This is how Mikel Arteta EVOLVES Arsenal next...

Each season in his time as Arsenal boss, Mikel Arteta has changed something significantly from a tactical point of view about the Gunners. And today's video is a mixture of how I think the team needs to evolve, which focuses on evolving how Arsenal attack. And I'm gonna unpack what that means shortly with particular reference to the Bayern Munich UCL tie, but also what Mikel Arteta is likely to do himself. And that includes balancing Arsenal's incredible flexibility in possession with becoming more ordinary. Welcome back to the Harvey Grayson YouTube channel. I'm so glad you found us or are joining us once again. All of this will be explained today as Arsenal head into the 2024-25 Premier League season. So let's get on with it. Starting with changing how we attack. This may seem like an exaggeration, but it's not. I'm not asking us to alter our whole idea of how to attack an opponent. I'm not asking us to necessarily even score more goals. But in those games against Manchester City, for example, where literally nothing splits the two teams, all those big knockout Champions League ties, all those pesky mid blocks, I want our attack to change something, to become more matter of fact, more predictable in some ways, but much more effective. Let me explain. Because in true nerd fashion, the past week of my life has been involved with going back over the key games of Arsenal season. And when I got to our UCL tie against Bayern Munich, watching it back, it really made me realise what we were lacking in terms of pushing us over the edge in these matches where everything seems 50-50 or deadlocked. Right now, to sum up how Arsenal attack, we're full of rotations, players in close proximity to one another, subtle movements and clever combinations, being intricate and really terrifically manipulating an opponent. We are absolutely exceptional at this and I don't want it to go anywhere. However, I want to add another layer to this, being more explicit in how we attack and doing that by adding more dynamism. And by dynamism, I don't actually mean more pace necessarily, far from it. Dynamism refers to being able to find space on a pitch and then exploit it and creating a more efficient attack, even if it means laying your cards out on the table earlier is at the forefront of how I want this Arsenal team to evolve because earlier in the season, a lot of our analysis on this channel focused on what I call the big space setup, which was a way for Arsenal to attack quicker and almost artificially create transitions by bypassing the second phase of possession and playing into an outlet surrounded by second ball winners who could springboard us towards goal. And this often involved releasing a wide free man off the left-hand side. It's a brilliant dynamic and Arteta was trying to improve Arsenal in how we attack these bigger spaces. And it's a large part of why we signed Kai Havertz, for example, why we saw a two shadow striker system at the start of the season and continue to see at times Havertz rotating with a center forward from shadow striker or the tip of a diamond. However, what is problematic about this and Arsenal trying to play quicker, especially in the ties like Bayern Munich, which I'm gonna get to, is that when we look at the rest of the players and their roles when Arsenal are trying to attack like this, there is a conflict of interest, in my opinion, between our approach to be more direct and more straightforward and the player's natural tendencies. Take the Bayern away game, for example. We often created situations like this on the pitch, much like the big space setup where we drew the Bayern press in, playing more straightforwardly to an outlet. And by having this central bunching or clustering of bodies to gobble up the layoff or second ball, and then either release Martinelli or take a shot on goal. But let me ask you, can you spot a problem when it comes to Arsenal's efficiency? In the next example, we're gonna see how Declan Rice and Tommy Asu's movements and interchanges confuse and draw the Bayern press in, creating that space between the lines for Jorginho to either find Kai Havertz, who has pinned the back line, and then have Odegaard take the ball off him, or, with the space Martin Odegaard has created, Jorginho has the option to play it out to Pekka Osaka, who has the chance to carry the ball all the way into the Bayern box. And this comes from it being a relatively set game state here with Bayern pinned in and defending deep in a mid-block with not too much space in and around for Arsenal to exploit. But we have an option now to do that. Now, Jorginho actually plays the wrong choice of pass and goes aerial instead of on the ground to Kai Havertz, but it's not the reason that the attack breaks down. We are not dynamic enough to exploit what we have created. I'll pitch you this. Imagine if we had a Rice and Onana pivot, and Jorginho is therefore replaced by a more powerful carrier who can therefore withstand contact, and this is able to make Saka a better passing option or play a better pass into Kai Havertz. Now, here's an even better thought. Let's imagine that Martin Oerdegaard takes the role of attracting the press that Declan Rice and Tommy Asu are doing here, and the second ball gobbler, as I called it, although it's not a technical term, that's what I'm calling it, becomes Pekka Osaka, drifting even further central, able to shield the ball, and hence make the right decision of shooting or passing in the final third, with Ben White, of course, offering that dynamic overlap on the right-hand side. Or, of course, we could keep Pekka Osaka wide and insert, instead of Martin Oerdegaard, Fabio Vieira, for example, and his devastating ball striking on the edge of the box. Or, one final option, we sign another center forward and start to see more and more Havertz plus someone else working in tandem here, sort of much more closely mimicking Havertz at the sort of tip of a diamond type deal. And each of these possibilities are dramatically a more dynamic option in how we recreate the same dynamic that we have here against Bayern Munich. Name me one team in the whole of Europe who could dynamically deal with this threat, going up against Onana and Declan Rice as carriers and their long legs in the middle of the park, players like Saka and Vieira, whose very game styles are built around this idea of efficiency, the ability to stretch sides in behind and win second balls with players like Ozzy Mahem or Kai Havertz, Benjamin Sesko, the players we've been linked to. And not to forget the space dominant player like Martinelli off the left, who would be platform to finish our attacks as opposed to starting them. And like I said, those deadlock encounters, whoever is the more efficient or dynamic normally comes out on top. And Arsenal are in a place, I think, where we're sometimes extremely dynamic in our patterns of play, but don't quite have the attacking profiles to optimize it. Or we have the attackers playing, but we don't tend to play this more straightforward enough style enough, because what knocked us out against Bayern is this more full stop quality. In the first half, it was Musiala on Jorginho, and that was their release valve. That was Bayern Munich's release valve, dragging Jorginho deep and creating space between him and Saliba, and then using the close distances between the players on Bayern's left-hand side to combine and create transitions against the settled Arsenal mid-block. In the second half, this transferred to Kimmich's ability to pass or cross the ball outside of our block. But how were these conditions created? Well, it was the dynamic movements of Musiala and Goretzka to draw men away from Leroy Sane, who could pin then and recycle the ball to Kimmich in the half space. And it's how their goal came about. Kimmich's ball in, which is almost a goal in itself, and then he crashes the box and scores. Bayern win the tie. And look, these examples against Bayern Munich are just examples, but it's the essence of what makes Arsenal more efficient in front of goal. And out of all the games that I could play through, it's these individual choices and moments I could bring up in any sort of the games that we've struggled in these similar conditions. We've already bulletproofed ourself in this efficient way, defensively, by the way. And Arteta has always progressed things in his time as Arsenal manager from back to front. Well, now it is about doing the front, and it's about making Arsenal more efficient, adding more layers to this Arsenal attack. And being more straightforward and forthright in how we attack in these sort of deadlocky moments in the game, and really make the most and be clinical of chances that don't come around very often. When we do this, we have to make sure we have the right players to dominate three aspects of play, none of which are particularly intricate, but bigger space aspects. The first one, number one, is the passing moment, the ability to access our outlets. Number two is the outlet moment, whether that is in behind, in the carry, or in the hold-up, we need players who specialise here. And lastly, but not least, is the shooting moment. Be efficient in front of goal, make the moments and the margins, tip them your way. Again, this is to add just another layer to our offensive repertoire, but it may mean that in certain games, as a fan base, I think we have to become okay with players like Martin Odegaard, for example, missing out on times, and it doesn't mean that he's any less integral to the long-term sustainability of this Arteta project, it doesn't. But different games, of course, require different tools. It's not about dropping players, it's about Mikel Arteta developing a squad of 17, 18, 19 players he can trust, but this aspect of Arsenal's evolution and what we need to do going into next season, this aspect, Mikel Arteta, is for another video. But for now, let's go back to the familiar, because I know a big question of what you guys have is what is mainly the next bit of tactical innovation Arteta will incorporate into this Arsenal team? As I detailed in an earlier video, each season, as I said at the start as well, Arteta has significantly evolved Arsenal from a tactical point of view. And for me, it's about balancing, becoming more ordinary, we're gonna explain what that means, with the increasing flexibility we saw in the second half of last season. Or is it still this season? I don't quite know, ever know how to put that. But let me explain what I mean. I'm by no means saying that what was arguably Arsenal's best version last season in sort of the really flexible buildup that we saw where responsibility was shared between five or often six players, it seemed constantly revolving and overloading. And at times things were, what I would say, at least a bit more relational than positional, where our positioning was increasingly based around where the ball was, as opposed to normal positional play, which is where the positioning of a team is based around the opponent. I'm not saying we're gonna get rid of this, because if anything, it actually informs these changes and forms part of a larger discussion about adding layers to Arsenal rather than replacing them, keeping everything as a nice whole. But that's not gonna change the fact that another very good iteration of Arsenal was a more stricter double pivot that we saw, for example, against Liverpool in the two home games with Rice and Jorginho, or against Manchester City in the Community Shield with Partey and Declan Rice. And there's a flurry of examples we can have throughout the season of this being implemented. But let's just say in the run-in, the ability for Arteta to deploy the exact same team that we did against Bournemouth and Spurs, but completely alter how strict, in a sense, our buildup was, is key in this balancing act that we're talking about. Just to be clear, by strict double pivot, I mean that the players in the midfield pivot that start are relatively fixed in position, but I don't mean that the players who are occupying the pivot are totally set in place. You're still gonna see a full-back joining, but just not as much. And our midfield can still be that big sort of moving piece it often is, but just not as much. We'll still see Erdegaard, or should I say Romergaard, drifting deep in the buildup, hopefully actually being allowed a wider range of angles to join the buildup in that all-phase midfield role, as well as cheating left more and more on top of a sturdier foundation. Again, this is more my rational prediction of how Arsenal evolve, becoming a bit more ordinary and traditional going into next season than my optimal Arsenal. But our full-backs are gonna be more traditional in this sense as well, because they're gonna be operating a bit more like full-backs just as we'll see midfielders being more set in their midfield roles more. Although profiles like Urien Timber and Tommy Asu will continue to rotate low and high with the centre mids and occupy those higher spaces between the lines, our left-back position next season, I think, is gonna be tasked more with the vital job of holding width more in our 2-3-5 shape, for example, in high possession. Gunnerblog revealed a few days ago that despite needing to sell a left-back to make it happen, Arsenal are looking for a more specialised profile in this department. And this certainly feels really rational, at least to me, when one of my transfer window criteria was an improvement in the left-hand-sided dynamics and a natural overlapper would go a long way to fixing this and starting, like we're saying, to add those extra little details and more efficient qualities in our attack, including getting our wingers closer to goal and not just in the final third. But I wonder, just to finish the video off, if this balancing act between real flexibility and stricter positioning may have sort of a reverse effect on this Arsenal team, where the fluidity we've seen in our build-up is actually just a natural marker of Arteta's growing trust in this team, meaning that the next step is more freedom in attack, again, from back to front and natural progression through the team. Because when we take the concept of being more efficient in our attacks that I've discussed at the start of the video, part of what is important is becoming a bit more freeform, particularly in transition, again, trying to get away from always having to enact very clever rotations and close proximities and allowing the freedom to carry more in the centre of the pitch, especially, to break into space through relationships on the pitch that, at times, can transcend the on-pitch structure and just cut through teams. And I think that's really what we're looking to add next to this Arsenal attack, that ability to change the flow of the game. It's kind of what I'm getting at with efficiency. I think a defending team can very quickly feel on top, especially if they're defending a lead, for example, when they realise it's the system of the team that they're playing rather than the individuals that they fear. You need both, of course, but Arsenal need to create the conditions, I think, more to allow those individual fear factor moments to surface because we definitely have the individuals in the squad as a whole that should be causing more of that. But for now, that's all from me. And these are the key takeaways of how I think, at this current moment in time, Arsenal will and should look to evolve going into next season. I really hope you've enjoyed this video. There's gonna be plenty more of Arsenal evolution stuff going on as and when we get more information going into this summer. But I really hope you've enjoyed. I'll catch you in the next one. See you later.