0h Santi Cazorla
Cazorla..
Led Arsenal in passing with 38 completed passes
Passed at a 93% rate, second on Arsenal behind Per Mertesacker
Led Arsenal’s attack with 11/12 passes in the final third
Led Arsenal’s attack with 2 key passes and 2 shots, taking or creating 4 of Arsenal’s pathetically poor 7 shots
Got an assist for Giroud’s goal, which Giroud made him work for, and which was a perfect drag back none-the-less
Led Arsenal’s dribbling with 3/4 attempts (Gibbs was honorable mention with 3/4 as well), for some context Sanchez and Welbeck only completed 2/9 combined dribbles and Sanchez’ only successful dribble was in his own defensive third
Led Arsenal in ball recoveries with 10 – this is a sort of defensive stat where the player picks the ball up whether via errant pass or a teammate’s tackle
Was second on Arsenal in tackles completed with a 100% 4/4 rate, all tackles were in and around the Arsenal 18 yard box
Blocked a shot in the box
Drew the foul that got Borini sent off and exposed his delicious, delicious nipple
Had 64 touches to lead Arsenal, was dispossessed twice and had no turnovers. In short, he kept tidy possession, won the ball back time and again for Arsenal, and when he won the ball back, drove the attack, creating chances for his teammates and himself. It’s a toss-up between him and Szczesny for man of the match.
What went wrong?
Chambers and Debuchy passed the ball at a 70% rate — misplacing 22 passes between them. Debuchy’s bad passes were mostly long balls (6 of the 11) but Chambers was serially shut down by Lazers, Lama, and Sterling, misplacing just 1 long pass and 10 short.
Flamini was equally terrible in possession. 74% passing from your center mid is just not acceptable. Many of his passes sought out Chambers where Chambers was not standing. And like Chambers, he wasn’t trying a ton of long balls.
Chambers was also dispossessed 3 times (terrible for a defender), turned the ball over 1 time (dribbled out of play), and had a number of passes aimed at him which he couldn’t retrieve.
Chambers did tackle a lot (led Arsenal with 5/8) but that’s only because Liverpool attacked almost exclusively down his side of the pitch. Sterling and Lasers were 8/19 dribbles on the left causing panic and pulling Arsenal’s defense apart.
Liverpool’s swarming defense is designed to cause panic in the opposition in order to cause the opposition to give the ball away. Chambers, Debuchy, and Flamini combined for 80/112 passing, 1/3 of Arsenal’s total passes on the day. With those three passing at a combined 71%, Arsenal struggled to both maintain possession and build from the back
Unable to pass, unable to penetrate, and overly reliant on one player to keep them in the game, Arsenal were lucky to get two goals today.
The result
Liverpool took 27 shots, the most shots Arsenal have conceded since I’ve been tracking
Liverpool took 15 shots inside the penalty area and 5 shots in the prime area
But….
Five of their six prime area shots were headers, one which they finally scored from, and only one other (Lickie Rambert) which Szczesny make a brilliant save on.
And…
Liverpool dominated the first half in terms of possession (making 293 passes to Arsenal’s 135) but only created 9 shots and most of those were from long range, and even Coutinho’s goal went between the legs of two players. So, while they had all that possession in the first half, they didn’t do much with it.
Arsenal offense
Arsenal only created 7 shots. In all the years I have been tracking Arsenal’s stats, this club very rarely have such a poor attacking performance. Between 2008 and 2011 Arsenal took 7 or fewer shots just twice, and one of those was against Blackburn at the end of the season.
Since 2012, there have been several teams which notoriously shut down Arsenal’s offence: Southampton has done it twice, Man U once, Tottenham once (the Rosicky goal winner), and Chelsea once.
But Arsenal scored, twice, we should have won!
True, Wenger even brought on all the fullbacks at the end of the game to try to get a result. This defensive posture for the last 30 minutes of the game is another reason why Arsenal’s shots numbers were so low, why Liverpool’s were so high, and why Liverpool’s passing stats were so high. For example, after Arsenal’s second goal Liverpool took 14 of their 27 total shots.
It was a poor night from Arsenal but they still nearly pulled off the smash and grab.
Santi’s in some great form so far as shown by the stats.
Really hope he carries it on, we all know what a difference he can make to our season (the season before last) when he consistently performs that well.
To be honest I’d like to see some of the stats relating to set pieces, both attacking and defending. First of all I don’t know if it’s always intentional or not, but from corners the ball always goes to the near post for what I’m assuming is meant to be a flick on by Per and by my count this has worked exactly once this season and it was cleared off the line anyway. It’s difficult to pull off, has a low success rate and is ultimately pointless. To be honest we might as well kick it into touch straight… Read more »
Should have spent sat-tue training on defence and set pieces not on holidays!
What good is all that training if all the players are burnt out beforehand?
We lacked presence in midfield in that game, Ox is alright but he’s not an established midfielder, I miss Ozil, Ramsey, and Wilshere even though the later gets so much stick but he would’ve done better than the Ox in midfield…Chamber? I would’ve gambled with Bellerin at right back today if I was Wenger because he has pace to match opposition anyway thus game sums up Arsenal this season, hot..cold..hot…hot…cold, I just hope our injured players will come back soon because we really lack depth.
stan kroenke also owns the st. louis rams. in the past 10 nfl seasons only one team has lost more games than the rams, but they still enjoy a faithful fan base. even though the rams are out of the playoffs the rams stadium is 90% sold for game day so what does kroenke care. complacency at the top breeds complacency at the bottom. this is what the arsenal has become. wenger is not going anywhere. nothing is going to change because wenger doesn’t have to deliver trophies. as long as the stadium is full he’s doing his job and… Read more »
f**k this americunt. he contributes nothing to the club.
Interesting that you felt the need to censor the word fuck, but not the word cunt?
I can’t abide censoring swear words. Newspapers (at least the tabloids, anyway) in Britain do it for words like ‘crap’ and ‘arse’ now. Pathetic.
this is nonsense, I doubt it is Kronke’s fault that Arsenal sucks ass, more likely a combination of bad coaching and a lack of first team midfielders combined with the loss of Koscielny. Arsenal were competing last season, most of us thought they would kick on and the summer was full of good transfer activity. What do you expect Kronke to be doing? Motivating Wenger, who has been in football longer than… I can see it now Kronke “Wenger, we need to start winning. sort out the defense, this zonal marking is not working and Bellerin would handle the pace… Read more »
I dont think Kroenke care about sports like for example Abramovich
Abramovitch’s interest starts and ends with making sure he has more expensive marquee signings than other oligarchs.
Like a sort of rich fuckers game of Fifa 15….
I mean that Abramovich attend all the games he can, he seems to genuinly care how Chelsea are doing, and both support and applaud his team with enthusiasm. For Kroenke i think the investment in Arsenal is purely a business investment just like all his other sports investments. However im not saying there is anything wrong with that, But i sometimes wish we had an owner who supported the team and wanted it to win as much as it`s fans do. In a perfect world though, no one could own a club per se, but rather only be chosen to… Read more »
And how the fuck is that relevant to anything?
And that header from prime position, I think was by not-so-Bore-ini.
Agree but I am not giving up hope. We do not perform three games in a row, it does not happen. Let’s hope for a couple of the two wins series over this Christmas period. We have a coach who is by far the one with the most premier league experience yet the team suffers all kind of problems from mental weakness to tactics etc… Hope he sees it himself and is up to it.
Ugh. It’s worth remembering that we were playing against a slow and error-prone back 3 of Kolo, Skrtel and Sakho, with a highly questionable backup keeper behind them. Yet we couldn’t manage to create any opportunities for Sanchez or Ox to run at them. Welbeck deserves a lot of credit for his tracking back and winning back the ball a few times, but it also meant that he was not available to get behind the opposition defence. Everything was in front of the Liverpool defenders, reminiscent of last season’s lifeless Giroud-centric attack. The one time we did get beyond Giroud… Read more »
We effectively played 4-2-4 to their 3-4-3 and quite rightly lost the battle in midfield. AOC was either not fit or not fit-enough to play and it showed. Sanchez is not a midfielder.
The huge irritation is that when Coquelin came on he stabilised midfield to an extent, which showed what we had been missing in the first half.
Chambers simply isn’t a right back, he should not have played this many games already, I feel sorry for him. As for the rest, we knew Flamini wasn’t good enough in defensive midfield. We knew we needed another centre back, all this just keeps repeating itself. Sanchez must be tired, another ‘big game’ where he was quiet though, probably due to the fact we couldn’t keep the ball and move up the pitch as a unit more than anything else. We are lucky it was Liverpool, if that was city or chelsea we’d have got killed. The team shape was… Read more »
No wonder we only made 7 shots, our passing was so bad we barely can keep the ball pass the midfield area.
I suspect Ox was playing thru injury these last two games, cos how else would you explain all his bad passes? He was brilliant defensively tho, very discipline. But offensively he’s been disappointing.
Only Santi & Giroud that look dangerous the whole game to me, perfect combination for the 2nd goal.
Man!…We our midfield was lacking a bite, Ox is good but he’s not an established midfielder yet, I would’ve started Le Coq and put Chambers wide instead of dat guy…Chambers pace was exposed, If Wilshere was healthy we would have won, our midfield looked disabled today, I hope speedy recovery to Wlashire, Ozil, and Ramsey. Sums up our season today’s game hot…cold….hot…cold…cold…Wenger in…out…in…out…
The really odd part of this game was how many ‘experts’ said the result showed Liverpool were destined for top four while the same ‘experts’ said the result showed how poor Arsenal were. If an iota of logic can be applied to the situation, not common granted, but worth a try; the same result can hardly mean two wildly different things to the two teams involved. A draw, at home, can hardly prove that Liverpool are destined for the top four while the same draw, away from home, proves that Arsenal are doomed. Especially when Arsenal are four places higher… Read more »
Sorry to be a spoil-spot but how’s the Koscielny-is-as-poor-as-Metersacker theory going. I confronted you last season that Kos seems to be carrying Per but you listed fairly all our terrible performances and observed that Kos was alongside Per in all cases and should be just as bad. well this year Per has played with Chambers, Monreal and Debuchy in central defence and frankly looks worse than most of them at times. And I’ll not appreciate the Per-shifts-to-the-left or whatever theory to explain his sh*tness because Debuchy has played a grand total of 2 games in centerback in his whole life… Read more »
While I agree that Koscielny is world-class(top 10 in the world), you have to understand that at a time when we weren’t even close to competing with the finances of City, Chelsea and even United, he’s a decent buy. Arsene Wenger realized that while Vermaelen and Kos are very good, they are too similar, and against the truly physical tall strikers, they struggle. I remember games against Bobby Zamora and Grant Holt where that duo didn’t work. He decided that Kos will compensate for Mertesacker’s lack of pace and that Mertesacker will be decisive in the air. Nightmare scenario with… Read more »
we were getting skinned bt Szczesny and our Santa Clauzorla gave us something to thank for this christmas. The Ox was out of sorts….”Diaby’s gonna be lika a new signing come April” I’m sooo bitter that we conceded a late thuggish goal we could’ve cleared, only to see BFG ducking and somebody else realising a little bit late that what he’d marked wasn’t the post. Painful. This zonal marking thing is gonna make me buy a gun to make things right. Anyways happy we didn’t lose and mad that we couldn’t just hold on.
Not forgetting the games before without chambers who obviously lacked match fitness plus pace although the liverpool team obviously seen that he should have been subbed sczny played well santi, alexis and debuchy although playing central defence looked different watch the game v newcastle and galatasaray the difference yes liverpool our a top club but gunners have had injured players return coyg
What?
“Liverpool took 27 shots, the most shots Arsenal have conceded since I’ve been tracking”
Galatasaray had 32 shots! If it were rugby…
27 shots how many on target tho Mr Rogers ?we were unlucky to concede at the last and we did not play well ,we been to anfield,Goodson,Stamford bridge only lost one on last seasons form we lost all three, going to new year ozil Walcott ramsey konseilny arteta all to come back let’s hope for great 2015
Yeah you say that (getting points when we didn’t last year) but last season we beat Swansea away, drew with United at home, beat Hull at home, beat Sp*rs at home, beat Norwich/Fulham/Cardiff away (replacing Leicester from this seasons results) so that’s 10 points dropped in comparison to last season against teams which we should be taking 6 points easily (exception being United although we shouldn’t be losing 2-0 at home)
For some reason, we seemed to give up in the last 20 minutes and were just walking around the pitch. Even the blind could see Liverpool were going to score/equalize – we could have won it but threw it away. Mind you, listening to the way the scousers were cheering when they scored and the way Rogers was talking this morning, you’d think they’d won some sort of tremendous victory – they just managed to draw at their home ground! And what the hell had Borini been smoking? He even ran off the pitch and into the tunnel like he… Read more »
Even then there are hardly any substitutions
I don’t how you all can take it anymore. I’m jumping off a bridge. All they had to do is mark a man and cover the posts. Basics, we all learn since pissing in diapers. Wenger and staff need to move on. Sorry I said it, but I am on the edge. No excuses for poor passing and horrendous ending.
I was Avery annoyed and was going to post a rant but then ‘Lasers and Lama’ made me snort so just….
Haha
Arsenal could have taken advantage of Liverpool’s high line defense with a good break on the counter…. Short passes when we’re under pressure will not help us…. We could have used the speed of Alexis and welbeck yesterday but no shaking we’re ARSENAL….
Exactly this. The reason we get swarmed is because teams don’t fear us on the break, and rightly so. We can’t counter to save our lives! You can have all the pace in the world, but if you can’t move the ball forward and your players can’t keep width (or in Welbecks case, isn’t on the shoulder of the last defender, which frustrates me to no end), then you’ve got no chance. Their first goal is a great example of this: we should have been within shooting range within 4-5 passes but instead we faffed around, lost possession on the… Read more »
One of the reasons opponents swarm us is because we forgotten how to counter attack, meaning that they can push numbers forward without fear of a threat on the break. Liverpool’s first goal was a great example of this. Really, 3 or 4 passes should have had us on their doorstep but instead, we faffed about, lost possession on the edge of our own area and then conceded. Woeful. And there was so little pressure on the man on the ball it was unbelievable. Ox clearly wasn’t 100% to be fair, nor Sanchez.
Wenger has never been a genius – just lucky … and now that’s run out. Also pretty dimwitted, as in ‘we don’t need Fabregas’ the worst decision of three years of poor management. Thanks but it’s time up.
Have you considered assessing the impact of injuries from season to season (or by teams),based on assigning a weighting of capability level (so,for example, Sanchez would currently score 4 out of 4) x days injured?
Just an idea to quantify the impact of player absences on our performance.