Manchester City visited the Emirates stadium in the pinnacle fixture of the gameweek that saw the return of club football. Both teams had notable absentees, which led to big name signings making their debuts. Danny Welbeck probably never thought he would feature for Arsenal, and the loan move of Lampard to Manchester City surprised a few people as well.
Manchester City pressing
Manchester City started the game pressing aggressively. Agüero and Silva played behind each other, one of them marking Flamini, the holding midfielder, while the other closing down one of the cntre-backs in case Szczesny had the ball. The winger from the weak side marked the other centre-back, thus closing down the short passing options of the goalkeeper. To be fair this was the only situation in which Arsenal struggled to get the ball forward, as Manchester City dominated them in the air, and Szczesny had a few poor kicks forward.
Picture: Arsenal goalkicks
Source: FourFourTwo StatsZone
In other situations Arsenal managed to bring the ball forward easily. If one midfielder was marked, a second one dropped deep. If two were marked a third moved towards the ball, at which point both Fernandinho and Lampard would have had to follow them, abandoning space and exposing the defense to the inward movement of Sánchez and Özil. At least one Arsenal midfielder was free as a result. On the picture below Agüero and Silva are trying to block the pass to Flamini, and keep the play on the left side of the pitch. Their efforts are futile.
Lampard
I always mavel at the dribbles and forward runs of Touré. Lampard played differently, he offered support to the player in possession, and rarely attempted dribbles. His play was fairly passive, with only five passes in the attacking third.
Picture: Lampard actions.
Taken from the FourFourTwo StatsZone
Last season we saw Manchester City play with two wingers coming inside into the central zone between the midfield and the defense. In this game they started with Navas on the righ, and Milner on the left, both of whom kept the width, and rarely came inside for the ball. This changed when Nasri came on for Lampard at half-time, forcing Milner into a more central position.
Picture: Passes Received by Navas
Taken from the FourFourTwo StatsZone
Picture: Passes Received by Milner in the first half
Taken from the FourFourTwo StatsZone
In the 13th minute Manchester City countered into the space left behind by Monreal. just fifteen minutes later Navas ran into the same space and put in a low cross which Agüero scored from
The midfield dominance of Arsenal
The forward runs of Ramsey combined with the drifting inwards of Sánchez posed a big problem for their opponents. This had multiple reasons. Arsenal took free-kicks quickly, before Manchester City could have taken up a defensive position with their two lines of four. Arsenal harassed Manchester City straight after loosing the ball, collecting balls after headers, and forcing mistakes. This was especially visible before the equaliser of Arsenal, where the teams exchanged possession three times in Manchester City’s half before Wilshere lobbed Hart from close range.
Arsenal created 3 vs 2 and 4 vs 3 situations in midfield, constantly overloading with Welbeck dropping deep, or Ramsey making a run forward, or Sanchez coming inwards, or of course some kind of combination of these.
Arsenal’s transitioned into attack from deep positions through the dribbles of Ramsey and Wilshere.
Sánchez and Özil
Sánchez switched positions around the 20th minute with Özil. In my opinion this was down to getting away from the defensively more adept James Milner, and playing against Navas and Zabaleta. Navas doesn’t provide as much defensive input as Milner does, so it made sense to play a good, in-form dribbler against him. Although this is my theory only, I didn’t find a stat that supported it. Although Navas found it hard to deal with Sánchez and the Chilean won two free-kick in dangerous positions against the Spaniard.
The half-time switch of City
James Milner moved to central midfield for the second half in place of Frank Lampard, Samir Nasri moved to the left side. Milner helped solidify the midfield from a defensive point of view, he made 4 interceptions, and 3 out of his 5 tackles were successful. Lampard had 3 successful tackles, but didn’t attempt any interceptions. The ball circulation of Manchester City improved as well, from 107 successful passes out of 136 (78,67% success rate) in the middle third during the first half to 125 successful out of 146 (85,6% success rate) during the second half.
Conclusion
For me Arsenal were the better team, and they would have deserved to keep the points at home. Sánchez had an exceptional game, and Welbeck seemed to fit in well with his new team-mates. Arsenal would have had a harder time transitioning from defense, and City could have made the midfield battle more contested had Touré been playing.
