Thread by @nonewthing

In soccer, there is something called 'qualitative superiority', especially in the offensive phases, where you have a superior player (eg, Mahrez) line 1v1 against an inferior opponent who wins the duel and makes a decisive action (shot, cross, pass) after.

(a thread on Arsenal).

Constantly generating such instances of qualitative superiority situations for your team is a key factor to creating favorable attacking dynamics as a coach.

Arteta has no senior players in attack who can be reliably decisive in 1v1s situations in the final 3rd. Pepe. Auba. Laca

This is why we always look so much better with Saka and ESR playing.

Their ability to beat a man and follow with a decisive action has a butterfly effect on the opposition defensive structure and magnifies the attacking aptitude of our team.

ESR vs Doherty = Odegaard NLD goal.

Despite this issue, Arteta has managed to surgically isolate Aubameyang's most decisive quality—cutting in to capitalize on a destabilized opponent/defense in transition and shoot—reproducing it for him in game scenarios.

No matter what you say about Arteta, that is top coaching

For people who know their stuff, that is proof 1016 that Arteta is an extremely good coach. However, the masses know no such thing.

In any case, the general lack of qualitative superiority among Arsenal's costly forwards is a big problem and a big factor in the club's decline.

Nicolas Pepe is the worst example: a nominal winger who can't reliably and consistently beat his man 1v1 from a standing start.

In Arteta's system, which is similar to Pep's in this respect, the right winger is generally 1v1 and isolated against his marker. Riyad Mahrez/Sterling

You can generally expect more than a few decisive moments from the wide winger (Sterling/Mahrez) who then makes a decisive delivery into the box where his teammates are attacking.

For Arsenal and even England, the only player who reliably does this is Bukayo Saka.

The funny thing about this is that you do not necessarily always need to beat your man. All you need is to just create enough separation between you and your marker so that you have the space/angle to make a cross/pass into the box.

Nicolas Pepe regularly fails at that, too.

When you have such players who are not qualitatively superior in your frontline and no options to play, you can go through extremely bad periods especially if you also happen to be a possession-based team.

Arsenal will always be the one in possession against most teams.

For a team like Arsenal, most of their goals will (and should) be scored after a possession sequence. That is the identity, reputation and expectation of the club both internal and external, even more especially when they are playing with 170 million worth of attacking talent.

Unfortunately, Arsenal have badly misidentified the proper 'type' of attacking talent to spend on and are left with glorified transition players who are not decent enough on the ball.

For a coach like Pep, it is the football version of hell.

If your players are not qualitatively superior 1v1, then you are reduced to 2 options:

—Creating scoring chances from extremely systematic moves.
—Creating many 'mini-transitions' moments for Pepe and Aubameyang to thrive off.

The first option also necessarily requires quality on the ball and in tight spaces, so the quality of that is reduced if Pepe and Auba are heavily involved in its buildup.

The second option is more achievable against top teams who will leave more space in behind than worse teams

Creating mini transitions is next to impossible if you don't have players at the back who can move the ball with enough quality. Hence the spending on Tomiyasu and White. They will help our current attackers more, while fitting into our future as a possession based team.