Team for Arsenal...

[NEVILLEB]

I would have Perisic in the team, instead of Sessegnon.

Sessegnon has defensive weaknesses he shouldn’t have at his age.

 

[Blake Griffin]

i get the calls for 352 and bulking up the midfield but the thing is, when we play 343 it very much becomes a 541 out of possession. you may only have hojbjerg and bentancur in the middle but son and kulusevski drop back into a wide position to help them. if we were to go "352" however, what it would actually look like when defending is 532, meaning you now have three players having to cover the same space that we'd otherwise have four players occupying. that's a lot of running for those three cms and i could see us becoming even more stretched unless kane really dropped deep to make up the deficit.

 

[NEVILLEB]

i get the calls for 352 and bulking up the midfield but the thing is, when we play 343 it very much becomes a 541 out of possession. you may only have hojbjerg and bentancur in the middle but son and kulusevski drop back into a wide position to help them. if we were to go "352" however, what it would actually look like when defending is 532, meaning you now have three players having to cover the same space that we'd otherwise have four players occupying. that's a lot of running for those three cms and i could see us becoming even more stretched unless kane really dropped deep to make up the deficit.

Watching the game yesterday we looked weak in the middle until Bissouma came on. Changed the game and made us more threatening and less vulnerable at the back.

The speed of the league these days you can’t count on the two wide players having time to drop back into midfield to make a 4. Need an extra man there before we lose possession.

 

[slartibartfast]

Wonder if Son will start

 

[Phil_2.0]

This will probably happen but we are now 13 league games unbeaten. We surely need to get past this now. We can be better than we have been when we have the ball in controlled possession against teams that sit off, like Sporting. But our whole tactic is about bringing the opposition on to us and attacking at speed - the chart below illustrates this in an amazing way. Plus the chances we give up when we don’t have the ball are usually very low quality ones, hence 13 games unbeaten…

View attachment 117087


Last year City overran our midfield 2, and we beat them 3-2 away with a very unlucky penalty against. Liverpool overran our midfield 2, and we got a 1-1 draw with a massively deflected effort against. Both of these teams are better than the current Arsenal.

Why are people advocating a 5-3-2 to control a game when that’s not our style? Fine to move to that latter in games to manage games, but it’s not our bread and butter. It’s not what got us CL football, that has us on the cusp of our longest ever unbeaten streak and level points with the expected runaway leaders of the league. We need to play our game.

If we are going to concede lots of shots, we are going to concede more massively deflected efforts. Thats not bad luck it's a consequence of defending so low.

I personally don't want to play 3-5-2 to gain control of the ball, although I think Bissouma will help that because he's so good at it. I want to play 3-5-2 to be better defensively. Secure the midfield. The issue would be that I am not sure we'd have enough Counter Attacking threats as we'd be relying on Hojbjerg to be the 5th attacker.

 

[dimiSpur]

I get why everyone is saying we should play the side & system which ended the Leicester game. However, Leicester was a home match, in which we wanted to control the game to a large extent. We certainly wished to control it to a greater extent than we will attempt to control possession against Arsenal, where we will likely seek to soak up pressure and deliver counter-attacking blows. This is a style which has borne fantastic results against better opposition, home and away.

So whilst I initially thought we should play the 3-5-2, on reflection, I think it more prudent to go with the system we know better and the one which will enable the attacking three to do their thing.

Therefore, I'd go:

Hugo

Emerson
Romero
Dier
Lenglet
Perisic

PEH
Bentancur

Kulu
Kane
Son

 

[djhotspur]

If we are going to concede lots of shots, we are going to concede more massively deflected efforts. Thats not bad luck it's a consequence of defending so low.

I personally don't want to play 3-5-2 to gain control of the ball, although I think Bissouma will help that because he's so good at it. I want to play 3-5-2 to be better defensively. Secure the midfield. The issue would be that I am not sure we'd have enough Counter Attacking threats as we'd be relying on Hojbjerg to be the 5th attacker.

I think you need t

If we are going to concede lots of shots, we are going to concede more massively deflected efforts. Thats not bad luck it's a consequence of defending so low.

I personally don't want to play 3-5-2 to gain control of the ball, although I think Bissouma will help that because he's so good at it. I want to play 3-5-2 to be better defensively. Secure the midfield. The issue would be that I am not sure we'd have enough Counter Attacking threats as we'd be relying on Hojbjerg to be the 5th attacker.

agreed. In an ideal world we have the right wing backs, spence when up to speed would be perfect for counters with his pace and power, Udogie next season too. Kulu needs to be converted to an 8 for it to work as he would obviously help massively through the middle like he played at palma

 

[SambaSpurs]

If we are going to concede lots of shots, we are going to concede more massively deflected efforts. Thats not bad luck it's a consequence of defending so low.

I personally don't want to play 3-5-2 to gain control of the ball, although I think Bissouma will help that because he's so good at it. I want to play 3-5-2 to be better defensively. Secure the midfield. The issue would be that I am not sure we'd have enough Counter Attacking threats as we'd be relying on Hojbjerg to be the 5th attacker.

Agreed it’s more likely, but it doesn’t happen particularly often. I can’t think of any of other examples in our last 20 or so games of a massively deflected shot going in or a penalty given whilst trying to block a shot.

Fair play on your last point. Honestly I don’t think we are in a bad place defensively though, we have one of the best statistically in the league in terms of goals against and xG against. I wouldn’t want to disrupt Son-Kane-Kulu but I think the 5-3-2 can help us a lot later in games.

 

[bubble07]

Sessegnon has defensive weaknesses he should have at his age.

He has several weaknesses

 

[spurs mental]

Lots of scare mongering and bed wetting about what Arsenal will do to us with lots of possession.

Absolutely guarantee you that, although they may not be saying it on the outside because they need to keep up the facade that they're ultra confident in their team, plus their arrogance,the wanderers fans and "Tets" will be freaked about what we can do to them on the counter.

Let AC devise the plan. Trust him to implement it and the players to deliver it. If we cede the midfield then I trust his reasons for it. If he bulks it up with Bissouma then I trust his reasons.

 

[SambaSpurs]

Yes but as sporting proved and as the chelsea and West Ham proved when we play better sides we can’t cope. Sporting have good attackers and we lost, chelsea should have won comfortably as they have good attackers but attackers that can’t finish and a terrible ref decision meant we scored.
West Ham are dog shit this season yet out played us and should have won.
I don’t care about last season I care about this season and we aren’t some brilliant side that keeps teams at bay, we’ve played a bunch of crap sides and drawn against the two only good sides we’ve played and should have lost both.
Last season we were a different beast but this season we don’t even look good in the transitions.
going to 3 5 2 is simply sensible against arsenal away from home or does your arrogance think we shouldn’t adapt to change against different opposition?
having bissouma in the hole will go along way to stopping odegaard and jesys dropping into the pocket and will allow Benta and hojberg to stop partey and xhaka playing. It’s a simple matter of fact arsenal are a different beast this season and yes they lost to a counter side in United but we don’t have eriksen and Bruno to play world class passes on the counter.
We never win at arsenal just look At the stats… even under poch when we were much the better side we still bottled it mostly there. Going there with an open midfield against much better quality of players who will beat us one on one like sporting did and have the intricate passing to unlock us.

I don’t think it’s arrogance to suggest we should play our usual formation, one that is working well, and where we have had success against possession focused teams. The main difference between this year and the end of last season is Son has gone from the best finisher in the league statistically to the worst, hopefully that rough patch is behind him now.

You can point to us being lucky and not controlling games but we have conceded the same amount as Arsenal/City who do control teams with possession and numbers in midfield. The underlying data behind that suggests it’s not lucky as far as the chances we are giving up.

Personally I don’t see the need to change the shape from the start and think we should back ourselves to grab goals as we did at Pep’s City, who Arsenal are the lite version of. Fair enough if you don’t agree but again, I don’t think it’s arrogant to suggest sticking with a formation that is serving us very well and has us unbeaten.

 

[NEVILLEB]

He has several weaknesses

Sorry should have been weaknesses he shouldn’t have (text!)

 

[journeyman]

I think it’ll be:

————————Lloris
———Romero—Dier—Lenglet
Emerson—Bentancur—Hojbjerg—Perisic
——Kulusevski—Kane—Son

And at least we know Richy & Bissouma are great options off the bench.

Arsenal were v impressive yesterday though. We should play to take 3 pts, but a draw wouldn’t be a bad result at all.

 

[SargeantMeatCurtains]

Hugo has a thigh injury so, depending on how serious it is, Fraser Forster will most likely start.

 

[kitchen]

However, we line up, we can expect to concede possession and try and hit them on the counter like Utd did. For those calling for a 352, I'm not against it, but we need to be really familiar with it to take on Arsenal, in the form they're in, at their ground.

I'm starting to think that Conte doesn't particularly care about winning the central midfield battle, and his entire plan is to win battles elsewhere. It's clear that he has very defined and well drilled patterns of play, and the players know them. What it doesn't cater for, and where it looks like we're losing battles even more lately is when we're simply sloppy on the ball, and giving it away cheaply. We were against Marseille, we were against sporting, West Ham and other games (even Leicester in parts). We can't afford to be against Arsenal.

Eventually for the 343 to take us to the next level, and compete with a 2 against 3 in lots of games, we will need some really world class midfielders, and I'm talking prime NGolo Kante good (who took Chelsea to a title with that system)

Another thing we need to watch out for is having our fullbacks pegged back. Whenever that happens it doesn't look good for us. I trust Conte to have a plan whatever happens but we'll also need to play well.

 

[punkisback]

I think you need t

agreed. In an ideal world we have the right wing backs, spence when up to speed would be perfect for counters with his pace and power, Udogie next season too. Kulu needs to be converted to an 8 for it to work as he would obviously help massively through the middle like he played at palma

This is it

in defensive shape

Lloris

Sessegnon
Lenglet
Dier
Romero
Emerson

Son
PEH
Bentancur
Deki

Kane


Transition

Lenglet
Dier
Romero

Sesseson
PEH
Bentancur
Deki
Emerson


Son
Kane

in Attack



Lenglet
Dier
Romero

Sesseson
PEH
Bentancur
Emerson


Son
Kane
Deki

Defensive shape allows us to look after their width from FB
Transition gives us the extra man in midfield to receive passes
Attack once we're in their final third allows us to be most clinical and have our best chance creator where he should be

 

[brasil_spur]

Has to be Conte's standard go to for this one surely?

Lloris

Romero
Dier
Lenglet

Royal
PEH
Bentancur
Perisic

Kulusevski
Kane
Son

Gives us the option of Richarlison off the bench around 60-65 minutes.

 

[gibbospurs]

Hugo has a thigh injury so, depending on how serious it is, Fraser Forster will most likely start.

It’s 2 weeks away?

 

[slartibartfast]

Has to be Conte's standard go to for this one surely?

Lloris

Romero
Dier
Lenglet

Royal
PEH
Bentancur
Perisic

Kulusevski
Kane
Son

Gives us the option of Richarlison off the bench around 60-65 minutes.

If Hojbjerg is fit he'll play.

 

[spids]

It’s 2 weeks away?

Depends if Lloris has an actual injury and is our for 3-4 weeks or it has withdrawn due to tightness in the muscle, which might mean 10 days rest is fine. We just don't know.