Arsenal vs Leicester City

Arsenal vs Leicester went down as the classic 1-0 to Leicester City where Jamie Vardy scores the winner at the 80th minute. The match was played at the Emirates Stadium and kicked off at 12:45 pm IST. The scoreline suggests the match to be bland and boring and it quite rightly justifies it. Arsenal played repetitive, unimaginative and basic football where their main source of chance creation depended on set pieces or long balls lobbed in by the centre half’s such as David Luiz and Gabriel Magalhaes. They dominated the match in possession with over 56% and even though clearcut chance creation was missing, Arsenal managed to take 12 shots, doubling their opposition with 6 shots, whereas only 4 of them were on target. They looked strong defensively  till David Luiz was subbed off due to being injured at the start of the second half and was replaced by Shkodran Mustafi. Arsenal lined up as 4-3-3 formation after a longtime rather than their standard 3-4-3 formation usually played by manager Mikel Arteta, though this change was inevitable due to the hot running form of the three midfielders Granit Xhaka, Thomas Partey and Dani Ceballos. Arsenal got off to a pretty exciting start with a goal scored in the 4th minute of the game, where Lacazette headed the ball into the far corner but was then ruled out as offside due to Aubameyang supposedly getting a touch on the ball at the far post. This created a lot of controversy as it was evident from the camera angle that Aubameyang hadn’t gotten touch on the ball and another reason for which the goal had been disallowed was that the Swiss Midfielder had blocked the view of Leicester shotstopper Casper Schmeichal, but again in the camera angle view it was evident that Xhaka hadnt been blocked the view and Leicester had a dodged huge bullet there. 

In my opinion, Arsenal still lack a creative midfielder on the pitch and even Ceballos was played too wide on the pitch to make a difference. Arsenal do have the solution in the stands which is the Worldup Winner Mesut Ozil but the coach hasn’t even put him on their 25 man Premier League list. The reason stated by Mikel Arteta suggests that there is too much competition and due to the squad depth he couldn’t include Ozil but Ozils agent suggests the sole reason for Ozil not being played is due to his political stance which may cause a dent in the sponsorships if Ozil is played. Another feasible solution would be to have a more standardised front three except of rotating Aubameyang on the left, right and centre as it was visible that he couldn’t create any movements or chances during last nights game.

On the other hand, Brendan Rodgers Leicester City pulled off a defensive masterclass and the most out of the chances they created during the counter attacks. At first it may have seemed as a foolish decision to not start the Foxes reliable  source of goals, Jamie Vardy and rather put a natural winger Harvey Barnes upfront. During the match Leicester city set up a 3-4-3 formation which on the pitched seemed to be an 8-2 as in the first half only Madisson and Barnes were making the runs ahead and also coming back on defines to make sure arsenal had none to little space to create any goalscoring chances, Brendon Rogers parked the bus and made it extremely hard for arsenals unimaginative side to create very little clearcut goalscoring chances. However he had only pull out his wildcard Jamie Vardy at the 60th minute and Leicester took advantage of the slip up  caused by the arsenal defense where Cengiz Under ran the length only to put it on a plate for Jamie Vardy to head it in goal. Even though there were doubts around the tactics set up by Rogers he proved them all wrong by getting 3 important points away from home.