- 3 years ago
Arsenal have won the 2023 Community Shield, beating Manchester City 4-1 on Penalties after a 1-1 draw. But while they were mere seconds from losing the game, they did something few have ever managed against Pep Guardiola's team... dominate them on and off the ball for long chunks of the match.
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00:00 Hello there everybody, the season's started, 4-2, it's exciting!
00:07 Adam Cleary from 4424 here and the community shield, right, doesn't matter.
00:13 It's not important, it's not a real trophy, it's just a nice little friendly for people
00:17 to go and have a day out in the sun.
00:19 Doesn't ever tell you who's going to win the league, like Loll Liverpool won it last year,
00:23 but it does tell you quite a bit about the two teams involved.
00:26 Last season it told us that while Man City were still really good, they might be having
00:30 quite a slow start that year, as it so proved, and this season it tells us that Arsenal might
00:36 finally have their number.
00:40 Now here are yesterday's teams for you and just while you're having a look at that, really
00:43 quick disclaimer, if you are a Man City fan and you're sitting there thinking "got our
00:47 number", are you mad?
00:49 It was on penalties and it took a last minute deflected goal to even get there.
00:53 Shut up, you idiot, you've got to remember, right?
00:56 It's levels, isn't it?
00:57 You're still amazing and you still might win it all and you were still really good for
01:01 part of this game, but this is about as close as anyone has looked to shutting your s***
01:06 down in about a year, so just please, on behalf of the entire rest of English football, just
01:12 let us have this.
01:14 Anyway, yes, so back to the teams.
01:15 Arsenal had Timber, Rice and Havertz, all very new, all very expensive, they were starting,
01:20 and Man City had Kovacic, and I think that already tells you something.
01:24 For Arsenal, it's three players who come in and immediately raise the bar in their area
01:29 of the pitch, let them do things they couldn't previously do, and for Man City, it's, well,
01:33 there's an Ilkay Gundogan-shaped hole, what is the just most available, cost-effective,
01:38 like-for-like replacement we can get?
01:39 So on the one hand, you've got a team trying to maintain the consistency that saw them
01:42 win it all, and on the other hand, you've got a team who really hated the fact they
01:46 didn't win anything and it was spent big to match that ambition.
01:49 The thing is, the most interesting new face for me in this game was this man, Declan Rice,
01:54 because I think everybody assumed he was coming in to provide a shield to the back four, to
01:57 make them more robust, more resolute, to be better at playing in these areas of the pitch.
02:02 He actually did all of his good work right here.
02:06 So we'll just wave the old magic wand to show you City in their build-up.
02:09 So while last season we saw Man City have that, like, box midfield formation that allowed
02:12 them to outnumber teams, what they did when they played Arsenal last season was they actually
02:16 tried to stretch them as much as possible to bait them into a big press, bait them into
02:20 a big trap, and then play through the gaps that left.
02:22 And if you're an Arsenal fan, you'll remember that well.
02:24 You went to the Etihad and they basically just toyed with you.
02:27 They kept putting the ball into the widest, deepest possible areas, you guys charged them
02:32 down, tried to win the ball back, failed to do so, and then the space this created allowed
02:35 them to just play balls into the middle and they just went through you like a hot knife
02:39 through s***.
02:40 That's twice I've swore in this video now, which I'm not saying is entirely because
02:44 of how stressful the Women's World Cup penalties was, but I'm also not not saying that.
02:48 Anyway, this is how it looked in that game.
02:49 They kept their attackers as high as possible to force the fullbacks to not get involved.
02:53 There was two in the middle.
02:54 They tied up the central players and you effectively man for man across the back with the goalkeeper
02:58 spare, so they would just knock the ball between them all.
03:00 And as soon as somebody left the gap, they would just play out, someone would drop and
03:05 then they were away.
03:05 They made it look incredibly easy.
03:07 So Michael Arteta needed a solution to this, and the solution to that is literally just
03:12 get Declan Rice.
03:13 And what he enables them to do is just shut down the entire middle section of the pitch.
03:16 He shut down Man City's entire buildup.
03:18 Thomas Party was relieved of his man marking duties, and he kind of sat in this space to
03:22 stop any long direct balls from ending up in this area.
03:26 And Odegaard, rather than pressing the centre backs, dropped in with Rice to basically man
03:30 mark both Rodri and Kovacic.
03:32 And what kept happening, and I genuinely couldn't believe my eyes with this, we had this really
03:36 compact sort of man marking job where you had Havertz, Rice and Odegaard as a three,
03:41 just completely shutting down this area of the pitch.
03:44 They could not get the ball into the two central midfielders.
03:47 So this forced the two Man City centre backs wider and wider.
03:50 And then the, hang on, that's going to look weird.
03:52 Where's my, I've never had them this far out before, hang on.
03:54 That meant that Ortega was pretty much playing out here, and they just had a Mexican standoff.
04:01 And the reason Rice is so important to this is because Havertz and Odegaard, it was both
04:05 their job to close down whoever had the ball, to try and block off whatever passing lane
04:09 they could.
04:09 And whichever one went, Rice would then cover across to the man he was leaving.
04:13 Because you can see what the inherent problem with this is, can't you?
04:16 Like let's say Odegaard, he decides to close down the keeper because he's got the ball.
04:19 He shuts off that passing lane there, so we can't go that way.
04:22 He's got to go into the centre back, in this case, Diaz, who is the only one free.
04:26 Now obviously he would do that because a quick pass into Diaz then gets Kovacic in because
04:29 he's free.
04:30 But because you've got Rice there, who's so good at reading the situation and knowing
04:33 what's going on, he would then jump onto the free man.
04:36 And now the problem that gives them is because Martinelli and Saka are still being aggressive
04:39 themselves.
04:40 They are waiting just a few yards off the fullback, so we're now pushed really high,
04:44 to try and jump onto them if that's where the pass goes.
04:46 Diaz is then faced with a very difficult situation.
04:49 He doesn't want to go wide because that's where the trap is.
04:52 He now can't go back to his goalkeeper because Odegaard will be curling his run to try and
04:56 stop that happening.
04:57 He can't go into the man he wanted to go into because Rice has jumped onto him.
05:00 So he's got two options.
05:01 Either you lump it long into one of the wide players, which Arsenal are more than happy
05:04 with.
05:04 They've got a numerical advantage in this area.
05:07 Or you just stand there and go, "Uh..."
05:11 And that's what they did several, several times.
05:13 We ended up in this stalemate where Man City weren't really sure where to go with their
05:17 first pass because their two central players, the players they needed to get the ball to
05:21 every single time, they were blocked off.
05:23 And again, why this only works for Declan Rice is because when he didn't have a specific
05:26 player to mark, he was sticking to Rodri like glue.
05:29 Like, teams will try and do this kind of thing to City all the time.
05:32 They'll try and shut down these passing in.
05:33 They'll try and give them nowhere to go.
05:35 It doesn't really work because their movement is so good.
05:38 But Rice just followed Rodri absolutely everywhere.
05:42 He did not let him have pretty much a single forward pass in the first half.
05:46 Everything had to be sideways or everything had to be backwards or everything just had
05:48 to be desperate and long.
05:50 Like, it even got to the point, as you can see here, where Rodri just went and played
05:53 at centre back and Stones went and sat in the pivot position just to see whether or
05:57 not Rice would stay there or whether he would keep following him.
06:00 They didn't really know what to do.
06:02 And again, the reason it has to be Rice because he was so important to their build-up play
06:05 as well.
06:05 He wasn't just doing a really good defensive job all over the pitch.
06:08 When Arsenal were building out from the back, he was taking a position based on what it
06:12 is they were trying to do.
06:13 Nigerian Timber was making fantastic runs down the left-hand side, but he didn't leave
06:17 Bernardo Silva free because Rice just sort of tucked in as like this left-sided centre
06:21 back.
06:21 He marshalled the space.
06:22 He stopped Alvarez from picking it up deep or he got across to Silva when he needed to.
06:26 He had that side of the pitch completely locked down.
06:28 But the best bit of all, and the thing I think you're going to see Arsenal doing a lot this
06:32 season when they kind of settle into their shape, was you would occasionally just drop
06:36 between the two centre backs, allow them to spread, then both White and Timber would just
06:41 immediately push up as wing-backs.
06:44 It's where they got that great Ben White chance from.
06:45 If you look at the build-up to that, look who is their deepest player, look who is their
06:48 most central player.
06:49 Declan Rice has dropped in there, which allowed Saliba to just sort of run unopposed up that
06:54 end of the pitch because obviously we've got Rice there tying up Haaland all of a sudden.
06:57 That allowed White to get in because now you've got an overload on that side and they should
07:01 have scored from it.
07:02 And not to Columbo this, but one final thing, the reason this has to be Declan Rice and
07:07 nobody else is because even when you press them that well, even when you've got that
07:10 lockdown, some City player will find space and they will just go over you or through
07:15 you or something.
07:16 Declan Rice is not in the picture here.
07:18 He's still not in the picture here.
07:21 And then if you beat his press, you still have to beat his recovery run and very few
07:26 teams are going to do that this season.
07:28 And just as one final, final thing, if you do think this is more the system than it is
07:32 the individual who was doing it, this is what happened when Partey ended up in that sort
07:35 of front pressing position.
07:37 That is Phil Foden spinning him like a goddamn Baneblade and that's where Man City got their
07:44 goal from.
07:44 And this is why if I was an Arsenal fan, I'd be very encouraged by this because this is
07:47 not something other teams could just do.
07:49 It only worked because Saliba had the shackles on Erling Haaland so well.
07:54 They were not able to get a long ball into him where he could bully the defence, which
07:57 would be a really easy out because, well, he had him in his back pocket.
08:01 Haaland didn't get a single attempt on goal, I think.
08:04 And when they were able to get the ball into the wide areas, which City do like to do,
08:07 they love to have these players wide to stretch you, to leave gaps in between.
08:10 You've got both White and Timber who, while being very good going forward, are centre
08:15 backs by trade and are really good at defending one on one.
08:18 And you know what?
08:18 Another encouraging thing from an Arsenal perspective is that the tide only turned when
08:23 Kevin De Bruyne came on the pitch.
08:24 The guy is so good at solving these problems and finding space where you're not allowing
08:28 him to have them.
08:29 He did completely flip the game on his head.
08:31 But if Man City are now so reliant upon him to do this, that's going to be a tough season
08:36 for them.
08:37 And yes, it's not like they dominated City and had a million bajillion chances and beat
08:41 them 3-0 or anything.
08:42 But like I said at the start, it's just, it's levelled.
08:44 This is sort of a level of tactical dominance over City for a large part of the game that
08:48 we haven't really seen anybody have.
08:51 It doesn't mean they're bad.
08:52 Doesn't mean they're still probably not just going to go on and win everything for the
08:56 sake of it.
08:57 But something.
08:58 It's a bottom line here.
08:59 If you're going to spend £100 million on a footballer, you might as well spend it on
09:02 the one player who can help you defeat your ultimate adversary.
09:06 So to Mikkel Arsetta, to you, sir, I say that is a level of spite and pettiness I think
09:11 wins you a Premier League title.
09:12 And you know what?
09:13 It's funny I should mention that because 442 Lynch been very much our own Declan Rice.
09:17 Mark White has done a video for the channel on why Arsenal are definitely going to win
09:21 the league, which he made before they even beat City, which is even more impressive.
09:25 I'll link that there and also down there.
09:28 It'll be at the end of the video.
09:29 So you've got no excuse not for watching it in my opinion.
09:32 More than that, though, it's just really good.
09:34 So please do leave them some love in the comments.
09:36 And speaking of the comments, I'm just knocking these segues out of the park today.
09:40 Please do leave all of your thoughts on Arsenal and the season ahead and all the myriad of
09:44 things I haven't talked about in that game, which I could have in the little box below.
09:48 We do honestly love to hear from you.
09:50 In the meantime, @AdamCleary on all the socials, @442 on all the socials as well.
09:54 Season preview issue, the best one we do all year in stores now.
09:58 But until next we meet, which will be tomorrow, I've been Adam Cleary, it's been 442.
10:03 Nice seeing you.
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