Arsenal conceding possesion in 2nd half .......Coincindence or Tactical defending???

Are we a possession based team or a counter-attacking one or a hybrid of the two?? Now a days the line is blurred in the style of Arsenal's game. We conceded possession against Sp*ds, Marseille and Stoke in the second half. Is it a coincidence or a tactical flexibility that Wenger is willing to show now on a more regular basis?  I would guess its more of the latter . Lets us analyse the three matches that I have pointed out above.

Arsenal vs Tottenham : We had a healthy amount of possession in the first half and scored a goal and regularly threatened Spud's goal by free kicks from Cazorla and through balls to Walcott. In 43rd minute we substituted Wilshere and brought the more defensive minded Flamini. Then Arsenal started to sit back instead of venturing forward. Arsenal mainly used beautiful one - twos and through balls to counter attack. According to Sky Sports we had 6  through balls with 43% possession. The balls were relatively easier for Arsenal to put through as Tottenham hogged possession and played a very high defensive line.  This created space to exploit through Walcott's speed. The goal was again due to the through ball put by Ramsey to Walcott. On the contrary Tottenham had put only ball through with their 57% possession. This was possible due to the narrow gap between the defensive line and the goal keeper. Arsenal relied more on intercepting the balls with clever positioning and anticipating obvious passes. Arsenal intercepted passes 19 times and converted it to quick counter attacks. We made life difficult for their midfield players as we tackled successfully 23 times  out of 29 attempted compared to Tottenham's 10 out of 14 tackles attempted. With players like Flamini and Ramsey we were able to recover balls quickly. Hence we won the match with less possession than Spuds.

Arsenal Vs Marseille: 

We had a tad bit more possession than Marseille. It was 49-51, hence pretty much even -steven, so we can say fairly that we did not boss the possession. As it was an away match we played a bit more defensively than we would normally. We can look at the player position against Marseille in the pic below.

We can say that the Wenger's idea was to use ozil and walcott as the two further most players. Walcott, had to use his pace down the right wing as space was created by Marseille when they moved into Arsenal's defending third. Giroud, Wilshere and Ozil tried to play Walcott down the flank. The attack was very lopsided on the right.
 The game was made in the midfield by the double pivot or Ramsey and Flamini, who went in to tackle 22 times. Due to congested space in the midfield, Marseille were turning the ball over in possession. The restricted space led them to try 7 of their 17 shots from outside the box.Even though the game was lopsided on right both the final passes to the goals made by Arsenal arrived from the left. The MOTM Kieran Gibbs had an outstanding games by providing the cross for Walcott's goal and the final pass for Ramsey's effort. After taking the a 2-0 lead again Arsenal conceded the possession and largely restricted Marseille to shoot from outside the box until the unlucky penlaty was conceded by Ramsey.Hence once again we defeated a decent opposition with fairly lesser amount of possession by Arsenal's standard.

Arsenal Vs Stoke: 

Against Stoke we bossed the possession in first half, but without Walcott, we missed the pace to exploit Erik piter's vulnerability. Gnabry was playing more safe in his first start for Arsenal. Gnabry is more defensive enhanced than Walcott, hence  he aided Sagna more ably in this match. The attack was minimal from the left hand side of the pitch as Wilshere, Giroud and Ozil were playing more in the center. After taking the lead for the second time in first half while outplaying stoke in their own game or rather Pulis's game, Arsenal decided to sit back and defend their 1 goal lead. They waiting to use their intricate passing to create chances but were more than happy to stifle the space for the reinvented Stoke. After the third goal, Wenger added more defensive quality on the flanks by the introduction of Monreal for Wilshere, he also brought the pacy Ryo to run into space with his speed. Miyachi introduction, helped Arsenal as Stokes were without  Pieters who was substitiuted for Palacios. They almost found the the 4th goal through Ramsey in a move started by Ryo, who was quick to pounce upon a mistake made by Stoke.  The defensive resilience of Arsenal was there to be seen . Flamini played his heart out by disrupting the rhythm of Stoke and organizing the defense well. Arsenal intercepted the passes more than Stoke, made a lot of tackles and forced Stoke to turnover possession by clever positioning,which helped in cutting out the adventurous passes. Hence we played very Unarsenal like and yet won the match comfortably.


All in all we can say that in spite of conceding goals in 2 out of the three matches, one of which, was an unfortunate penalty, Arsenal are now more clever and more resilient while defending. This can be attributed to the pairing of Mertesacker and Koscienly, who are screened superbly by Flamini in the holding midfield position. Rambo is the all action man leading in tackles , goals, interceptions and ball recoveries. The speed of Theo and Chambo (when available), pushes Wenegr to become more pragmatic. The team can see the game out now, unlike before when the team would get greedy and go on attacking till it concedes silly goals through counter attacks. Hence, I don't think conceding possession is due to the opponents playing better but Arsenal playing to a plan in order to achieve results.

How successful they will be in implementing the plan only time will tell but, as of now the tactics are working. I wont be surprised if we see Arsenal conceding majority of possession to Swansea in week end after taking the lead.