Five Alive- How Arsenal used five attacking lanes hit Bristol City Women for five

Arsenal thrashed Bristol City 5-0 on Sunday evening and, in truth, that was pretty much the result most of us would have been expecting. Bristol have the worst defensive record in the division by some distance and look destined for a swift return to the Championship. However, when the teams met in October at Ashton Gate, the Gunners were unconvincing in a 2-1 win at the beginning of their troubles against low defensive blocks.

On this occasion, Arsenal had more tools in the toolbelt. The biggest tactical feature of this game was the right winger ‘rolling inside’ into a central position with Emily Fox pushed very high on the outside lane. Arseblog News asked Jonas Eidevall about this after the game and he explained that he wanted to match Bristol’s back five with a front five.

‘The thinking was to put five against five against them because they play a back five. We need to create five players, so we had two wide players, two pocket players and one central. The way to do that was to roll inside with a wide forward.’ Let’s look at some examples.

Arsenal started Foord and Catley on the left, in part, because of the strong understanding between the two players. As Wubben-Moy switches play to Foord here, Catley immediately sees that as a trigger to run inside. When Arsenal attacked down the left hand side, Foord would edge out to the touchline, with Catley underlapping just inside. Arsenal’s target was to have five players in attacking lanes. When they attacked down the left, that meant (L-R); Foord, Catley, Russo and Mead behind Blackstenius.

As Catley takes the ball from Foord here, we can see Foord begins to inch wide of her compatriot. She wants to hold the width and create space for Catley to run in the inside left lane.

Catley passes back to Foord and immediately sets off for that inside channel with two Bristol City players attracted to Foord and a dangerous cutback situation is created.

The next time the ball goes to the left, we see the idea repeated. Foord is right on the touchline with Catley just inside her. Foord plays this first time to try to get Catley back into that inside channel but the pass is cut out.

Here we see the idea repeat again. Foord on the outside and Catley immediately makes a run inside. Foord doesn’t find the angle for the pass on this occasion and checks back inside but the idea is repeating and it’s very clear.

And once more for luck. Little passes the ball to Foord on the outside left and who is that who has made a run in the inside channel? Looks a little like Steph Catley to me…

Catley has a blocked shot in the 10^th minute (a portent for the third goal) and this angle illustrates the theme again very nicely. She is tucked inside with Foord holding the width of the pitch.

While the dominant idea was for the five attacking lanes to be populated as I set out earlier, clearly there is fluidity of personnel within that structure. Here we see Catley wide and Foord inside, for example.

And as play develops it’s Russo who populates that inside left channel and gets a shot on target. Football isn’t chess, the pieces move a lot more freely. So long as those five attacking lanes are populated, that’s the main thing. The order of the pieces simply gives the players a comfortable reference point to repeat attacking patterns.

We see that fluidity for the second goal too. It’s Pelova here who has drifted into Foord’s wide left channel. Foord is inside left and Catley is far more central. Foord and Catley have moved ‘one lane’ to the right. Pelova finds Foord here and her cutback finds Mead to score.

And while the third goal is an own goal, it firmly establishes a key attacking principle of the first half. Pelova finds Foord out wide and Catley is immediately triggered to run inside.

Sure enough, Foord waits for her compatriot on that inside lane again and Catley’s attempted cross loops into the net via a deflection.

The idea on the right-hand side was similar with a slight difference. While Catley played inside Foord to create five attacking lanes from the left, from the right, Mead usually rolled inside with Fox outside her. As this attack develops, we see Mead creep inside with Fox on the overlap.

Mead has crept into a very central position here and Little finds her. In these right sided attacks, Russo and Mead essentially played as dual 10s. Mead lays off this Little pass to Pelova, whose shot goes just wide. We saw Mead coming inside again and again during this game.

We see it again here, with Mead pushed right in next to Blackstenius and Fox filling the outside lane on the right.

Mead touches the ball to Russo, who tries a floated ball into Blackstenius which doesn’t quite connect. You can also see Catley in the picture ready to attack that inside left lane again if play does graduate to that side.

We saw a lot more of Mead rolling inside from the right in the second half but, again, there was fluidity and variety. Here we see Emily Fox drifting inside while Mead holds width on the right.

As the move develops we see Fox really drift into that central space. City’s Amalie Thestrup points to Fox because nobody is marking her. Arsenal’s out to in movement consistently caused the away team problems.

This move ends with Russo teeing up Fox for a shot from the edge of the area. Fox had three shots in the game, the same number as Stina Blackstenius. The American drifted in-field to good effect too.

As Arsenal move to the right here, look at how centrally Mead is positioned.

The ball works its way to Fox who passes inside to Mead. This is not typically the sort of pass you would expect from right-back to right-winger.

Again, look at how far in-field Mead has moved as Fox receives the ball on the right flank. Mead is essentially playing as a right 10. Arsenal created a midfield box on these occasions with Russo and Mead as 10s supported by Pelova and Little from behind.

Once again, as Williamson brings the ball forwards here, Mead is positioned where you would expect a number 10 to be and Williamson plays an excellent disguised pass into her feet. Fox is holding the width on the right while Mead moves in. Arsenal knew Bristol would not be offensive enough to really punish the fact that they were often leaving Fox isolated on the right flank if moves broke down.

In the build-up to the fourth goal, as Little plays the pass to Russo for her to turn and shoot, we can again see Mead positioned far more as a right ten than a right winger.

As Russo shapes to shoot, we see it’s Fox offering the width on the overlap with Mead very much tucked inside.

When McCabe came on for Mead, she largely repeated the pattern of taking up central positions but, again, there was variety. Here we see Emily Fox pick up the ball centrally.

Fox finds McCabe on the overlap and she tees up Russo for the fifth.

Arsenal are beginning to find the variety to break down low blocks, against Villa they moved the ball from side to side quickly and moved the Villa defence around. Against Bristol, we saw them adopt five attacking lanes with Fox and Catley making up the fifth attacker and Mead often drifting into central positions.