A tale of sloppy play in the midfield and beyond against Everton, could be worse though! 

As you have probably realised I only do my Mr Arsenal Blog's tactics weekly feature, once a week, so tonight I am just going to do a more generic article based on tonights' game, and talk about something that has been becoming a real issue in recent weeks. Tonight, in my opinion, was always going to be an extremely tough match, against I side which I have a huge amount of both respect and admiration for. They have great players e.g. Fellani, Baines, Jelavic e.t.c. But what I admire about them is the way in which the club is run, they have stood by their manager for long time, and got results from a shoe string budget. They had started this season very well, and beat United (on the traitors debut) there on the first weekend of the season. Therefore a point from this game, is not exactly a disaster! Therefore, as I said in the title to this piece, it certainly could be a lot lot worse!

However, what is really concerning me at the moment, and is something that to be honest has been of a real concern to me throughout this season to date is something that has never really been a problem for us in the past, in fact in my opinion is has usually be the opposite. This is that, this season we seem reasonably comfortable without the ball, Steve Bould has undoubtably had some kind of an impact (there is still a long way to go by the way, but its an improvement), however on it we seem to keep panicking. In the past when we were under pressure from a team, especially at home, when we used to finally got the ball back I would invariably sigh a huge sigh of relief, and think "good we have it, now we will hold on to it". Now when we get the ball back under pressure, we seem to quite frankly get scared, panic, make rash decisions, over complicate the passes, and then give it away again!

Bringing it back to the game that we saw tonight, this was again very much on show. We would be under pressure, eventually get it back but then play a pass that is not on, and give the ball back again, or pass it straight to a defender and put ourselves quite frankly under more pressure than we already were before. It's really a worry because we have many players in the side, that are extremely gifted technically  and who all can pass well! But for some reason or another they just seem panicky on the ball and it seems especially in away games, we just keep giving it away, and therefore inviting teams on to us! It wouldn't be so much of an issue if it was in our attacking 3rd that we give the ball up, however as we saw tonight, we gave it away just outside the box, in their attacking 3rd and thus conceded a totally avoidable goal!!

As you can see from this heat map below, the number of un-successful passes (here marked with the red arrows), in our own half especially, is quite frequent. And what is concerning about this is that this is from the first half alone!! This is something which has to improve. This heat map does not include the pass from Sagna, which led to their goal, because that did go to Arsenal player, but was then given away. It was a ridiculous pass, because the ball should have just been bolted up the pitch clear. I am pretty sure that most of you reading this that either play football, or played football at school or for local club or whatever like I used to, were told at a very young age to NEVER pass across goal. Because if you misplace the pass, or the player you pass it too (as in this case it was Arteta), mis controls it, the team will be in BIG trouble. As it proved.

This is very concerning. I don't know whether it is down to a lack of confidence, lack of leadership or what. But what is clear to me, is that we have a lot of technical quality, players that know how to pass the ball well and effectively, but for one reason or another we are just so sloppy on the ball at the moment, and as the season progresses we simply have to improve on this.

As I said before however, going away to Everton and getting a point is no disgrace that is for sure, as I can guarantee that you that a number of so called "big" teams will go there and get mullered and loose, therefore we shouldn't be too annoyed. But it is just frustrating how we seem to keep making the same mistakes on the ball at the moment, which is very unlike Arsenal. Today we actually seemed more comfortable off the ball than we were on it, which is virtually un heard of in recent years. Vermalean and Mertesacker had great games today, and are joint man of the match today for me, because without them picking up the pieces and tidying up what was going wrong from in front of them, we probably would have most likely lost this fixture!

Next up is Swansea at home, and to be honest that is a team that you absolutely CANNOT afford to give the ball away to, because they are good on the break, and have some very gifted footballers who are very capable of breaking us down if we give them the chance! So the key for it is, for the boys to stop panicking on the ball, don't play the passes that are clearly not on, and don't pass it AT ALL when on your own line or thereabouts (Mr Sagna), just get rid with a good old fashioned hoof, re-group and then play from there. If we had done that tonight, we probably would have come away with a win (even though we probably didn't deserve it).

Anyway, enough from me, i'm off to my bed! Hopefully we will get a good win on Saturday, in my absence (I will be at Twickenham for England Vs NZ), so hope to check my phone and see that we have got our passing boots on!! If we do, we should get a good win!!

UP THE ARSENAL!!!!!!

@Mr_arsenal_blog