Everton vs. Arsenal Tactical Analysis

A frustrating, low risk afternoon for the Gunners

Arsenal’s hopes of winning the Premier League are quite slim, in fact, I only have them projected at 7.21% chance to overtake Liverpool. So, Arteta set his sights firmly on Arsenal’s Champions League match on Tuesday with Real Madrid.

Arsenal came out with a very rotated squad, but as the match progressed, Arteta gave his usual starters some action to keep them fresh.

image via FotMob

First Half

Everton took the very low risk approach by going long whenever they could. They sometimes would let Arsenal press them initially, but every single time they would boot it up the pitch.

For most of the match, Arsenal’s most dangerous chances came off of set pieces. I want to highlight how effective the six yard back post overload can be.

Arsenal can either make a run across the box, like this.

Or they can stay the back post, so it can be really difficult to defend.

Arsenal started out with Jorginho as the single pivot with Rice & Merino operating in the half spaces with Trossard dropping deep, which created a 3 v 2 overload in the middle.

With that being said, Arsenal really no success playing through the middle of Everton’s defensive block.

image via Opta the Analyst

One of the reasons Arsenal is so good defensively is becuase they’re rest defense is always in a great position.

Here Lewis-Skelly loses the ball centrally, which allows Everton to break, but Arsenal have them covered and have the numerical advantage.

At around the 25 minute mark, Lewis-Skelly started to invert into the middle of the pitch.

What that did was created a box midfield that was forcing Everton to play very compact.

Arsenal opened the scoring off only of the only fast break opportunities they got all match. Sterling and Trossard were 2 v 2 and Trossard found the back of the net.

Once Everton fell behind, they tried to press Arsenal with more intensity out of a zonal 4-2-3-1.

Arsenal though used great ball circulation to create space centrally, which allowed Jorginho to carry the ball all the way into Everton’s final third.

One underrated aspect about Arsenal is how fluid their rotations are. Anybody can play any position, which makes it very difficult for teams to defend.

Here is an example of Trossard receiving the ball out wide and Merino & Rice crashing the box.

Second Half

Everton got a soft penalty to open the second half, which Ndiaye put in the back of the net to make it 1-1.

Arsenal brought on Saka at half time and you could see Arsenal trying to use their position rotations on his side of the pitch.

The problem was, Everton was not allowing Arsenal to create wide overloads in the final third, so the Gunners really struggled for chance creation.

While Everton was solid defensively, they did nothing in attack. The problem was since they were going long from goal kicks, they were at the mercy of winning duels against Arsenal, which was not in their favor.

image via FotMob

Arsenal kept using their fluid rotations to try and find overloads against Everton’s 4-4-2 like this.

The problem was they couldn’t capitalize on them and quite frankly they weren’t aggressive enough in the final third.

One of the best chances Arsenal had from open play came near the end of the match.

Gabriel Martinelli was getting locked up by Jake O’Brien all afternoon long, but finally instead of going to the byline, cut inside and forced Pickford into a difficult save.

Conclusion

Arsenal clearly had one eye on Real Madrid on Tuesday with the way Arteta rotated their squad.

The struggles though continued for Arsenal against low blocks and even though their fluidity and rotations are beautiful watch, it didn’t lead to many high quality chances from open play, as 0.68 of Arsenal’s 1.79 expected goals came from open play.

image via FotMob

Mikel Arteta was clearly prioritizing a solid rest defense and not allowing Everton to break in transition on them, which did work, the Gunners just got really unlucky with that penalty. As you can see above, Everton only took four non-penalty shots for the entire match.

With that draw, the title race is pretty much over, so now Arsenal must put all of their eggs into the Champions League basket.