“There was only one team that came to play football … I’m glad we always enter the pitch to try to win every match.” Bernardo Silva caused quite the stir when he had a dig at Arsenal following last season’s 2-2 draw at Manchester City. Fewer headlines were created by the fact that, speaking to Sky Sports, Pep Guardiola admitted “maybe (he) would’ve done the same” a goal up and a man down away from home against a top side. Like Arsenal in Manchester 12 months ago, but with a man more on the pitch, Manchester City did indeed bunker in as they looked to cling onto their lead and leave north London with all three points on Sunday. Ultimately there was an equaliser, superbly taken by substitute Gabriel Martinelli, and the points were shared. The key to the match, though, was Arsenal’s failure to exploit the gaps in City’s defensive shape much, much earlier and it’s hard not to look at Mikel Arteta’s selection as a contributing factor. Manchester City are not a team that will ever happily drop off and sit back in a deep defensive shape, which often means there is space left in behind for teams to exploit. Early season defeats to Tottenham and Brighton can be blamed on City’s inability to appropriately defend that space in behind, and there were even warning signs in the 4-0 win at Wolves on the opening weekend. Heading to north London on Sunday, City were wary of leaving the same space behind their defence again, especially with Arsenal’s Viktor Gyokeres thriving when he can make those deep runs. City know exactly what it’s like to have a striker racing in behind — it’s exactly how Erling Haaland opened the scoring on Sunday, not for the first time against Arsenal — and were determined not to let Gyokeres have the same opportunities. But a football pitch is big and there will always be space somewhere. With City still looking to press high but keen not to have their defence push up, there were huge gaps between the backline and the midfield. Their press could have been easier to play through as a result but Arsenal, without a real number 10 or a striker who looks to receive the ball to feet, could never take advantage. The signs were there from the very first minute of the game. Arsenal won possession on the edge of their own box and quickly found Mikel Merino in space near the halfway line. The space between City’s backline and midfield was as obvious as the lack of an Arsenal player looking to get into it. Merino turned back and City had the time they needed to get behind the ball. Jurrien Timber then looked to feed the ball over the top for Gyokeres, but with the City defence already retreating it was almost impossible to find the Swede in behind. Straight away it was obvious that City were going to deny Arsenal that pass in behind but, for all the talk of not providing Gyokeres, it felt like Arsenal were trying too hard to force that specific ball when it was just never on. That issue was exacerbated by the team failing to attack the spaces that City were leaving. With just over a minute gone, the gap between midfield and defence was clear again: City wanted to press, but wouldn’t commit their backline to that press, and Mikel Merino was left asking for the ball in the chasm between press and defence, arms wide open, but was ignored. You feel David Raya would’ve been tempted to fire that pass into one of Martin Odegaard, Ethan Nwaneri or Eberechi Eze, trusting their ability to both control a tricky ball and then quickly turn and drive into the space ahead of them. For all the qualities he can bring to a team, that’s not the sort of player Merino is. To make a real difference, that combination of technical security has to be combined with the physicality to compete with your opposite number. In the other selection that may have surprised some — starting Leandro Trossard on the left flank — Arteta did have the much-needed technical ability in the centre and inclination to drift towards the ball to find the spaces City’s players left, but the Belgian lacks the burst of pace to consistently make it count. In the example above, he runs off the back of Rodri with City right-back Abdukodir Khusanov drawn to Riccardo Calafiori on the ball. City weren’t too worried about Trossard on the ball a good 40 yards from goal, though: Ruben Dias remained central rather than being dragged out wide, and Khusanov turns from facing Calafiori makes light work of catching Trossard, despite the latter’s healthy head start, before out-muscling him. Still, Trossard did at least offer some of that movement between the lines that his team-mates didn’t, dropping off the frontline to receive from Raya here: But as he turns to face the remaining City midfielders and that chasm between midfield and defence is clear, no Arsenal player looks to get into it and the Belgian has to go wide to Timber. What could’ve been a promising attack slows and is poorly executed attack from there. By the time Timber looks to release the ball, City have men back. Timber actually finds Gyokeres well, but the Swede is pushed wide and never has the chance to get beyond Ruben Dias, who is covering. Merino has made a similar run to Gyokeres, there’s nothing on the flank to keep Dias second-guessing his covering run, and Madueke has not made any sort of movement at all. Madueke running in behind here would’ve stretched the defence a little at least. Better yet, had Gyokeres moved towards the ball and looked for a pass into feet, he could’ve attracted attention and given Madueke and Merino both space to burst in behind. That’s exactly the sort of movement up front that saw Trossard create the opener for Martinelli in Bilbao. On one of the few occasions Gyokeres did drop, Arsenal played through City with ease and released Trossard in behind. Trossard’s lack of speed was again the thing that prevented Arsenal from turning this into a chance. There were nice turns from Martin Zubimendi and Declan Rice in the first half to carry the ball into that gap in front of the City defence, but too many Arsenal runners were moving away from the ball and City could simply retreat and slow the attack down. See, that movement in behind isn’t really valuable for a player looking to receive if the defence is dropping, and its main use then is to have someone else drop off of the frontline into the space that is created. It’s movement away from the defence that allows Calafiori to receive and turn into space early in the second half. It’s so valuable to face the ball and drop off of the backline. You have a great view of what’s ahead of you with your back to goal and time to see where the spaces are, just as Calafiori above sees that it’s to Rodri’s right, in behind Bernardo Silva. It gives defenders decisions to make — do you go with him or not? Rice plays a simple pass and the Italian can turn to be running towards the defence in an instant. In this case, he plays Trossard but things, unfortunately, slow down with him again. Ideally you’d have him in Calafiori’s position here instead. As a one-on-one winger, Trossard isn’t direct enough to keep pushing the opposition back and, in this case, didn’t have the pace to beat Matheus Nunes. City were comfortable enough that they don’t even support the right-back to turn it into a two-on-one, leaving him to push Trossard to the byline alone and happy to have the rest of the backline pack the box. It really is a combination of technical and physical abilities that is needed at this level to make the difference — more often than not, one isn’t enough. Madueke was the only player in the starting front five who truly has both and, as we already saw in Bilbao, it’s hard to create things against good teams when those profiles are skewed too far towards the physical side. With a physique-heavy pair of number eights in Rice and Merino, plus Gyokeres up front, Arsenal have lacked guile and unpredictability. The performance on Sunday also underlined the value of players in the frontline who move towards the ball. As Martinelli’s goal in Bilbao also displayed, only with that can you get the most out of those who move away from it. In terms of the conversation around Gyokeres, it means a better balance of profiles is required to get more out of him, but it also means he needs to vary his own movement more often to be less predictable and create openings for his team-mates. There is nobody who wants to run in behind more than Haaland but you only have to look at his goal on Sunday, and the way his presence drags Gabriel in, to see that any striker can create space for themselves and others by varying their movement and coming towards the ball. By the time Saka and Eze were on the pitch on Sunday, the task had changed completely. Arsenal started the half well but by the hour mark, City decided to dig in, as illustrated by Guardiola removing Phil Foden for Nathan Ake and later Erling Haaland for Nico Gonzalez. It’s hard enough breaking down a lesser talented side that sits deep and protects their own box, it’s a monumental challenge against players with the quality of City’s. From 60-75 minutes, Arsenal had zero shots and attempted just two take-ons in that time. That simply isn’t enough against a team sitting back like City were. My impression is that Arsenal wanted to play on the front foot — they started the game excellently and not particularly cautiously at all — but lacked the correct combination of profiles to make it count. If anything, you could argue the goal actually comes from the team being too eager to dominate things, looking to smother City and losing the run of Tijjani Reijnders with too many players fixated on the ball. Reijnders gambles before Haaland has won it, it pays off and goals change games. The first one in this game clearly unsettled Arsenal, sloppiness crept in for a while afterwards, and it made City’s gameplan a straightforward enough one. You can’t bank on not conceding one, as we saw at Anfield, no matter how solid your set up is. Arteta has missed Odegaard, Havertz for these games, as well as Saka from the start on Sunday, and that doesn’t help, but points have been dropped and there the manager does not have the luxury of time when it comes to bedding in Eze or Nwaneri in a midfield role. In future, when without Odegaard and Havertz, Arsenal are going to have to find another midfield, one with a better balance of qualities and more complementary players, to be a more attacking force in games. The post Tactics Column: Arsenal fail to exploit the space appeared first on Arseblog ... an Arsenal blog.