Does Arteta have Arsenal playing too conservatively?
The Cannon Stats Podcast is back looking at the biggest story of the moment
Everyone is talking about it and asking about it, where you go in the Arsenal world it seems like you can’t escape hearing that Arsenal have been too conservative or that the team is playing with the handbrake on too much right now.
When these things happen, that makes for a good opportunity for an examination if this actually holds water and that is exactly what Scott and Adam do here in the latest Cannon Stats podcast.
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The podcast focuses on the City Lineup and discussion of if they set up wrong. That leads into the Merino/Rice midfield question and if that grouping works for Arsenal or not. The last major question goes into a more high-level view if the way that Arsenal play under Arteta is calibrated correctly or not.
Here is the post that Adam wrote looking deeper into the Rice Merino midfield questions that is well worth your time.
You're not being told the full story about Merino-Rice
You’ve seen it everywhere by now. On Twitter, BlueSky, probably Sky or TNT or wherever you get your football fix…After Saturday’s draw to City, Arsenal now have played 13 matches where Declan Rice and Mikel Merino have explicitly started in midfield (not with Merino at 9).
Here is the link to the post Scott talked about on if Defense wins Championships.
The second half of the podcast touches on what we can learn from Arsenal’s League Cup win over Port Vale and then looks ahead to the weekend matchup against Newcastle.