Mikel Merino limitations as an attacker costing Arsenal, the form of Cole Palmer and Nico Dominguez unprecedented forest work | Football news
Welcome to SpanSky Sports Column in which Adam Bate It uses a combination of data and opinions to think about some key stories from the latest Premier League matches. This week:
๐ด Merino is not a natural striker
โฌ๏ธ How worried is the Palmer’s form?
๐ช Dominguez’s key role for forest
He passed the moment in the middle of the first half of Arsenal’s match to Manchester United when Mikel Merino saw the space open on the left channel and made a running. It was a real race and received the ball inside the criminal box.
What happened the following revealed. A makeshift striker isolated his marker and had the opportunity to install Leny Yoro. He managed to beat him and he was. Instead, Merino played a percentage and checked.
It was not wrong, by itself. Merino chose Declan Rice, and the shot eventually came in from Thomas Party. Despite this, it was impossible not to wonder how this simple passage of the game could have passed very differently with the natural center on the field.
Merino had only one shot. That came from his second touch in the afternoon inside the criminal box. “Efficiency in the last 20 meters was not good enough,” Mikel Arteta said. In fact, Merino had more touch in his half of the field than in that particular zone.
As the front three, initial trio Merino, Ethan Nwaneri and Leandro Trossard had nine touches inside Manchester United Box between them. In the context, Bukayo Saka averages nine touches per game in the opposition frame independently This season.
Without giving Saka wide, but Gabriel Martinelli presented from the bench only for this game, the lack of a true striker is only underlined. Merino’s goals against Leicester were welcome, but it’s consistently doing another thing.
“He came in and scored two goals against Leicester and were good endings, but you won’t win the Premier League with him in advance,” said Arsenal’s former favorite Paul Merson’s favorite Sky Sports. “It looks lost in advance. It doesn’t give you a presence.”
Merino brings quality. In fact, the presence is enough to score in the air and in the occasions that he has lowered deep into play, which helped Arsenal’s dominance. But that disadvantage of the penetration behind the United defense was caused than it should have been.
It’s not on Merin, maybe even on Arthte, who is trying to find tactical solutions for what’s the staff problem. But as exemplary at that moment for 25 minutes at Old Trafford, it is a mark of why Arsenal will reappear this season.
How worried is Palmer’s target drought?
Chelsea won each of his last four home games of the Premier League, which should not be a surprise despite their unconvincing form – all were against teams in the lower five. The surprise is that Cole Palmer did not score in any of them.
In a 1-0 victory against Leicester at Stamford Bridge, Palmer approached – seeing his sentence saved by Mads Hermansen. It was one of the five shots of England International, who extended attempts at 29 without scoring.
It is unnecessary to say that this is more than any other player in the Premier League in this period, the one that now extends to a total of seven games and 683 minutes of football. Speculations are full of why the previously fertile player suddenly struggles to score.
The absence of Nicolas Jackson, who was missing for each of the last four Chelsea of โโthe Premier League from the injury against West Ham, is a popular explanation for the fall that Palmer withstanding from a goal against Bournethmouth in mid -January.
“Palmer forces Jackson and Jackson making Palmer,” Paul Merson said Sky Sports. “He is a willing player who stretches the game and then Palmer enters and gets the ball. He didn’t have a movement if Jackson didn’t make those races.”
However, Jackson’s replacement Pedro Net actually made more running than any other player during the Premier League weekend. Palmer seems to be associated with his final treatment, not that he did not find himself in the right positions.
His expected goal during this ride is 3.48, which ranked him among the top 10 Premier League players in terms of the quality of his chances. The other nine players on the list were an average of over five goals, each of them at least twice.
Statistically evidence suggests that things will turn into Palmer soon enough, and his Chief Coach of Chelsea Enzo Maresac seems to be not concerned about his form – instead pointing out to the health issue that was a factor in his performance against Leicester.
“Cole didn’t train yesterday because he didn’t feel good,” Maresca said on Sunday. “He woke up this morning and asked if he could be on the field to help this club play in the Champions League.” Expect Palmer to do so only if he continues to have a chance.
Domonguez’s key role for forest
Nico Dominguez achieved eight fights in the nottingham forest 1-0 victory over Manchester City – twice as much as anyone else on the field. Extraordinary statistics given that the 26-year-old Argentine midfielder was replaced in the middle of the second half.
Dominguez never made more fights in a game in a forest shirt. Indeed, no forest player has made more in the game this season. Asked to praise his full back to dealing with city flying wings, Nuno Espirito Santo had Dominguez in mind his answer.
“The credit for them, but also the credit for help, especially the midfielders to double,” Nuno said at a press conference after the match. “Help, covers, double ups were fundamental to have this defensive account.” There were so many examples of that.
Eight fights were just a part of it. There were 82 separate examples of Dominguez that pressed against the city, which was regular from any other player during the Premier League weekend. His work ensured that Ola Ain was not isolated against Jeremy Loca.
Some coaches give their winged player to do this job of supporting the full back, but that would make it difficult for Anthony Elangi and Callum Hudson-Odoi to find themselves in a position to give their threats to the forest to the forest.
Instead, they were given the task of closing the space inside, forcing City Wide, and Dominguez was then needed to move. He covered more soil than any other midfielder while pressing, working to throw out the documents and limit his influence.
When a winning goal came, the kindness of a ringing passage with Morgan Gibbs-White and the end of Hudson-Odoi, Dominguez had already left. But it would not be an exaggeration to say that this victory in large part is enabled because of its display.
