Leicester vs Arsenal: The Debrief

Arsenal grind out an important win

On the scale of how nervy a 1 goal win can be this was low, but it was still a bit nervy considering that Arsenal probably should have had a couple more goals on a normal day.

Regardless Arsenal got an important win to keep them at the top of the table.

Leicester 0 (0.0)-(0.6) 1 Arsenal | Arsenal The Graphics

Arsenal pretty convincingly dominated this match statistically. The only thing that was really missing was converting territorial dominance into shots.

245 - Touches in the final third for Arsenal, that is the 6th most they have had in a match this season.

84 - Touches in the final third for Leicester, that is the 8th fewest Arsenal have allowed this season.

52 - Touches within 25 yards of goal for Arsenal

15 - Touches within 25 yards of goal for Leicester

1 - Passes completed by Arsenal into the ‘Dagner Zone’ (within 12 yards of goal), this was the corner that Gabriel Martinelli attempted to flick on but it glanced off wrong.

Arsenal’s passes around the box were all on the periphery and lacked some cutting edge.

Trying to figure out the blame for the attack and the credit to Leicester is interesting. Leicester were significantly less open against Arsenal than they were last weekend when their high line and minimal midfield pressure was exposed several times by Manchester United. In this match there were a couple of those opportunities most notably Jorginho finding Bukayo Saka with a nice through ball but Leicester played a significantly more conservative style in this match.

Arsenal also didn’t have the greatest day with their wide men looking to beat a man in the final third with just 4 dribbles completed.

What that ultimately led to was a shot map that was a bit underwhelming with mostly low-quality shots that almost exclusively came in the first half (7 vs 3).

It is hard to know what might have been had the Leandro Trossard goal had stood (I think it should have, that was the type of grabbing you see on every corner that is never called, and I don’t think comes close to the previous high bar for intervention) or if the pretty clear foul on Saka had been called (It looks like Souttar trips before he pulls down Saka but it doesn’t have be intentional to be a foul).

Thankfully a great moment of magic lead to a goal that earned Arsenal all three points.

The two passes in this sequence were very good. Gabriel Dos Santos plays an excellent first-time ball, Trossard was a perfect outlet and showed his versatility to interchange (more on this in a bit) and played a perfect nutmegged pass that Martinelli takes and turns a semi-dangerous chance (only about 15% chance of goal from there) into a massive goal.

A defensive master class

The flip side of Arsenal struggling a bit in attack is that they absolutely gave up nothing to Leicester in this match.

1 - Shot from Leicester in this match

28.8 - The distance from goal on the one shot.

0.019 - The expected goals value of that one shot.

This is tied for the fewest shots in a match this season (the other was Everton against Newcastle) and the lowest xG in a match this season (the previous low was Everton against Manchester City where they got 0.07 xG in their 1-1 draw).

With Arsenal’s territorial control pushing back Leicester they were very effectively boxed in. They tried to play the long ball direct style that had been shown to cause Arsenal problems but in this match it did not come off.

26.9% - Leciecester’s pass completion on long balls.

This lead to a very disjointed pass map for Leicester.

They just could not make connections for most of the match. In this match they had just 13 sequences where they strung together 5 or more passes (just 6 where it got to 7 or more passes).

The ball was almost always in the Leicester half in this match. When they did get the ball into Arsenal’s half Gabriel and William Saliba handled their threat without too much trouble. The Arsenal center backs were often left on an island here but coped really well, in the few situations where Leicester tried to break, the centerbacks played beautiful positional defending of putting their big bodies in the way and forcing a break to stop.

My confidence in the centerback pairing has never been higher and I would not switch Arsenal’s pair for any other in the league right now.

Bringing Balance Back

Mikel Arteta might a big call in this match, bringing in Trossard for Eddie Nketiah. Nektiah had been playing well but ended up in a dry spell with his finishing that really hurt the ultimate value that he can bring to the team. He also looked a bit on the tired side, so Arteta made the call to give him a rest and move to a more fluid front line.

I think it showed promise, even if it didn’t quite produce the fireworks with the attacking output.

The most notable part of the change was that Martinelli and Trossard interchanged and passed to each other significantly more than when either played with Nketiah. Martinelli and Trossard combined for 12 passes to each other which compared to 4 combinations between Nketiah and Trossard against Aston Villa is pretty significant.

The balance in the team looked a lot more similar to what the team was accomplishing with Gabriel Jesus, even if it didn’t reach the same attacking output.

I expect that this is something worth continuing with against Everton, who will try the same low block and long ball that caused Arsenal problems. Hopefully, a fluid attacking line will give them different problems and open up a few more spaces.