More physicality and a low block coming for Arsenal? – Crazy people from the suburbs

Hello friends, I hope everything is okay?

I thought the catharsis of the Same Old Arsenal group last night with James and Amanda would help me understand my feelings about that result at Chelsea, but I’m still no closer to breaking it down. I think it’s because City finally beat Leeds so it feels like they caught up with us last weekend, but if you look at the bigger picture we increased our lead over them by a point from the North London Derby. Imagine, for example, that City would have played Leeds and won the weekend before when we played the NLD. Then they played Newcastle this weekend, they lost, while we went to Chelsea and drew. I would probably consider that a point won.

I guess that’s the challenge of this league and especially at this stage of the season; games come so quickly that leads can quickly erode and at a time when City have a fairly favorable run (including what I suspect was a routine away win at Fulham tonight), we’ve had some really tough games coming up.

City fans might also view our home game against Brentford as a more favorable game, to be honest, but watching them this season I think it’s still going to be very difficult. Their strengths lie in direct play and quick transitions with fast players and it is by leaving the ball to their opponents and hitting them on the counter that they have had great success at home all season. They are fourth at home at the moment, but on the road it’s a very different story; they are fourth from bottom with one win and five losses. Having not watched them as much as I would have liked to be able to speak more specifically to how they will line up against us, I can’t say why their away form is so poor compared to their home form, but perhaps there is that home crowd advantage that they are capitalizing on. I watched the game against Liverpool at the Gtech Stadium and they troubled Liverpool on the counter with longer balls in behind, as well as that impressive Kayode throw-in weapon that they frequently deploy. If ever there was an argument for pushing a team’s billboards forward, Brentford would certainly be it.

What’s interesting about Brentford from a numerical point of view is that away from home they have the second best xG allowed after us; which tells me they are sitting a little deeper, more compact in shape, away from home and telling teams to attack them in their low block. This is reflected in the number of passes they have completed this season – only Burnley have had fewer. When you look at the type of passes they make as well, they don’t miss much, that’s for sure. They attempt the fewest short passes in the league (less than 15 yards) and the second fewest average passes (15-30 yards) and while I haven’t watched many of them as I admit today, I can already see what this game will shape tomorrow.

After facing a physical battle against Chelsea on their patch, Arteta and his Arsenal team must know that they will face the same tomorrow night against Burnley. It’s going to be a long ball, it’s going to be physical, it’s going to be a little staged and it could be a bit of a stop-start game I suppose. Arteta and Arsenal must prepare for this. We have certainly shown that we can take on teams with a physical battle and in a game like tomorrow it will be handy to have so many attacking options to call upon as I look at how this game could play out and think we are going to have a lot of the ball in their half and creating chances could be paramount as they fill their own box with bodies to try and stop the play and then hit us with quick counters and big long balls.

But that’s been Brentford’s style for a while now, to be honest, because we saw it under Frank and we saw it even in the Ivan Toney era. Remember when David Raya was playing for them and we were seeing ball after ball at Toney to battle with our center halves? We might see a bit more of that in the penalty shootout tomorrow, I think.

From a shooting perspective, it’s also interesting that Brentford have the third highest percentage of shots on target in the league, as well as the second shortest average distance to the goal they shoot from. This tells me that this is a team that doesn’t take many shots on goal; when they shoot, it usually means they are of sufficient quality to aim at the target. If Brentford have a chance or two tomorrow they are testing Raya so he will need to be ready against his old team.

I don’t think it will be a pretty game by any stretch of the imagination, so it might be one for attacking players who excel in tight spaces, but what Arteta will also have to contend with is the fitness and availability of players for tomorrow. We’ve been beaten, bruised and injured all season and so inevitably there will be one or two who aren’t quite ready or who might be feeling fatigued, but I’ll take a deeper look at what Arsenal might do tomorrow, I think.

Until then, we have to wait and see what Arteta says today in his press conference about player availability, before we can start making decisions on who might start and how we might break down Brentford.

I’ll be back tomorrow. See you soon then.