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The Team from Goonerholicsforever.com
In the first of a two-legged Derby of Basque Managers, Arsenal’s Mikel Arteta Amatriain aimed to prove his greater worth than Unai Emery Etxegoien, his predecessor at the club who later took over at Villarreal in July 2020. On his side Emery’s undoubted incentive was to show the Gunners they shouldn’t have let him go after his spell in North London ended in frustration. With the two sides in nearly the same predicament, needing to win the Europa League to qualify for European football next season, and both managers having demonstrated cautious tactical approaches in their respective tenures at Arsenal, the first leg was always likely to be a tense affair.
I got home with 30 minutes to spare, and checked my Spanish language TV channels to be sure I would be able to report on the game, and sure enough Unai Emery was giving his pre-match presser in Spanish, which he is certainly able to speak much more effectively than the English he used to use for the purpose of torturing Arsenal fans who couldn’t understand what he was trying to do or say. Surprisingly, Alexandre Lacazette was not on the Arsenal bench, and Eddie Nketiah was left on the bench in favor of Martin Ødegaard who was notionally our lone striker but he seldom filled that position, and our attacking formation was difficult to discern, not to say ineffective.
Arsenal XI
Leno
Chambers — Holding — Pablo Marí — Xhaka
Partey — Ceballos
Saka — Smith Rowe — Pépé
Ødegaard
Villarreal XI
Rulli
Foyth — Albiol — Torres — Pedraza
Chukwueze — Capoue — Parejo — Trigueros
Moreno — Alcácer
Villarreal came out in their bright yellow home kit, which contrasted nicely with the lush green turf but left Arsenal a bit less noticeable in their dark blue away kit. Both sides started conservatively but in the fifth minute as Villarreal attacked on the right, seemingly innnocuously, Granit Xhaka kept backtracking and gave the right winger (Chukwueze?) all the time in the world to center for Trigueros to score a piledriver from relatively short range. Why did Xhaka retreat so, and where was Trigueros’ marker, we all asked collectively. It looked like Thomas Partey was closer to the goal scorer than any other Arsenal player but I wouldn’t put the blame on him alone. Surely somebody had to put a foot in to prevent them from scoring such a simple and completely undefended goal.
Villarreal 1-0 Arsenal (Trigueros, 5 minutes)
In the 12th minute as Arsenal tried to regain their equanimity by stringing together a few passes, Partey broke up the team’s budding rhythm by sending a simple short pass straight out of touch. Arsenal were without a target or hold up man up front, and their attacks weren’t looking dangerous as Villarreal presented a well-disciplined and organized defensive front. Finally, in the 25th minute Arsenal managed an effort on goal but Bukayo Saka sent a curler high and wide from the corner of the Villarreal box. Three minutes later Partey sent a shot into row ZZ from a central area when he should have at least kept it low and on target. Straight away, Villarreal went downfield, won a corner on the left, sent in a good one, flicked it on where Albiol, the man Partey was supposed to be marking, scored at the far post.
Villarreal 2-0 Arsenal (Albiol, 29 minutes)
In the 33rd minute Moreno almost made it three with a left footed effort just wide of the near post from a dangerous central position. One minute later the referee awarded Pépé a penalty although it looked like he had handled seconds beforehand, and the foul looked like it took place just outside the area in any case. After viewing the replay the referee changed his initial decision citing the handball violation, and the score remained 2-0. The penalty would have been extremely harsh on Villarreal in any case. Saka won a free kick on the right but Arsenal squandered the opportunity by committing a foul on the free kick. A couple of minutes later Saka won another free kick and Ødegaard sent in an in-swinger that Holding headed wide. Leno came out to force a Villarreal attacker wide when he looked like possibly scoring another one for the home side.
Villarreal broke again, and Ceballos conceded a yellow card and central free kick which Leno saved comfortably. That yellow card would figure prominently later on. Partey sent another one straight out of play when trying to switch play in the 45th minute before the half came to an end. Arsenal weren’t looking very good but as a sage remarked at halftime, if the Gunners could score next it would be a completely different game. Nevertheless, Arsenal looked poor and uninspired. I had to nod my head in agreement with what CER said at halftime: “It would be interesting to know what Arteta sent them out to do. Because I see no signs of any plan frankly.“
Villarreal 2-0 Arsenal (halftime)
The second half resumed with Unai Emery making a cautious substitution, taking off one of his strikers, Alcácer, and replacing him with defensive midfielder Francis Coquelin, ex- of this parish. In the 48th minute Pépé’s near post chance was blocked and sent out for a corner that came to nought. Arsenal sent in a couple of crosses to Pépé in relatively promising positions but he wasn’t able to find support at the right moment. But things turned from bad to worse for the Gunners on 57 minutes when Dani Ceballos was sent off for a questionable second yellow after he tried unsuccessfully to recover an errant pass in attack. Leno saved a fierce shot that was headed for the bottom corner within a minute of the sending off but Arsenal won a corner and Holding shot wide with three Villarreal players in front of him. Arteta responded by sending on Martinelli in place of the anonymous Ødegaard.
After 66 minutes Leno tipped another fierce close-range shot over the bar when it looked destined to be the Spaniards’ third. Two minutes later Leno made another low save but this one was a bit easier despite the Villarreal player being well positioned. The question in my mind at this point (70 minutes) was, could Arsenal stay in the tie? But shortly thereafter, as Lady Luck would have it (replays showed minimal contact in my opinion) Saka won a penalty driving into the area on the right, and Pépé drove home the spot kick to the center of the goal, and against all odds Arsenal indeed were right back in the thick of things, but Could they stay there or turn it around still more advantageously?
Villarreal 2-1 Arsenal (Pépé, 73 minutes)
On 77 minutes ex-Spud Capoue ran into Saka in an extremely clumsy challenge, accruing his second yellow and forcing the referee to send him off thus rebalancing the sides at 10 players each. Capoue, the man who initiated the contact, had to be stretchered off but Saka was fine to continue. Villarreal tried to attack down the right, perhaps sensing a weakness in Granit Xhaka’s tiring legs but on more than one occasion in the last ten minutes our makeshift left-back came up with important defensive stops against tricky winger Chukwueze.
On 85 minutes Aubameyang replaced Saka, and promptly earned a yellow card for a defensive challenge shortly before five minutes of injury time were announced. With a minute left Thomas had his best moment of the game, splitting the Villarreal defence with a diagonal ball that sent Aubameyang in alone on the keeper but his shot was saved in a situation where the old Auba almost definitely would have scored.
Near the end of injury time Willian replaced Pépé, and Elneny replaced Smith Rowe, but the referee soon blew his final whistle and Arsenal were left to gasp for breath realizing that they had been very lucky not to lose the leg by a wider margin. Our prospects would look better if Arsenal had spent the season making the Emirates a fortress but they have done nothing of the sort. On the other hand I do not think Villarreal will be feeling overly confident having squandered the chance to give Arsenal a real hiding when the opportunity was there for them to take, so poor were the Gunners on the night. And therein lies the grain of optimism that Arsenal can chew on going into the second leg. At least the Gunners improved a bit in and held Villarreal scoreless in the second half. A second leg like the one we played against Slavia Prague wouldn’t go amiss, but are we capable, and can Mikel Arteta put one over on his Basque compatriot at just the right time?
Coming soon to a blog near you (this one!)
Celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Arsenal’s first Double at Goonerholics Forever. Watch the conversations, read the recollections, bid for signed memorabilia and donate to the Willow Foundation to support their work with young adults with life-threatening disease.
Bob McNab, Mr Reliable, was quick in the tackle, read the game superbly and was tactically shrewd. He constantly barked out orders to organise that superb defence and still found time to support the attack. 54 appearances in 1970-71.
Thanks Dr F. A fine report on a
poor performance. Some credit
to Leno for keeping us in it after
his howler in the last game and
to the 10 men who managed to
pull it back to 2-1. Given his luck
in this competition it’s probably
better we won’t have Dani next
week. I hope we will have KT,
Luiz and Laca.
Cheers Bt8!
Btt8
Congratulations on an extremely thorough , balanced and insightful report . Balance certainly wasn’t something we had in a bizarre and ineffective team selection . Arteta can tinker all he likes tactically but if the team play with the lack of energy and quality they showed in the first half the formation is irrelevant.
The first goal came from Xhaka’s reluctance to tackle Chukwueze . The lawmakers have ruined football by removing tackling as it is such a high risk action especially in the penalty area. Xhaka can’t tackle anyway as we saw against Everton and is extremely slow. Not a great choice to curb a very tricky winger. The second goal was a defensive howler by Marí and Partey who left Albiol unmarked for the flick-on they shouldn’t have won in the first place .
When Ceballos was sent off for an innocuous challenge the summit of ambitions was a 2-0 defeat . A joke penalty, Emery’s conservatism and Capoue’s dangerous challenge coupled with a good display by Leno saw use with a better result than we deserved . Martinelli transformed the attack and Pepe was always a threat but given Arteta’s almost total inability to produce a strong , attacking performance at home we must pray for a Leeds/ Chelsea/S***s performance and not what we normally. produce at home .
Keep the faith but I accept Arteta is not making it easy to do so
sorry Bt8, I thanked Dr F instead
of you 🙇♂️🙇♂️
A good old 1-0 to the Arsenal will see us through to face United although I suspect we’ll need to score more than one to get there. We may need to play some recognised strikers in the second leg Mikel!
UTA.
Good stuff bt8. A comprehensive report that underlines how we are still in this tie as a result of the efforts of Leno, the villain of the piece last Friday, the skills and it has to be said wiles of young Saka and the cool head and penalty skill of Pépé. We certainly got out of jail and the outcome looked very gloomy after the red card for Ceballos. But lo and behold, we played better with 10 men and could have evened things up late on when we looked far the more likely team to score again. Good call on Xhaka too who managed his tricky winger well in the second half.
Under normal circumstances I would be optimistic for the second leg but who knows which Arsenal in which formation will turn up and with how much sense of purpose?
Another observation from last night is that Ødegaard had little influence on the game and, indeed, looked second-best to ESR in the unusual roles they were both asked to play. Whether that is due to his recent return from inury or simply a true measure of his abilities and proof of our characteristic overreaction to the display of a modicum of talent, remains to be seen.
Whilst his addition to the team since January has been a huge positive and a further season-long loan would be helpful as we concentrate on upgrading elsewhere in the team, I am unconvinced that he is a £50m player and a must-buy at whatever price Madrid demand. There are plenty of alternatives with similar skills at that price.
Nice one Bt8. I’m just glad we’re still in the tie. Hopefully KT3 will be available next Thursday.
Arseblog on fine form this morning, though GSD needs to check this for accuracy
“Dani Ceballos couldn’t live with the forward burst of Juan Foyth – a man who runs like a constipated dinosaur desperately seeking some bushes”
It’s good that we managed to keep ourselves in the tie, although who we might meet in the final doesn’t fill me with joy.
Arteta doesn’t seem so bad when you consider Spurs are now looking at Potter and Scotty Parker. Actually Potter doesn’t seem a bad manager within the relegation dog fight.
Thanks, bt8,
Not much hope left other than our other face (Jekyll? Hyde?) will turn up next Thursday.
oh gosh…
it is like the late Wengers tactics… “what if I put a GK into the CF position… it will surely confuse them…”
Yes, surely but no so much so than our own team…
all too bad
Thanks bt8.
I must admit, I have no idea how we are still in this tie. I’m very glad we are, but I thought yesterday was wrong on so many levels. The team selection was bizarre to me. Why pick two wide players and no striker? We would break on many an occasion, and all you wouid see is a sea of yellow to aim at? I don’t understand why Xhaka is preferred at left back to Cedric? The back four had as much pace as an ocean tanker in reverse.
I didn’t understand Arteta’s tactics in the slightest. Not for the first time there seemed to be very little plan. The fact he made two substitutions with less than 30 seconds to go, when he had a corner just about summed it all up for me.
No striker and two shots on target all night. One was a penalty and one was in the 94th minute?
We are still in this tie and like others, I hope we have some players back for the second leg because that was just painful.
I am genuinely having serious doubts over whether Arteta can actually make the grade at this moment in time. In my opinion, Last night was as inept tactically as I can remember.
Let’s hope there is a massive improvement just around the corner.
Cheers bt8.
I agree with most that we were lucky to get out with a one goal deficit after a weird selection compounded by a sluggish performance. Emery getting his Coq out at half time seemed like a balls up to me, and it did indeed let us off the hook.
The thing is, we are still well in the tie. I do hope we manage a decent home performance for once.
Countryman @8.
Well, he is not quite right – back in the day we rarely bothered with bushes, it was more a case of just shitting wherever you happened to be standing (a policy that is unpopular these days unless you play in midfield for Arsenal)
I did also think blogs’ piece this morning was a good ‘un!
I’m not for the first time pretty much in agreement with a bemused Steve T. I was bemused by the formation and interested to know the tranquilliser we injected the team with just before kick-off. We have conceded so many early goals this season from lackadaisical defending and scored very few . This was so different from Slavia Prague where we looked like we had a fire to put out . But that’s very much the exception.
Everyone has expressed the same wish- pick a cohesive team and pump them up next week. I’d put out a very rotated team at Newcastle
Maybe
Ryan
Bellerin Luiz Gabriel Cedric
Ceballos Elneny
Willian Odegaard Nelson
Balogun
A thorough and accurate report, bt8. Nothing much, if anything at all, to disagree with in your match analysis. At one point, I thought we would be looking at a Roma-scale task in the second leg, but much to thank Leno for that we are still in with a shout.
I would love to hear Arteta’s rationale for his team selection. He will not have made it casually. I suspect he has lost faith in Nketiah and just got it wrong if he thought that ESR could slot into Laca’s deep-lying nine role.
Ned,
On British TV , Martin Keown was a pundit analysing the match. He made much of Arteta not liking Martinelli. I think ( as one could see when he came on) that he could run in behind their back four . Albiol is 35 and struggled with his pace and movement .I agree that Arteta doesn’t trust Nketiah but I think it was based on his time at Manchester City . But I watched City overrun S***s and PSG ( second half) recently and speculated that instead if a false 9 they would have won much more easily with a focal point to the attack As Steve T said earlier who do the wide men pass to ? If you have Joe Willock arriving late you have a target but Partey and Ceballos and Ødegaard aren’t that sort of player
TTG@17: I concur with your assessment of the impact Martinelli had once he came on. It does seem that Arteta sees neither him nor Nketiah as long-term successors to Laca and Auba up top.
That may be because the manager thinks they are missing something, or — complete speculation here — he is going peak Pep and believes the days of the striker (any striker) are numbered. Perhaps needs be with Aguero’s injuries, Guardiola increasingly favours deploying a 4-2-4-0. It gives him more scope for his beloved overloads in midfield without any sacrifice in his theory of positional play.
However, he can afford to play the tactical visionary (which he is) as he can call on de Bruyne, Mahrez, Foden, Bernardo Silva, Sterling, Ferran Torres and Gundogan to be a false nine. Such a roster has both quantity and quality, the pace to get behind defences and into the box, and the ability to score goals (78 between them in all competitions this season).
At this point, Arteta has to be more pragmatic. The coat he can cut from the cloth he has is more than a few threadcounts short of City’s. To be fair to Arteta, he has Laca playing more as a deep-lying centre-forward in the di Stefano mould (Google him, youngsters) than a Messi false nine, which allows him to get into the box as attacks develop down the wings.
Having seen Guardiola play de Bruyne as a proper false nine against PSG, a big game for City after all, might Arteta have been tempted to think the Croydon version could do the same against Villareal? In two or three years time, it might seem as natural as anything but we are a long way from fast-forwarding to that.
buzzcocks
without buzz
From Southampton comes news to warm the cockles of Arsenal fans everywhere with the sending off of Vestergaard:
“Only Arsenal (12) have received more Premier League red cards since Ralph Hasenhuttl’s first game in charge than Southampton (9).”
It was getting pretty lonely up there at the top, and it still is, but at least we have the Saints within three of us and (hopefully) closing in fast. Did somebody say David Luiz is nearing full strength?
With coach MA @ a minimum not making changes @ HT, should we just say he is a stubborn man?
Can I draw everyone’s attention to the words at the very top of this post?
C100,
Done. Can’t wait for the release of the interviews and auction.
Thanks for all the hard work put in by all those involved. Just thinking about this has helped me to get out of the funk I have been in since Thursday night. Well worth some of my hard-earned.
Well done CER!
Celebrate the 1970-71 Double at Goonerholics Forever. Watch Bob & Pat, read the reminiscences, bid for signed memorabilia and donate to the Willow Foundation!
Pat broke through, aged 21, in 1970-71, played over 500 games for the Arsenal and as player & coach, he won more trophies at the Arsenal than anyone else. 55 appearances in 1970-71.
A blast from the past, Holics.
And why?
The gentleman from Oz whom Dave showed round the iconic sites of our tribe has just contacted me as a result of our Twitter publicity campaign to express his good wishes and his memories of this day. As Trev points out there’s a segue at Drinks 106-113.
Just catching up on my homework for next week. Highly recommended!
Comprehensive and insightful summary of a forgettable performance, bt8!
Let’s turn this around. Start positively, play without fear, express our considerable attacking talent without any complicated over-designed tactical cleverness.
>>>>>>>