Why Beating Porto Is Huge For Arsenal
It took a David Raya save in the penalty shootout, but Arsenal are through to the Champions League Quarter Finals. But while the tie ended 1-1 over both legs, simply turning around the initial deficit represented an enormous victory for Mikel Arteta. Adam Clery looks at why Porto were such a difficult proposition for the Gunners, and why finding a way past them bodes incredibly well for the remainder of the season.
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00:00 [DING]
00:02 Alright, so first off, Arsenal have had massive performances this season against some of the biggest teams in the UK.
00:07 So what is so special about Porto?
00:10 Well, in the intro I did for the video where we looked at the first leg, I said this.
00:14 Now, don't get me wrong, I still do think they'll qualify, but they do face an uphill task to do so,
00:19 given that Porto seem to have identified this Arsenal team's Achilles heel,
00:25 THE MID BLOCK.
00:27 And that term, this "mid block", is the one thing that Arsenal seem to have consistently struggled against this season.
00:33 Where teams have got results against them, tends to be because they do that very well.
00:37 Like just for example, think about those two results against West Ham United.
00:41 When Arsenal got beat, it was because West Ham had that really compact, well-disciplined mid block,
00:45 and they countered against them really effectively.
00:47 But, a few weeks later, Arsenal had learned from this, they found where the gaps were, and then...
00:53 they...
00:55 *music*
00:57 And thus, when they rocked up for the away leg, they found one of the best mid blocks in all of European football,
01:03 and just could not play through it.
01:05 Now, not to be too self-referential in this one, but this was the thumbnail we used for our analysis of that match.
01:11 Now, there are three things to note with this image.
01:14 Now, number one is that given I couldn't use Photoshop at all six months ago, I think we'll all agree,
01:18 that's actually pretty tidy, right? Yep, good, thank you very much.
01:22 Number two is just look at how well-structured and how well-disciplined their out-of-possession shape is.
01:29 They're set up here in a 4-3-3, they're not giving Arsenal any space between the lines,
01:33 not even that much space on the flanks, and they are not engaging until the halfway line.
01:38 It is a classic textbook mid block.
01:41 But thirdly, and most importantly of all, is the player Arsenal have on the ball in this image is Martin Oerdegaard.
01:48 And what this very conveniently illustrates is that in this game,
01:52 Arsenal's solution to the total lack of space they had in the final third was to have Oerdegaard drop as far back as possible
01:58 to get on the ball to try and make something happen.
02:01 And we can also see this illustrated very neatly in his heat map from that game.
02:06 You'll see he got the majority of touches in his own half.
02:08 He really struggled to get on the ball in any meaningful way in the final third.
02:14 And Arsenal fans, as you know very well, in games where you struggle to get Oerdegaard on the ball in the final third,
02:20 then you struggle to create chances.
02:22 And so it proved they did not score against Porto and they lost that game.
02:26 But people can say whatever they like about Arteta.
02:29 He does learn from these things.
02:31 He does adapt this side really, really well.
02:34 And they did with Oerdegaard in this game.
02:37 This was his heat map from the first leg, and this was his heat map from the second leg.
02:43 And it isn't just that he was better able to do things in the final third.
02:47 It's that he was only doing things in the final third.
02:51 If we just overlay this again with all the passes he made in that first 90 minutes of the game,
02:56 you will see he virtually never bothers dirtying his hands with getting involved in the build-up.
03:02 He was clearly specifically instructed by Arteta, "Just forget all of that.
03:06 Leave that to Jorginho. Leave that to Rice. Leave that to White. Leave that to the defenders.
03:11 Just you stay in the final third where you're effective.
03:14 It doesn't matter if you can't get on the ball for long periods, and we will get it to you."
03:19 Opta, it was, posted this just unbelievable graph from the first half of that match
03:24 showing that Oerdegaard completed, in 45 minutes, only six passes.
03:30 And that is just unheard of for Oerdegaard this season.
03:33 If you look at his numbers across the Premier League,
03:36 the guy completes something like 60 passes per match on average.
03:40 The guy is the heartbeat of Arsenal's everything across the pitch.
03:44 And in this game, they just said, "Look, it doesn't matter. It does not matter getting on the ball.
03:48 Don't worry about any of that. Just stay where you can do damage."
03:52 The thing is, though, this isn't like a simple solution.
03:54 You can't just take your best passer, your best creator, your most important on-the-ball player
03:59 and remove him entirely from your own half without there being a cost to that.
04:03 And the cost here was Declan Rice.
04:05 I saw a few people saying, "Oh, he had a really quiet game and he struggled to make an impact."
04:09 And it wasn't that at all.
04:11 It's just that we're now used to seeing him playing this sort of advanced eight-roll,
04:14 getting into the box and doing that.
04:16 He didn't have that luxury in this game.
04:18 He had to be everywhere in Arsenal's own half,
04:21 filling in those gaps that Oerdegaard normally would.
04:23 And if we just look, this is his heat map from the game.
04:26 He doesn't really have any major areas of impact, but he has loads of little ones.
04:31 And none of them are in the final third.
04:33 Like, it's actually kind of mad, this heat map.
04:36 If you think about how Declan Rice's role has been over the last couple of games,
04:39 it doesn't get anywhere near the box.
04:42 Like, if you just change that out for the Brentford game, which is Arsenal's last fixture,
04:45 it literally paints a picture of a man who plays here, yes,
04:49 but wants to steamroller into attacking areas.
04:52 And he just didn't do that at all against Porto.
04:54 But for whatever problems this idea may have created,
04:57 it was also the thing that got them their goal.
05:00 You can see here, this is Martin Oerdegaard.
05:02 They managed to find him in a tiny bit of space on the edge of the box.
05:05 And the reason they prioritised him in this area is because,
05:09 obviously, he is the player in that Arsenal squad with the quality
05:13 to make something out of what a lot of other players would find to be absolutely nothing.
05:17 He takes something like three or four players out of the equation with this pass,
05:21 gets Leandro Trossard in, 1-0, everything is happy and good.
05:24 However, as I mentioned at the start of this video,
05:27 the reason this is such a significant win for Arsenal is because
05:30 this Porto side is almost perfectly designed to restrict the number of chances they had.
05:36 And that was the only goal they were able to score.
05:39 And even before the goal, they had adapted to this approach from Arsenal quite well.
05:42 I'll show you Arsenal's average positions over the course of those first 90 minutes.
05:47 You can see, obviously, Oerdegaard and Saka, they're the major threat.
05:50 They were really prioritising this right-hand side of the attacking areas.
05:54 And Porto were like, OK.
05:56 Because Kai Havertz isn't really like that guy as a centre-forward
06:00 and going to put pressure on the centre-backs,
06:02 you can see he's quite a lot deeper than you would expect him to be here.
06:05 I'll overlay Porto's average positions.
06:07 They just didn't bother with that central area at all.
06:10 Like, this is an enormous gap between Pepe and Octavio.
06:14 You'd almost never, ever see two centre-backs that far apart in this kind of system ever normally.
06:20 But it worked really, really well. Octavio just came out to that side to restrict Oerdegaard.
06:24 And this point in the video, right, is pretty much the end of the tactical discussion.
06:28 Because Porto was set up in a way that was going to be effective against Arsenal.
06:32 But Arsenal had found a way to be effective against that.
06:35 So it then just comes down to individual battle.
06:39 As well as Declan Rice, I've seen a few people saying they thought Saka had quite a quiet game as well.
06:43 Like, I think he only created one chance. Only half of his dribbles were successful.
06:48 I think he had one shot on target in the entire match.
06:51 And that wasn't him being off the boil. That was Wendell.
06:54 He might have gone on and missed one of the penalties, but in the actual game itself,
06:57 he handled Saka about as well as I've ever seen a left-back handle Saka.
07:02 Certainly this season.
07:03 Just show you his numbers from the SofaScore app, because they're legitimately astonishing.
07:07 The guy had 16 individual defensive actions in that match.
07:12 That's like tackles, blocks, clearances, interceptions, recoveries, all that stuff, right? 16.
07:17 The next highest on the pitch was 8. He had double anybody else.
07:21 And if we just overlay on the pitch where they all took place,
07:25 I think aside from this one, which was a clearance from a set piece,
07:28 they are all just stopping Bakayo Saka. He had an unbelievable game.
07:33 So then, Arsenal had a system that was reasonably effective at breaking down Porto's mid-block,
07:37 but also Porto are just really, really good at that mid-block.
07:41 And it came to a stalemate at 1-1 over the two legs.
07:44 So why did I say this ended up being Arsenal's most significant victory of the season?
07:50 One word, my friends.
07:52 Mentality. That's my favourite joke I've ever done.
07:59 In every way bar the scoreline in the first leg, Arsenal battered Porto.
08:03 And in every way bar the scoreline in the second leg, Arsenal battered Porto.
08:07 And yet they went into the end of extra time having not beat them.
08:11 It was all going to come down to penalties.
08:13 And Arsenal fans, you know fine well that part of the reason you've been unable to get to this stage
08:19 of a competition like this for so long is because previous teams, previous squads,
08:24 previous individuals would have wilted in this situation.
08:28 "Oh, it's not our day. Hasn't gone for us. Didn't get the decisions.
08:31 That goal shouldn't have been ruled out." And so on and so on.
08:34 "Oh, it's not my fault. Oh, well."
08:36 I'll tell you this, going into that penalty shootout,
08:38 I did not doubt for a single second that Arsenal would win that and win it comfortably.
08:43 I thought they would score all their penalties and I thought Reyer would save one or two.
08:48 And I know some people will tell you that penalties are a lottery, right?
08:50 But they're really, really not. You can prepare better for them.
08:53 You can do the small things that make a difference.
08:56 And you saw that in Saka's penalty.
08:59 One of the most important things sports science has learned about taking penalties in the last couple of years
09:03 and something you see repeated in the teams that are consistently good at it
09:06 is taking your time on the run up.
09:09 We actually did a whole video about this at the start of the season
09:12 where there was a penalty shootout and one team clearly had better technique
09:15 and better practices than the other and they won.
09:18 Would you like to guess who that team was?
09:22 Arsenal, both against Manchester City there and against Porto last night,
09:25 took way longer in the preparation for the penalty.
09:29 The time that passed between the referee blowing the whistle and them hitting the ball
09:32 was much longer than their opponents.
09:35 And that allows you to compose yourself, to focus your mind, to get your heart rate down.
09:41 And while that obviously doesn't guarantee you score a penalty,
09:44 it gives you a slightly better chance of doing so.
09:47 And over four or five penalties, that slightly better chance makes a big difference.
09:51 And also just one very small, very tiny point, right?
09:55 I saw this video this morning on Twitter of Aaron Ramsdale helping David Ryer
10:00 with the preparation for the penalties.
10:02 He's standing over him, he's looking around, he's making sure none of the opposition
10:05 is seeing the preparation he's doing.
10:07 There has been so much talk since Ryer arrived at Arsenal about the tension,
10:12 the strife, the problems, the drama of replacing an established number one
10:17 with somebody completely different.
10:19 But does that video look to you like two men who want the other to fail?
10:24 So it might, on the face of it, look like they've squeezed through against a team
10:27 they should have been comfortably beating, but that is honestly, trust me on this,
10:31 an enormous, enormous win.
10:33 They couldn't have been playing a worse team for their style of football.
10:37 They probably couldn't have had more go against them in terms of just individual
10:40 brilliance and decisions and whatnot.
10:42 And yet, they found a way.
10:45 And if you keep finding a way, you win stuff.
10:49 So, yeah, there you go. That's how Arsenal found a way past Porto.
10:52 And just on behalf of all English football fans, allow me to say thanks for doing it
10:57 for the Coefficient, boys.
10:58 I'm away now to email that mentality joke to Kosta and see if they fancy sponsoring
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11:26 This is a big, it's a big, big, big, big for Arsenal, this.
11:29 In my opinion, a big, big.
11:31 And I'll big you big. Good big.