Good , IBK.

Arteta in FourFourTwo. Posted this in another thread but it pretty much sums up where we're going wrong if this is the mentality and philosophy of Wengerball.

http://performance.fourfourtwo.com/t...s-off-the-park

Don’t join the battle
“Take the game where you want. If you get drawn into the battle you will suffer. If you start making fouls and giving away throw-ins and corners then you lose your momentum, which is hard to get back. Stick to your passing game and keep the ball in their half. If you start forcing the play and giving the ball away you give them the opportunity to hit you on the counter attack. Arsene Wenger is so calm. He tells us to keep playing our football until the last minute of the game, and that has paid off.”

Tire out the opposition
“Make the opposition run for 10, 20, 30, 40 minutes – they will struggle to maintain their work rate for the entire game. Once they get tired, they start to make mistakes and you can draw them into two versus one or three versus two situations. This is your opportunity to find the spare man. If you keep the ball then the opposition will get tense and want to get aggressive. This will force them to break out of their positions and this is when you expose the space. Patience – that’s the difference between a good player and a top player.”

Confidence is key
“It doesn’t matter what system you play, or how hard the opposition press, you can find an advantage somewhere on the pitch. You have to pass with speed and precision and believe not only in yourself, but your team-mates, because sometimes you have to put them in trouble with a one-touch pass in a tight area of the pitch. You have to play the ball to their safer side – their stronger foot or where there’s more space for them to turn into. Sometimes just playing the ball into his feet isn’t good enough.”

ARTETA ON PASSING THE ARSENAL WAY
Work your way out of any dead end with this intricate drill, straight from the Gunners training ground

“At Arsenal, we do a lot of exercises where you have to play through the mannequins, but you can use cones.
This is a great drill because it’s real, you’re moving and finding the holes to play the diagonal pass, just like in a match.
After reading this, I think I get why the players appear so lifeless at times with no urgency, why we're so weak in the challenge and why Wenger takes so long to make subs. We're trying to ware down our opponents and hope their tiredness opens them up. In most games we try to play high up the pitch and pin our opponents back into their box. We try to avoid fouls to keep the momentum and maybe that's why we're so frail physically.

Stick to your passing game and keep the ball in their half. If you start forcing the play and giving the ball away you give them the opportunity to hit you on the counter attack.
You have to pass with speed and precision and believe not only in yourself, but your team-mates, because sometimes you have to put them in trouble with a one-touch pass in a tight area of the pitch.
That seems to be a bit of a contradiction or confusing at least. How do the players switch from safety passes, keeping calm and trying not to lose possession because your worried about a counter attack to trusting your players and putting them in a risky position with a pass in order to open up space? Especially against a well organised team that aren't rattled by the possession stats? I know we practice a lot of five aside and Wenger says the players are forced to deal with a lot of situations during those sessions and the brain acts like a computer and teaches them how to react naturally when faced with a challenge. It's why Wenger is never shouting instructions and losing his shit on the touchline because in theory they should know what's required. All in theory.

When Wengerball works, we fly and we're confident but we lose confidence way too easily after a defeat and Wenger needs to intervene. I wonder what Wenger will do when he says 'going back to basics'. More passing drills and five aside? How will we get the confidence back?

This is just a short snippet of Wengerball but it's interesting to read. I think we'd need supremely superior players for this to work in this era. You can see when the players look lost. I don't think it's down to a lack of desire and you always hear Wenger say that the spirit is there. I believe him. I can understand why Henry, Pires and co blasted away the competition in the Prem years back because fitness levels were way below ours and the same goes for the quality of players. In the Champs League it was always a different story. I think we'll really need to adjust under Wenger if we're to go any further.