lowest block because that is the defensive shape that invites the most opposition pressure around your box and it gets a bit less the higher up you defend, it is opposite with the measures of quality with a higher portion of touches in the box turning into shots, higher quality shots and more big chances per shot with the higher line.

This is exactly what you’d expect.

Some of Arseanl’s worst performances have been against teams playing like this but there doesn’t seem to be a strong relationship that this is a place where Arsenal perform worse.

What is perhaps not quite as expected is the points and wins broken down by opposition line height.

Arsenal have the highest points per match against the high line and the best win percentage against the midblock.

Final Thoughts

This isn’t the definitive study on things and there is room for much more explanation and examination of the issues that Arsenal have had.

I do think that it is interesting that if you do look at this a bit deeper that some of the assumptions don’t quite hold but perhaps that isn’t that surprising.

Sport is full of copycats. If someone find something that works everyone is going to try it and lots of teams have tried to replicate with mixed success to implement the type of defensive strategies that West Ham employed here but not everyone will execute at that level or face Arsenal when they are at the low part of total attacking availability to be able to get those same results.

Arsenal do also face midblocks the most so this is something that they have practice playing against and while the counters that they have employed previously didn’t work here that isn’t always the case.

Mikel Arteta is going to want to spend a bit of extra time working on this because up next is Nottingham Forest who are another team that will probably trot out this tactic and will present a difficult challenge for the depleted attack to try and create against.