Mr Arsenal Blog's tactics weekly. 

Tuesday 1st January - reviewing the Southampton match.

Firstly Happy New Year to all my readers, I wish each of you all the best for the new year 2013, also thanks so much for your support with these blogs it really is appreciated. So onto the game, all in all it was a disappointing performance and result from Arsenal, we certainly did not hit the level offensively that we reached Vs Newcastle, and were sloppy defensively in parts as well. The boss summed it up well I think when he said "we were not great" after the match. I hope that this can change ahead of some very important games Vs Chelsea and Manchester City, which are looming in the next couple of weeks. What were the main points from this game however? Why were Arsenal not able to win this match?

Firstly once again the movement and the speed of thought and passing was not at the appropriate level today. It is increasingly frustrating that I seem to have to talk about this in every other article I write about The Arsenal at the moment, but it is a real issue that needs rectifying, and that was very evident again in this match. As I have said before it is all well and good having more of the ball, which in this much we did just about have more of the ball (with around 55% compared to Southampton's 46%), however you have to provide imputes for the teams attack, by combining good passing (which I would say we have on the whole), with good intelligent and creative movement off the ball. Without this it will always be hard to stretch a defence. On Saturday we scored 7 goals despite not showing great movement, maybe that was because of Newcastle being tired, which was positive. However the point is I haven't really seen the Arsenal team show intelligent movement of the ball for some time now, which to be frank is a real concern.

Against a team, with all due respect to them, that started the day in the bottom three, we should clearly have more shots on target (according to BBC Sport we had 4) than we did. I wholeheartedly believe that lots of this is down to a lack of movement off the ball. We have to move defensive units around, without this the defence of any team will be able to keep its shape and not been pulled out to areas, where they do not want to go, and therefore ultimately struggle to test the opposition goalkeeper, which to be fair was the case today as we can see from that stat. As Arsene said after the game "we were not creative enough and did not play with purpose". This is what I am getting at. There was a lack of conviction today in the teams attacking, that cutting edge was really missing from our play. We have to find this in order to make real progress.

Something which really took my by suprisse today was the performance of Bac Sagna. This is a lad who is usually "Mr Dependable" if you will, someone that is one of the most consistent performers in the league, week in week out. However today it is not harsh to say, he was absolutely inept, shocking, almost lost at times. As someone said on twitter it was as if he was "drunk" from some kind of New Years Eve celebration. I would suggest that is not the case, however I would say the point is valid, because he really did not look, for want of a better phrase, "jaded" (thanks for that Arsene). Bac was clearly at fault for the goal that we conceded, because he failed to clearly the ball into the box upon several opportunities, and also offered very very little going forward.

This leads me on to something that I noticed on Saturday at The Emirates for the Newcastle because you could see that our fall backs were not fulfilling their attacking roles frequently enough. Apart from on two occasions one for our 4th goal for Theo where Gibbo ran on into the box and cut the ball back to the penalty from which Theo scored, and another when he got into the box and shot at the goalkeeper. However apart from that they did not get forward frequently enough to create width and ultimately attacking opportunities. I think this is something that we have to improve on as our system requires the fall backs to create the overlap, and we have not been doing this frequently enough recently, with the exception of the Reading game away (won 5-2), and as I say we really need to improve on this. Sagna had a poor game today and to be honest I was not impressed with either of them on Saturday either, which is a concern, as Sagna did not block the crosses from coming in frequently enough and Gibbs let Ba and Marveux especially free at the far post, from which they both punished us for.

Hopefully we can improve on these areas ahead of our next game Vs Swansea in the FA Cup and then of course hit a good level of performance again for the City game at the Home of Football a week on Saturday. As I have said before, there is a long way to go in this season still but I do believe that this is a really key month for us, with some big games coming up, and also with the transfer window being open again providing an opportunity for us to strengthen, it is indeed a very important few weeks for the club. As I said on twitter today, and in my last article (the 1/2 term report), our stats from the season so far show that we are good in all areas apart from our shot to goal ratio, which points to a lack of ruthlessness up front. Therefore I think it is clear that we need a new striker in this window, a proven goal-scorer someone that commands the ball and has urgency to score, something which seemed to be lacking today, that's for sure.

This is a big month for Arsenal, and a big few weeks coming up. The game on Saturday Vs Swansea in the FA Cup is in my opinion SO important, we cannot afford to be knocked out of another competition, after the shambles of the Bradford Capital One Cup game, we have to go on a good run in this competition. If we are going to do this, we must re-create the good from our win over Newcastle, and let's be positive, and there were many good things! So let's hope we do!!

UP THE ARSENAL!!!

@Mr_arsenal_blog