How Arteta can beat Lampard
[A Thread]

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#ARSCHE #AFC

The coming weekend sees Arsenal and Chelsea come together, but with the sides at opposite ends of the table it’s expected to be a fairly easy runout for Chelsea.

This thread looks at what Arteta can look to do to pull off a surprise result.

Specifically, this thread will look over:

• Chelsea’s style of play
• Stopping their ball progression
• Dealing with Chelsea’s striker
• Building from the back
• Transitioning down the flanks
• Being effective with crosses
• Overall gameplan

1. Chelsea’s style of play

Chelsea lineup in a 433, when attacking this shifts to a 253 with the fullbacks pushing on and the wingers coming inside. Although this can become a 262 when the frontmen drop off.

Then when defending they look to sit in a mid-block with a rigid 451.

When building, Chelsea use positional rotations to create space to play through the lines.

Usually, they like to drift out wide creating overloads with the option of either an underlap or overlap, before putting in a cross to their numerous options in the box.

2. Stopping their ball progression

If Arsenal allow Chelsea to get into their rhythm with ball progression it will just end up as one-way traffic, which we saw in the Palace and Burnley games.

However, there are a couple ways of stopping the blues doing so.

Everton did so by deploying a man-marking system on the DM and fullbacks of Chelsea.

This took away Chelsea’s most effective outlets for ball progression, forcing them to play lots of low percentage long balls and sideways passes between the CB’s.

What Spurs did, was play a back six in a low-block to stop Chelsea’s underlaps and force them out wide.

Whilst I don’t think Arsenal should do this, it raises an interesting point that if you track the underlaps of Chelsea, they do lose a lot of their creativity.

I think if Arsenal look to replicate the marking system Everton showed, whilst tracking the underlapping runs like Spurs did, it could really give Arsenal the upper hand in the defensive phase.

3. Dealing with Chelsea’s striker

Whether it’s Giroud or Abraham, the striker of Chelsea has potential to cause problems.

They both have extremely clever movement, frequently dropping off to create space for their teammates to run through on goal.

The images below show multiple occasions where the Chelsea No.9 managed to create chances with this movement.

However, all of these scenarios came against back 4’s. This is because when one of the CB’s went to pick up the No.9, the other CB couldn’t cover the space left.

By comparison, Wolves never had this problem.

Because Wolves had an extra man, if Giroud dropped closest to the LCB, then the LCB would pick him up and the other two would cover the space vacated, what this meant was that Wolves never gave away the space the other sides did.

Whilst Arsenal do play a 5back, what was key to Wolves’ success was the communication between the three CB’s.

Arteta has to be very careful with his CB selection on Saturday. Arsenal have a number of CB’s at the club who are poor positionally, and could cost them the game.

4. Building from the back

Now we’ve had a look at how Arsenal can setup defensively, we’ll move on to how they begin to start their attacks.

Chelsea will most likely look to press high, and whilst they are quite effective in their press, they do have a massive weakness with it.

When Chelsea press, if you leave your frontman forward you force their backline back, and they lose any sense of compactness.

Southampton did this on several occasions, creating the space then dropping the ball in there as an easy to way to bypass Chelsea’s press.

However, when they’re in their mid-block they are a bit more difficult to break down.

They block out the central areas, but in doing so they leave space out wide, which you can exploit with quick switches and wide overloads.

5. Transitioning down the flanks

However, arguably one of the best ways to exploit Chelsea is through transitioning down the flanks.
As Chelsea’s fullbacks get so far forward, there’s rarely adequate cover for when opposition sides counter down these sides.

We’ve seen numerous sides do this to great effect against Lampard, going even as far back as his Derby days.

With the pace Arsenal have on the break, this could work really well, especially given the injuries to both Chilwell and Emerson.

6. Being effective with crosses

It’s no secret that Arsenal like to cross, usually unsuccessfully, but one weakness that was noticeable in the Chelsea’s game against West Ham was Azpilicueta’s positioning and awareness in crossing situations.

Whilst he never actually got caught out, there was a number of times where Benrahama was completely free in the box after running on Azpi’s blindside.

If Arsenal can get crosses aimed in behind him at the backpost, we could see Chelsea caught out.

7. Overall Gameplan

Bringing it together, when defending Arsenal should look to block the passing options to Kante and the fullbacks, whilst tracking any underlaps. When attacking, a lot of their work should be done in transition, either up the flanks or to the No.9 in space.

However, when Arsenal can’t transition, they should be looking to build wide, around the Chelsea mid-block and if they are going to cross, try and get it to the back post.

Although, I would stress that Arsenal’s best chance of scoring does come in those transition phases.

As much as it’d be good to see Arsenal go out and attack Chelsea, they lack, the personnel, attacking principles of play and probably the confidence to do so at the moment.

What Arsenal can do however, is make the tweaks we’ve mentioned to get a result.

END OF THREAD
Likes and RT’s appreciated

I generally do one of these a week, so follow if you enjoyed. I’m also looking to do a piece on what Arsenal need to do in the transfer window to get the club out of the hole they’re in, so likewise follow if you’re interested in that!