James Olley
๐ค SpeakerAppearances Over Time
Podcast Appearances
It was really impressive to watch how well-drilled they were in terms of whenever United broke, Declan Rice was there mopping up, and then whenever United were in the opposition half, Arsenal were so rigid with their banks of four and just defending.
It was almost like an art form to watch it.
Now, it's clear that...
They must work on shape every day, which is quite boring if you're a player just walking through positional sense.
And we just thought, well, it was quite robotic.
So he's drilled his players to the point where can they think for themselves?
Now, when Dargu scored that second goal, we made a point because all of a sudden they had this kind of impromptu gathering, the Arsenal players.
Now, I think a little bit was because they weren't sure if it was a handball by Dargu, but a lot of it was almost like they were all looking around at each other thinking, what do we do now?
It wasn't a huddle, but it was definitely a sense of, they were looking for somebody to say, right, come on guys, let's get ourselves out of this.
But nobody clearly had an idea what to do.
And they started glancing over the touchline to our tech, as if to say, what now?
Yeah, taking off your most creative play.
But it wasn't brave, was it?
Because I know what you're saying.
He's made it for the wrong reasons.
Yeah, and he's taken off a player like Odegaard who could create a chance.
Odegaard has got his deficiencies, but he's a creative midfielder that could have opened up Man United's defence.
And I was thinking this a couple of days ago before the game.
how risk averse he is I can't think of a manager that's won the Premier League as a risk averse manager now obviously people say Mourinho but Mourinho was risk averse after Chelsea were 2-0 up you'd never get to a point where they try and control against the point sneak a goal and then defend to win a league you have to be ready to take a chance and all the managers I can't think of a single Premier League manager that's won the league by not taking chances and I don't think Arteta takes enough chances
They haven't addressed their key problem though, and that's the midfield.