Arsene and Jose Get It Right
At its onset, the EPL season has already been full of dramatic story lines, including but not limited to a clash between old adversaries and a somewhat tame encounter between two clubs that normally generate an unreasonable amount of hype. Yet, about 6 matches in and the top of the table is looking oddly familiar. Absent are the “surprise challengers” of any sort and the most exciting challenge of the season seems to be Pep Guardiola vs. Dimitri Seluk (Yaya Toure’s agent). A new Leicester seems unlikely to materialize out of what seems like a return to norm for the Premiership.
While Pep’s obsessive-compulsive tinkering has led City to rise above the rest of the competition, anchored by steadily excellent play of players like De Bruyne and Sterling, the rest of the league is already playing catch-up. Jose Mourinho has hit his first snag as United manager, dropping three straight games in all competitions before finally making the necessary adjustments this weekend. Arsene Wenger has perpetually refused to change, like your stubborn uncle who insists he can fix the television on his own but can’t really explain why there were at least six parts left when he put it back together and the image looks like it’s been shot on a super 8. Yet even Arsene has changed his ways. This weekend, it all came together for United and Arsenal at the right moment.
Jose’s Triumph
Look, playing Leicester City this year is not quite as impressive a fixture as it was a year prior. They’ve lost their defensive mitigator in Kante (about that later) and instead of trying to replace him, acquired a number of forwards equal to the population of a small Eastern European village. This is weird, considering they didn’t really loose any forwards and both Mahrez and Vardy ply their trade in the same blue colours they did last year while looking increasingly disinterested. However, given United’s record going into the weekend, it was imperative they get this one correctly, and they did.
For most of the first two months, Jose Mourinho appeared to lean in the French direction of team management. That is, buying a Ferrari and the driving it as if it were a Citroën. Much like with France, Pogba was pushed way too deep to make meaningful impact in matches without breaking out into a gazelle like sprint across the full pitch. Instead, Wayne Rooney and his increasingly lead foot has been deputized as the designated number 10. Yeah, not great Bob. Essentially, Mourinho was married to Gabrielle Union but chose to cheat on her with Wanda Sykes.
The biggest adjustment, and the one British press will talk about until about 2017, because English footballers are de-facto gravitational centres of European soccer, is Rooney’s transition from under-qualified number 10 to a very expensive seat warmer. Inserting Ander Herrara into the line-up reshaped Manchester into a more threatening monster. Both Pogba and Juan Mata moved up to fill the space vacated by Rooney and the results were actually spectacular. United were better in the press, but more importantly, Pogba and Ibrahimovic were more connected up front.
Mourinho has two new shiny toys to play around and while Ibra has been polished all season, it took a tactical adjustment to unlock Paul. The Frenchman’s criticism has always been a perceived lack of goals, ignoring the fact that managers have often opted for treating him like he was adopted, hiding him in the back of the central four line. Moving him up front ensures that his best moments can come from less of a relentless gallop and more of an orchestrated prance in shorter bursts. It also allows him to link up with one of the most prolific forwards of all time. Everyone wins.
United have enough to cover in the back, from Herrera down, the squad is flush with CDMs who can do the job. You can keep using Ander, slide in Morgan Schneiderlin, move Daley Blind up to his natural spot or, if you’re extremely desperate, even bring back Marouane Fellaini. Anything really, just please, for the love of God, do not park your Pogba sized Ferarri back into the garage.
Arsene tests the False-9
A few years ago, Arsene Wenger was considered a visionary. He has perfected cradle robbing talented Frenchmen from their mothers, fathers and country to bring them to Arsenal to play the right way. As the world changed however, Arsene elected to let it burn to ash around him insisting that everything indeed was fine. He continued to operate under market value in the transfer dealings and instead of adjusting his positional line-up to his personnel often insisted on fitting a square peg in a round hole, or a Ramsey-shaped peg into a out and out winger shaped hole.
Pep and other top managers have been experimenting with the False-9 tactic for quite a bit. Germany won the World Cup using Mario Gotze in that exact spot, although that move was purely out of necessity since their choice of strikers for that tournament can sparingly be described as on the very wrong side of their prime. Now it was time for Wenger to catch up.
Against Chelsea, he elected to once again play Alexis Sanchez up front, a move that generally sows chaos among the opposition as the tiny Chilean uses his speed and intensity to roam across the whole field, freeing up both Alex Iwobi and Theo Walcott to turn in and sneak in behind the lines. That is exactly what happened.
Alexis Sanchez plays soccer as if someone is directly pumping unfiltered caffeine into his veins the whole time. To say he is energetic would be an insult to him and a huge complement to energetic people. This kind of intensity is what coaxed Gary Cahill into his second horrific back pass mistake of the season, a brilliant display of individual determination. While that goal was pure, uncut Chilean passion, the other two came as a direct result of positional fluidity afforded by sliding Alexis into a false nine spot.
As he moves around the field, players like Walcott get the opportunity to be more central, getting into positions they otherwise wouldn’t with Giroud on the field. As Sanchez slides into pockets of space and defenders gravitate towards him it opens up other lanes. Theo scored his goal from a side opposite the wing he was assigned to. Instead, he cleverly drifted inside and allowed Bellerin to occupy the space, left by both Sanchez and Walcott. The defense, assuming that the striker overload was happening fell asleep (especially Eden Hazard), which lead to an easy slip one two.
With Sanchez playing closer to the middle of the field, the Chelsea defense also got sucked in further from their field, sensing no immediate threat from someone that deep. They were proven wrong when Mesut Ozil turned the Blues’ most overrated and overpriced acquisition of the summer (N’Golo Kante) into another dimension where he will be forced to exist for a week as a human pylon. Shrugging Kante like he was a bad habit, Ozil exposed the Chelsea back two at full sprint. Both him and Sanchez picked up speed from deep, making it easy to slip his forward in right in behind the back pedaling defense.
Someone like Giroud plays very uncomfortably close to the defense, most probably to the extent where they would be able to tell who had what for breakfast. That kind of proximity makes quick turns that develop in coast to coast sprints that much harder. As a false-9, Sanchez is afforded a luxury of a running start at a stationary defense. I can’t say I’ve ever been assaulted by a live tiger, but I have seen Alexis Sanchez open up in full speed on a Chelsea defense. I am not sure which one is scarier.
