Mikel Arteta and Cesc Fabregas have already shown England manager Thomas Tuchel where he is going wrong after Arsenal blueprint ignored
Thomas Tuchel is under increasing scrutiny following England’s elimination from the World Cup at the hands of Argentina. After taking the lead courtesy of a cross from Arsenal transfer target Morgan Rogers, finding Anthony Gordon, the German coach decided to bring on three defenders and radically change the Three Lions’ shape.
Gordon, Reece James and Declan Rice came off for Ezri Konsa, Dan Burn and Nico O’Reilly. A forward, a midfielder and an offensive-minded full-back for two centre-halves and one full-back who was used in midfield. Argentina, emboldened by England’s retreat, scored twice to deal a hammer blow to Tuchel’s reputation as head coach.
Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta would have likely been watching on from home. What he would have seen is a strategy entirely at odds with how he managed to get his side to win the Premier League title.
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Arsenal won 14 of their 26 wins during the campaign by a single goal. If you look through each of the 14 games, while there were some tactical tweaks and, on occasion, a more defensive-minded midfielder might replace an offensive one, Arteta kept the four-at-the-back structure the same.
He leaned on his formation and trusted his players to defend, but look to be a threat and keep their opponent fearful of being exploited on the counter too. A simple rule of: If we’ve got the ball, they cannot score.
There were just two occasions when Arteta allowed a one-goal lead to slip through a similar error. Away to Sunderland and away to Wolves, in both cases a defender came on to add to the back line and in both games Arsenal conceded a late equaliser… he no doubt learned that lesson.
And it won Arsenal the title. Whereas Tuchel did the opposite: surrendered possession, surrendered control, and gave the impetus to Argentina.
There is another great example of another young Spanish coach explaining why this doesn’t work. Former Arsenal midfielder now head coach of Como, Cesc Fabregas, helped the Italian side qualify for the UEFA Champions League.
Como won six of their Serie A games by a single goal through the campaign.
“If you are winning 1-0, for example, and you change a midfielder or a striker and you put a defender in the last 10-15 minutes, you’re playing with a back five all of a sudden because you saw from outside that they are playing with really high full-backs or whatever reason. Inside the players, you see that he’s taken a striker off, he’s put a defensive player on.
“So automatically your mindset is, ‘Oh, the coach wants us to defend, we have to sit back!’ And you attract pressure and you invite them to have the ball more and you invite them to attack you more and to be more dangerous and the more they are on your pitch.
“Yeah, one day it can happen that you can kill them on the counterattack and score the second goal, but 80%-90% of the time it backfires. Because you invite pressure and there’s a penalty, there’s a little free kick or cross rebound…”
