#7 - Should Arteta stick or twist for vital Manchester City team selection?
We review the Power Rankings changes following a frustrating 1-1 home draw against Brentford and look ahead to the massive game on Wednesday night and how Arteta could approach the game.
Welcome to the seventh edition of the newsletter. Thanks for reading once again. We’d really appreciate if you could subscribe below and share this with other Arsenal fans who might find it interesting. This week we take a deeper look into the Power Ranking changes and how players form may factor into Arteta’s thinking for the huge game tomorrow and then very quickly a third game in a week, when Arsenal travel to Aston Villa in Saturday’s early kick-off.
Arsenal Power Rankings update
Through a mix of analytics from several data sources, fan player ratings, transfermarkt value and more, we calculate and report The Fresh Arsenal Power Rankings weekly, exclusively in this newsletter. Want to know more? Leave a comment below.
Risers: This is the least movement we’ve seen game to game since we started reporting. When you glance at the standings, it’s pretty understandable. Nobody really stood out for Arsenal against Brentford. Ben White improved after his last couple of displays saw him fall from the heights of fourth to outside the top 10. He’s crept back into the top 10 following a more assured display against Brentford.
The other positive from the game was Leandro Trossard’s first Arsenal goal. He will be gutted it wasn’t the winner, but it’s a real positive moment for him nonetheless. Despite only starting one match since his arrival (FA Cup vs. Man City), he’s now into the top 11 in the rankings and will be pushing for more starts.
Fallers: William Saliba had a really tough afternoon up against Ivan Toney. The Brentford man used his physical frame to dominate aerially and tease the ref into awarding fouls, one of which led to the goal. Saliba will have to become more street-smart to handle these challenges moving forward.
There was no other downwards movement in the top 11. Martinelli, Nketiah and Xhaka were poor on the day, but a lack of quality beneath them sees them stick to their positions.
Zinchenko is an interesting one, his performance led to mixed reviews from fans but the data suggests he had a very strong game. He and Partey dominated the ball for the Gunners, with 76 and 78 passes completed respectively - 46 and 44 of those coming in the final third (White next with 32).
Zinchenko also completed 2/2 take ons and made eight ball recoveries. Crucially though, on a day where Arsenal lost a lot of duels, he won 6 out of 7 ground duels and 2 out of 3 aerial battles.
I think there’s two aspects of his performance that led many to believe he had a poor game. The first is he slowed things down a bit too often. Against a team like Brentford, it is key to break with speed in order to punish the few openings you get and there seemed to be some frustration at Zinchenko’s instinct to control rather than burst. He also had a few wayward shots from distance which always live long in the memory.
In our Power Rankings, he remains in an influential fourth.
Should Arteta stick or twist for City?
With some fading performances in mind, should Mikel make tweaks to the line-up for the crucial game against Manchester City tomorrow?
It feels more likely tweaks come at Villa Park on Saturday. When you look at who could be dropped for the City game, the likes of Martinelli, Xhaka and Nketiah spring to mind, but whilst that trio have struggled in recent games, there is rationale to keep them in the side for this one.
Deep blocks presented by Everton and Brentford have caused issues for Nketiah and Martinelli, with neither having the space or time on the ball that often helps them be so deadly.
Manchester City, albeit a team with higher technical quality, are likely to be coming to The Emirates wanting to win the game, they’ll give us more defensive concerns but with that it should leave more space for Eddie and Gabi to be more efficient in the final third.
Xhaka has also faded in recent weeks and you can see his limitations against deep blocks. The Swiss international was on fire at the start of the season but his final third contributions have dried up a bit since the World Cup. But in this game, Arsenal will need to defend more in central areas than they are used to. Xhaka’s experience and physical attributes make him a crucial part of this side, they just need him back to his best.
If there’s any changes, the two I think that are most likely to come in are Tomiyasu and Trossard.
As mentioned in the Power Rankings, White was improved against Brentford, but he does tire towards the end of games and if he’s not 100% fresh for this one, Arteta has a player he trusts in Tomiyasu there and ready to slot in.
Trossard is the other, and I would be inclined to throw in a bit of a surprise and play him as the centre-forward. Pep and City will fully be expecting Nketiah and I think he could have a part to play off the bench, but Eddie looks tired, he’s had to play 90 minutes almost every game since Jesus got injured - that is not something he is used to. Arteta needs to trust his team and Eddie would give Arsenal something off the bench, whilst a break from the starting eleven would also refresh him for Saturday in the process.
We’ve not seen Trossard through the middle for Arsenal yet, but he played much of this season in that position for Brighton. Eddie hasn’t been contributing much to the build up in recent games and Trossard is a player who always shows for the ball. He can twist and turn sharply whilst also combining in earlier phases of play, and I feel a striker like him is more likely to get the best out of both Martinelli and Saka.
He’s also the only Arsenal player to score a goal in the last three games and that confidence could be crucial. He’s a big game player and has scored against most of the big six many times before for Brighton. I feel he will be really up for this game and one of the few Arsenal players to have left that Brentford game with confidence. If I was in charge, this would be the one change I’d make for City, with a few more tweaks on Saturday.
Arteta needs to find the right balance, but tweaking the team is an important part of that, this team can’t become too predictable and stale. Changes shouldn’t come after defeats, the manager must tweak appropriately so that we very rarely get to the stage of dropping points and conduct post-mortems after.
There’s a lot of games to come and this isn’t the last time Arsenal will play three times in a week. In fact, it is the first of many.
Arsenal content of the week
On every occasion that Arsenal have dropped points in the Premier League this season, there has been some reason to feel hard done by. Sky Sports put together all the controversy here.
An in-depth tactical analysis on Martin Odegaard by Micheal Cox.