Rice is done an interview with The Athletic and an interesting thing came out. I recently said one thing we don’t do, or aren’t good at, particularly are CB pairing was long diagonals….Rice said that Arteta doesn’t like diagonals, or that he only likes them if you gain an advantage from it. He said he played a lovely diagonal to Rice in the Brighton game and Arteta told him, nice pass but Saka has no one near him making the inside ball on and has another Brighton player coming over. So Arsenal gained no advantage from the switch of play.
Have a look at the pass map for the amount of switches of play Rice has attempted in the last 6 seasons.
The details you hear snippets of about the plan and idea Arteta has on how to play football are pretty incredible at times. Arteta can still improve and I reckon he’s learning at a faster rate than Pep or Klopp because he’s so young and inexperienced in comparison to them. I think it’s crazy how little recognition Arteta gets for dragging this club off the floor and in to two title races in his first management job.
| Attachments: |
 |