Don't Let One Match Rewrite the Season

The League Cup Final hurt but here's why it shouldn't change how we feel about where Arsenal are headed and capable of.

It has been just about a week now since Arsenal lost in the League Cup Final to Manchester City and there hasn’t been anything posted here on Cannon Stats about it.

That isn’t because I was too miserable to post about it, or that I don’t want to post when things don’t go right or that I am a shill for the club who can’t or won’t be negative about anything Arsenal.

I (and I think that Adam shares this as well) try to stay pretty positive about Arsenal, especially when the longer-term performances point me in that direction. It’s painful to write about a loss, especially one of the most complete performances an opponent has played against Arsenal this season.

I like to think of myself as an even keeled fellow where I don’t get too high when things are going great, nor too low when they are going poorly; that can sometimes come across as contrarian but that is never my goal.

Today, I finally got around to being able to do a proper watching of the match and I thought I would share some thoughts. Mostly I want to keep it on the bigger picture and the longer term than get to dragged into the details for something that happened a week ago and was a one-off match.

One thing that I thought before the match (and retweeted a post that I thought was very good) and I think that we should keep in mind here, let’s not over index and fit the narrative for the rest of the season around this single match.

It is/was important but if we are being realistic, it is the least important of the competitions that we are in this season. Arsenal had a three-match run with very high stakes in Everton, Leverkusen, and this final. If you had asked me (and probably most fans) to pick two matches to win and one to lose, it’s painful to lose a final but that is probably the one here, favoring the Premier League and Champions League.

Before I get too much further into things, I did find the analysis done by Adrian Clarke and Adam Clery excellent here for the match if you haven’t already seen it and are still looking into things.

The Match

I think that for me the best place to start here is with the running expected threat from the match. I think that this paints a nice illustration of the momentum and overall flow here.

For much of the first match, there wasn’t too much from either team. The first 20 minutes favored Arsenal a bit and this is where they had their best chance to score but this wasn’t sustained pressure by any means.

Manchester City also didn’t really have much in the way of threat until they got a good cross into the box as the first half was ending.

The second half in this match is where things got ugly and ultimately where the match was decided.

I don’t believe that there were massive tweaks to the strategy from either team that made this play out in the way that it did, rather I think that this was much of the same general structure and plan from both teams but with poor execution from Arsenal and to be fair to Manchester City really nicely taken opportunities from them as well.

Overall, this match to my eye saw Arsenal chose to try and play a more off the ball and transition style game for better or worse. This was a match where they had spells of possession, but I don’t think that they came in with the mindset of wanting to dominate that ball or use the ball to control the match.

Arsenal came in with a specific plan, perhaps due to the absence of their most creative midfielders and to try and exploit a weakness that has caused City problems all season long, playing fast and playing direct.

For the season Arsenal have played at a 1.95 progressive yards per second pace. They have been one of the slowest teams at moving the ball down the field. In this match they played at a significantly faster pace, trying to get the ball forward at nearly every opportunity and played at a 2.5 progressive yards per second pace.

Outside of a few restarts from goal kicks (where we saw a lot of the 4-man defensive screen from City) this was not a ponderous, probing possession game from Arsenal and I think that was a choice that was made to try and test if City had the ability to stop direct play.

For much of the season, I have seen our fans want to see something closer to this. To see the team willing to take more risk, to get the ball up the field quickly before the defense is settled, trust that the defenders that we rave about can clean up a mess or two and that anyway that could be balanced out by more on the attacking end. This was a solid plan, it was just lacking in a few fine points of execution.

Even in the period where the match is lost, there are moments where it takes a good play from City to stop something potentially dangerous from Arsenal.

Here is a moment in the 53rd minute after a flick on from Havertz where the ball falls to Rice where Arsenal have a 3 on 4 situation and City in an unstructured defensive situation.

It ends up rolling just too far in front of him to control it and make a play but the resulting loose ball nearly still falls to Saka open into space where he could have been 1v1 with the keeper.

Or here is a situation in the 56th minute where after riding some pressure from City where they bent but didn’t break, the ball is at Trossard’s feet and Arsenal have a potential situation where they can have superior numbers on the break.

His pass is poor and Ake beats Saka to the spot. The opportunity to do something dangerous is there but poorly executed.

Here is another one a few seconds later. This follows Zubimendi making a nice headed pass following a blocked shot that potentially sets up Havertz on the break again.

Havertz takes a big touch trying to go fast and it leaves just enough room for Matheus Nunes to come in and make the saving tackle.

I'm not arguing Arsenal played well because they didn't. But they were playing a deliberate, specific way, and the margins that decided the match were finer than the scoreline suggested. They had moments that could have turned the game, and if they executed them or the ball bounces just slightly differently maybe we are talking about an entirely different narrative of the match.

Instead of wow, the relentless pressure of Manchester City kept Arsenal pinned back and suffocated them until they scored becomes the soft underbelly of Manchester City and the naïveté of pushing too many players forwards left room that Arsenal ruthlessly exploited.

These are the fine margins of a Cup Final. I believe that Arsenal are generally better than Manchester City but the gap is not so large that if the team fails to execute their game plan at a high level and make a critical error that it can be overcome.

The Bigger Picture

I have already said that I don’t believe that there is too much that we should try and read from this match. If Arsenal do or don’t go on to accomplish winning any of the bigger prizes this season, I have a hard time placing any major weight on what specifically happened in this match as a reason.

I don’t think that this gives teams a blueprint for how to beat Arsenal going forward. I think that this exploited missing of the strength that David Raya’s passing gives Arsenal playing out from the back and was a day where players that can and should execute better just failed to do it.

I don’t think that this will see the team’s mentality and confidence crumble. It’s no doubt painful but this team has bounced back from tougher losses already this season and has shown major resilience.

I don’t think that this is even something that would fuel the team to new heights either. They don't need this loss as fuel, the motivation was already there. This team is chasing history, and that's been the engine all season.

I personally feel rested and motivated after my own little spring break, hopefully this international break can do the same for Arsenal as they come back ready for what could be a major and historical run in to close out the season.