Arsenal Escape Germany With A Draw After Brutal Midweek for Premier League

34:00We didn't have either of them. And then you look at the secondary, what I call controllers, who aren't quite as controlly as those two, but Trossard and maybe Mikel Marino as well, and they're not there. So it felt like quite a transitional team and not a team who, in the final third, other than Saka, you wouldn't really back any of those guys to get their foot on the ball and, you know, find a through ball or something like that. And Saka wasn't doing it anyway. So, you know, I think it's probably well established by now that Martinelli and Jokarez is a bit, you know, toothpaste and orange juice.

34:36It doesn't really work. But if we're not considering Ezza for the left wing, and if we're not considering Madueke, then that only leaves Martinelli really and and so I think probably there is something in like the blend wasn't quite right and we could have done with at least one of those guys somewhere because as a I felt and we talked about this on the IR he was much more involved like I could see him and you know it wasn't one of his kind of four touch performances but he's not going to give you control in that area um either so we we were probably just we could have just done with at least one of those players on the pitch for me that that's usually Erdegaard and Havertz I think Trossard can do it I think Marino can give you a bit of that but maybe 50 % I think yeah and look look I'm not saying either like we've seen this performance with those maybe not so much Havertz actually when Havertz has started we haven't seen these performances like for me if you ask me to choose one of them that's the one I'd choose because I think the trade-off like between Ezra and Erdegaard is not as big as the trade-off between Havertz and Jokeres like I sorry I think Havertz is significantly better as a centre forward yeah than Jokeres and I think that raises our overall level quite a bit more so i i i just still got this feeling he's the guy we're kind of i you know i don't want to do that guy who isn't playing his solution to all our problems thing but this guy who isn't really playing that much is the solution to most of our problems i think yeah yeah i mean it is always going to be the case that the the players who aren't playing start to grow in our estimation.

36:22And hopefully we'll find out in the not-too-distant future whether they've grown in our estimation rightly so because they play and they play well. There were some things about this game tactically that I found interesting, Paul, and things we were doing. And the midfield dynamic was very, very interesting to me. Zubimendi and Rice were swapping around. Rice was covering all the areas. Zubimendi was pulling out really wide. And I re-watched the Every Touch as a Had video. And as I did some really interesting things and he would get the ball in good little pockets and turn and face, but candidly when he'd turn to face, there's nobody to give it to next.

36:58And I, you know, Clive has poked fun at me and rightfully so he said, Elliot, just admit you don't like the double pivot. You prefer the single pivot and that's part of it. But I think we saw why, because when as it would get the ball and Zuby's out wide and Rice is slightly behind him and Yokares is standing between two center backs and a, and a back five, there really isn't anywhere for it to go next other than to recycle um and the midfield dynamic is a really interesting one to me and for anyone who says like well we miss Odegaard I love the way Odegaard brings the ball through the middle third but again if you're taking as an out for Odegaard I think you're going to wind up with the same problem of where does he go next if not just out wide and then the whole cycle repeats another thing that people have been really quick to notice is the way that we play our fullbacks in the sort of inside pockets in the half spaces and our wingers on the touchline.

37:49And so Timber was finding a lot of joy getting into the box and getting forward in the space that was being opened by Saka staying wide and vice versa with Pierron Capier. And so it does create this interesting dynamic where our midfielders are vacating midfield, our fullbacks are coming into that zone to become attacking options and for me a simpleton it all feels a little too complicated and not and not being executed at the highest level i'm curious if you have a a perspective on that dynamic and how it impacts our attacking play well i think we're predictable as part of the problem yeah um so what's interesting about the way rice is playing is he did this a lot especially in the first half the dropping in to pick it up off rye off one of the center backs and drive us forward and that was probably the best part of our game a lot of our better moves came from rice running into space onto the ball from whoever and driving it up and we were getting up and around the box um i haven't figured out what our real problem is yet zubamendi is is kind of he'll move forward towards the Odegaard position, but he doesn't do it with conviction.

39:02Do you think there's less verticality in his game now than there was when he first arrived? It feels to me like he doesn't want to play that next pass forward. And I wonder if some mistakes he's made recently are in his mind, but he doesn't seem to want to play the ball forward as much as I feel like he maybe was earlier. I think we've definitely confused his position and diluted the role. And I think it's working for Declan Rice being the all-action, all-over-the-pitch player without the expense of clarity from Odegaard and structure. Like, there was a time you knew what the right-hand side would look like and it would have whoever.

39:38It might have the deep-lying midfielder of seasons gone by or Zubimendi, and you'd have Timber or White, you'd have Saka, and you'd have Odegaard, or you'd have Havertz in that space. And now we leave Saka isolated, which I think works in many games, right? Don't bring an extra player. Don't crowd that area. Could have worked in this game, wasn't, so switch to something else. And Zubimendi does a bit of what you would want him to do. He moves up. He's kind of clever. Once or twice when we really need something to happen here, he starts to drift into that center forward spot. but unfortunately what you're seeing from Zubimendi is like a wonder goal every five games and you think oh what a player but in the the day-to-day knocking it around midfielder it doesn't like if you go back and watch this Zubimendi game he doesn't get to do anything apart from continuity passes um Rice looks great Zubimendi it's at the cost of Zubimendi but you kind of lost a player up the pitch.

40:50I think this was a game in which this was one of Eza's better games. I think in the first half, it was one of Jokeresh's better games in that. Didn't do anything. Well, he did something spectacular. He turned his man, was threw into the box and they had to rugby tackle him. That was really, really good. And he had, most of his touches came off in the first half. When the ball bounced off him, it bounced to one of our men or into a good spot. and like as that stopped happening through the game i think we struggled even more uh you know when the yorkeres touches later on didn't work out so well it's just kind of more more pressure back on trying to play it out from the back i just think we're very predictable at the moment and zubimendi being the player who can push forward is okay but it's not going to scare anybody yeah well so then let's get into some system stuff tim just quick before we move into how they got their goal, how we got back into it.

41:49Declan Rice had zero touches in the opposition box. Martin Zubimendi had one touch in the opposition box. Ebrecha Eza had one touch in the opposition box. And I just don't think, especially when teams are going to sit deep, you're going to get the goals you need if you manage two box touches from your midfield three over 90 minutes. I think you need someone to crash. When was the last time you can remember Declan Rice crashing the box to arrive late to follow up a chance? or Zubomendi who popped up with some important goals earlier in the season. Where is that box crashing? And so ultimately, it feels like that responsibility is being held just by the front three.

42:26And interestingly, the fullbacks who do arrive there sometimes. But that second man run into the box, it's either not happening or it's not being found. Two box touches for the midfield three. One from Ezzo who averages 3.3, which isn't even that much to begin with. so is there something systematic or something about how we're using Zubamendi that's changed how can we get more people attacking the box so that it isn't such an easy day for defenses like I mean because I think Leverkusen did a nice job defending us but every time I saw as on the ball and I look at the picture on my screen I see Victor Jokras with around five players near him and two wingers out on the touch lines you know yeah I think maybe there's something in When we have Rice, Zubemendy, Erdegaard, no one really does the box crashing.

43:18Although we saw Rice do it a couple of times at Bournemouth. But then when Eza plays as a 10, it's almost like he is so defined in that kind of second striker role that it's like, right, no one else can do this. I've said this before, it becomes much more two sixes and a 10 than like three eights or a six and two eights. And maybe if we had the personnel, maybe, you know, Mikel Arteta could have gone, do you know what, actually? Yeah, let's have Odegaard and Eza or let's put Marino on because he's a bit of a joker in that respect in that he can be an 8 or 10 or a second striker or whatever and give us a bit more fluidity.

43:58But it does feel like... Or Calafiore and White. Yeah. White, right. The two fullbacks we had on are the two fullbacks that aren't great in the box. You know, Timber misses the header. And Capier has quite a presentable chance that he hits at the keeper. And you kept seeing like the Joker factor. We're not seeing much of Calafiore, but you could have persuaded me. We set up for this fullbacks who can do dangerous things in the box kind of thing with either White or Calafiore. yeah and I think that's kind of what I mean by the Odegaard Havertz thing because when Havertz plays as a nine he kind of is and isn't a nine he goes like there's a little bit more rotation whereas maybe with this collection of players it's like you guys Reiss and Zubimendi you stand here Eze you stand there you're it's it's a bit foosball do you know what I mean like there isn't as much like rotation of positions it's just like Eze and Jokerez being spun around furiously by the foosball kind of players.

45:03I feel like we lose some of that fluidity. But at the same time, sometimes when Odegaard plays, it almost feels like we have too much of that fluidity. And it's like one of you guys needs to get in the bloody penalty area. So, yeah, it feels a bit more rigid with that collection of players. Pop? I think we really struggled with this 3-4-3.

45:28because defensively, we couldn't get them at all. They really kind of smothered us. It turned into a five when they needed us a five. They smothered our midfield. I mean, we should have had a man overload, but we never did. They always got the players in position. It wasn't just Kofana. It feels like we did that by design because we were pulling Zubamendi way out wide and stuff. Like in the 3-4-3, I kind of thought maybe we'll want to have the extra man coming inside so that we can outnumber them there. We really looked like we wanted to outnumber them out wide. You know, I don't, I'm not sure what the plan was.

46:03Yeah. And so my point is, again, a bit like the Saka thing, we're going to face them at the Emirates. We'll have a little bit more energy. Maybe they'll have slightly less. but we don't play a lot of 3-4-3s where the other team's actually using it progressively and moving dynamically and getting the players into the spots they did you know we think of it being Saliba or Gabriel against Kofana but I think part of the reason they had trouble with him was it wasn't just him they would get three players forward to attack at the same time and the wingers would like they did the 3-4-3 really good we don't face a lot of that we might face a defensive 343 but this was a 343 at home with a a motivated attacker a motivated buyer right a motivated attacker who would get players into the right spots and like the second thing we'll have to figure it out for the second leg don't disagree what you're saying but i think we were predictable and we had not faced this kind kind of a setup with a team who really knows how to use a 3-4-3 against you in attack.

47:11Yeah, I will echo Tim's sentiments too, though, just to say, it was that kind of officious refereeing performance that can lead to a game being really hard to get into your flow. It's very redolent of the Porto away game, except that we got a draw instead of a loss. So I think there really is something to be said for that. So here's what we're gonna do. I'm gonna mention the brands that we love. And then we're going to let Tim go because we are having some technical issues with Tim part. But then Paul and I will continue. We'll talk about Nani. We'll talk about Kai. We'll talk about the penalty and getting level in the tie and look ahead briefly to the Everton game.

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49:45You're not going to want to miss a second of the action, so tune in to the NCAA men's first four tonight at 6 p.m. Eastern on True TV and in the March Madness live app. Look, at this point, you could probably tell me everything I need to know about NordVPN, but I will tell you everything you need to know, which is simply it's an app. It goes on your phone. It goes on your tablet. It goes on your computer. You tell it where you want to browse and you're browsing there. And it is just such an elegant and easy solution to a problem that we all have in terms of being able to access the content we want to watch.

50:16And so sometimes I'll just leave it up and running in another location, especially during matches, so I can watch the little video clips and the media coverage and the match reviews of the day stuff that I want to see. It also has threat protection, and we know as you travel around certain links related to football, you may want that extra threat protection. So it's simple, it's fast, and it works, and NordVPN is going to give you a fantastic value for being a wonderful and treasured listener to this specific podcast. NordVPN.com slash Arsenal Vision is the code to get a huge discount off your Nord plan and four additional months on top.

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51:18Paul, it's not the way you'd like to come out after halftime. And Mikel Arteta said some words that have me worried for whoever he's specifically talking about. And it might be as a on the corner, but on the way on, if he was disappointed with the way we defended on the corner for Leverkusen goal, he says, quote, there are always two sides to that. One is the element of the opponent, that they picked that weakness and that lack of attention or urgency in both situations. And the other one is us, because we knew we showed them three clips from last weekend in three different ways, and we weren't ready for it, and we got caught.

51:51That's bad for whomever he's talking about because he's saying we didn't have the right focus and attention, and he's saying he showed three clips of that exact scenario, and we got caught anyway. My instinct is that he might be talking about Ezza because Ezza's the one who winds up getting caught with a little pick play that they run to the back post. It's a well-executed corner, but we come out of the dressing room not ready. They get in. They get a chance. They get a corner. or they get a goal. So what do you make of those things I just mentioned and Mikel's reaction to them? I have some thoughts.

52:19So I don't think he's... Two things, just to spoiler alert. I don't think he's talking about Eze. I don't think it was Eze's fault. I think he's talking about the kickoff. I think he pretty much says how they restart, how they kick off. Because they waltz through our midfield. Saka kind of jumps forward. The spacing... They just run through our midfield, put in a really nice cross they have a header right that's the great raya save it shouldn't have to be but it was like a knife a warm knife through butter i think that's why he was upset they uh whatever you say about us we're we have a great shape and we're very hard to get down the center of and they ran down the middle of us put it out wide swung in across we were at their mercy great save from raya then they take the corner but i'm i've definitely compartmentalized into he thinks how the heck did they run through us get a shot on goal and then get a corner then you look at the corner the corner is a very clever uh set piece that we would have been proud of if we took and it was three players standing on each other's toes for them they had three guys in a group uh we had two markers timber and somebody somebody else maybe zubimendi it was not as a as a already had a separate man a fourth man that he was marking the guy who grabs him as he tries as is the guy who sees the problem in that they have three players there two split timber goes with one of them who our other marker goes with the other and andrich is there standing all on its own it's not as a as has got a man and he sees him free he reacts to it the biggest mistake as a makes is he lies on the ground all sprawled out he's like the guy who runs in finds a body with a knife next to it and thinks oh why don't i pick up that bloody knife just as the cops are coming in seriously he called attention to his role in it even though his role in it was not the the critical piece yeah and i've watched it back a few times but the last few times i'm like as a don't lie on the ground like he sprawls out and he's i wonder if he's trying to maybe get a a foul on that pick play because there's a little bit of a pick that they run to kind of knock him off the ability to follow maybe but i think he's just essaying right he's got this free spirit and i'm like do not third time's not to express your inner self he's like exactly He's asperated.

54:56He's spread out halfway across the pitch. I'm like, don't do that. You look like you're the guy. Everybody's talking about Eze. My personal opinion, absolutely nothing to do with Eze and the fact he's the only guy who sees that Andridge is unmarked. Even if he'd got past his marker who was holding him, Andridge doesn't stay in that spot that Eze is running to. Andridge moves to the back post. You're not stopping him. The fact that he's completely unmarked at that point, we're undone. yeah that's my it could be wrong but i looked at it i'm like it ain't as a unless unless he shouldn't have been marking the guy he was marking what i will say is that whoever's fault it is and whether it's the corner of the restart mikhail's comments make it pretty clear that he feels someone or some group of someone's is culpable for not paying attention to some education that had been provided to them previously men in mind okay yeah fair enough well and by the way that That may well be the case, but I think it's an interesting one.

55:56But then what's interesting, we played slower and with less urgency after falling behind for about 15 minutes or so until we made the sub. And I do want to say, as frustrating as it was to watch us play with our food and not be particularly incisive, I have seen Arsenal teams naively chase situations like this and make the situation worse. In fact, I watched Chelsea do something like this against PSG, where they were in a perfectly reasonable position in the tie and chucked it away and lost the tie. This is a tie that even at 1-0 to Leverkusen after the first leg, I think we'd still be marginally favorites to go through.

56:38So it wasn't incumbent upon us to go chase it. And so I have to balance my frustration with how slowly we played with recognizing that it was probably the more mature approach. It wasn't great, though. then then we make the sub and almost as soon as nani maduike comes on it did look quite different and the reason is simple we had a player who when we got it to him he was able to beat his man and pull players out of position and so it's pretty hard to get around nani maduike coming on as the inflection point in the game what do you make of what he added for us well the first thing is i love the sub in the sense of like this probably isn't the biggest thing but maybe it is it's like nobody's sacred it's go time there's the Champions League you make your moves and I that was Clive's headline by the way on the instant reaction was no sacred cows and Mikkel was asked on why he took Paquio off he didn't mince words he says I thought we needed something else and Nani has been contributing and being a real threat so I decided to make the change I think that's right we went with the different implement from the two back because it was a different implement um just before he gets subbed you see saka looking super frustrated like he's worked out it's not his night yeah just this he has a run at the defender gets nowhere bounces off him so he's got a week to think about it and he's going to be charged up he's going to have the crowd behind him and it'll be very interesting to see if he can kind of up his levels and give them a problem um what's interesting we kind of have started the blitz and maybe blitz is a bit too strong a word it was more we flew over them with a lot of jets but didn't drop a lot of bombs but uh uh just before we get sack off we've started really moving and attacking and and we continue it for the rest of the the match at that point we're like We're in and around attacking them, lots of crosses in, no shots, weirdly.

58:44And this is where their 3-4-3 has truly fallen into a back five and they're covering everything. And they're just getting to everything in just about enough time to stop the actual shot. But we're putting in crosses, we're moving it around, we have urgency. And the one thing you would say is the one guy, I think it was a decent game for Martinelli grading on a curve. He was hit and miss, but he had some hits in his misses. So he was miss in a lot of moments. But to your point, the few things that we did well before Nani came on largely flowed through Martinelli. And in fact, he had the cross for the timber header where timber heads over from point blank range, where if he isn't even there, there's two other guys to potentially finish that chance.

59:29Yeah. And outside of him, you know, if you look at the Saka side, not to layer on it too heavily, but it was a miss and miss from Saka's side. Nothing, after the first few minutes of the game, nothing came off for him. And look, great sub. You could ask why not Saka and Havertz at that time because centrally we were starting to bang in crosses. We were getting lots of aerial balls in there and you don't associate Yachoresh with getting on the ends of aerial crosses. My theory, Paul, and we'll come to this, is I think Mikel is trying to gear Kai up to start against Everton at the weekend. And that's just how he wanted to parcel out the minutes.

1:00:13Yeah, and maybe he, maybe just they have a very, very steady plan for Kai and they're staying with the plan. But you could see why at 60 minutes, if you're going to bring on, if you're saying we're not getting at them enough, we're also not getting at them enough in terms of shots on goal, headers on goal and seemed to be set up for you were going to need somebody tall in the box to get on the end of these things so we waited a while for kai but we got nani immediately first thing he had to do was defensively scurry back and he did he snuffed out an attack then he's up the other end dribbles passes man puts in a decent cross into a dangerous area i think you could look at the last 30 minutes there's lots of balls into dangerous areas nobody getting on the end of them and it you know at the end of the day it was a dribble into the box that unlocked it as opposed to anybody getting on the end of anything yeah uh clive called this out and i think it's a great point we had three corners in this whole game one of them was in the 92nd minute i think the other two were after the nani sub and i think you can point to corners and say well why do we have to rely on corners it's not so much why do we have to rely on corners i think the volume of corners we get is usually directly related to the amount of threat we're creating right how do you get a getting to play yeah well that's the point yeah yeah and having no corners i think was indicative of how infrequently we put them under pressure where they had to hack clear a clearance or where we beat someone to the byline things like that there's one thing i'll call out about martinelli and i just want to make this point because i think it is a thing about his game recently that bothers me there was a goal he scored recently i want to say where he cut it on his right and curled it in maybe it was against wigan or something um but but here's what i want to say about martinelli the speed of his decision making has slowed down a lot and so there will be a lot of times when he gets the ball and Piero Incappi underlaps and he's got that moment you can play it to him on the underlap or you can cut on your right and deliver the cross he gets the ball and too often I think he touches he touches, he waits, he touches, he takes a touch and Incappi has already made his underlap and the defenders already followed him and the defense is back in its shape and now if he cuts inside he has nowhere to go so he has to go back to Gabriel or he overplays it and it dribbles it across the midfield out to the other side yeah the urgency to make a decision and commit to it quickly is not there and I think he does let defenses get set and then the moment goes and so it's not that when he does things well he's doing them well it's just I think he's he's slower to to move the ball and that's something to maybe keep an eye on I think we can we can speed along here a little bit though and get to Kai coming on and candidly I don't think I did much um and and and then Jesus came on and I think Jesus came on in part because Mikel wanted to shift Kai's position around a little and get him into midfield as it was starting to fade but Kai obviously makes the critical intervention we should say obviously coming back to Leverkusen where he was beloved he got a great reception Pierro and Cappier also by the way on loan for Leverkusen so two players who have been very familiar with playing there and playing against that team um one of whom and in Cappier was there for their invincible season.

1:03:24So, you know, a nice moment for them to get back there. But the penalty is soft, but it's a penalty. What I would say is in the Champions League, I expect to get it. I think Nani gets the reward for beating his man and the punishment is given for the man making the kind of challenge you should never be making, which is from behind in the box. There is contact. If you don't get that penalty, I'm not screaming about it, but I think it is a penalty just about. can I give you my philosophy on penalties because I think this is the perfect example of it and you know we often measure ourselves by how would we feel if it was given against us I'd be fine if this was given against us I know we go to the VAR and like the contact and like blah blah blah when the attacker is good and has the defender on toast and the defender is flailing I just see that as a chaos moment and I give credit to the attacker and I'm fine with it you see these you this is people talk about how penalties have reffed they've all they've always been reffed like this and like whether it's Hazard or Rooney or Ronaldo once you have a really exciting attacker who has in that moment the defender on toast and think chaos chaos ensues and like the attackers more through the knot and the defenders trying to catch up to it.

1:04:48I'm like, okay, you got them. I don't get overly worried about, oh, is the contact, is there contact? Yes. Is the contact enough? I kind of in that point of doesn't really matter. You have the guy flailing and you can get all technical about it, but that's not how penalties work in games. And we brought on the right guy who got their defender in trouble multiple times and this was like the fourth time he had him on toast and the guy is flailing he he does things he he'll look at that and think why did i do i should have just let him go but that's what happens when you're rinsing your defender and i'm like fair enough penalty and if it had happened on the other end like it would have hurt and i might have thought it's soft but i would have thought fair enough you in that area time and time again you had us and you got your moment and you got your penalty.

1:05:41Yeah, and like I said, I'm fine with it being a penalty. I think it is a penalty. I think if we hadn't gotten it, I don't think I would be outraged by not getting it. But I do think it's a perfectly fine penalty. I think we're surprised. Is my feeling on it. We agree there, right? Like, this is my point. I think when a player tricks his way into the box and the beaten defender tackles from behind, you're upping the likelihood the ref's going to see that as a penalty to reward. The penalties I hate are when, like, the attacker's running towards the touchline, out of the box. He's on the edge of the box.

1:06:14He's not facing goal. You're not doing anything very clever. Yeah, I agree with you. This is a threatening move that's impacted by the challenge. It's like you grabbed him. You're leaning him over the cliff. Okay, you didn't throw him over the cliff, but you're literally leaning him over the cliff. I think you should get something for that. Thankfully, not even doing it. He was not thrown off a cliff. Okay, in terms of the penalty, are you at all surprised that it was Kai's to take? There weren't any too many clear options on the pitch at that point. Yeah, that was it. I'm like, my first reaction is, no, no, no, no, no.

1:06:46This is a terrible narrative. You know, he hasn't played. He hasn't had any big moments. He's barely been in this game. He's been, you know, he's seen the ball once or twice to bounce it off his foot. What are you doing here? You set up a script here that's like his whole past is flowing through his brains. And like the ref blows the whistle. And then there's this delay and a big breath out of him. And I'm like, oh, that's like they say if the player takes the breath within one second and then moves forward and takes the penalty, generally he scores. whereas if there's a kind of this delay and the slow breath and the extra second or two i'm like oh my god and then i think it's a pretty good penalty but at the time live it looked like oh he can get there the keeper fakes to dive right which is why kai goes left but by faking to dive right he can't dive back up pardon me instead of fake he fakes to dive left and then dives right in by doing that fake he cannot get back to where kai has put that shot quickly enough so i think it is a fine penalty kai waited for the keeper right he watched the keeper he stares him down he does fine i was thinking like who's going to take this you can't give it to gabriel jesus we know that can't give it to nani you could give it to declan rice i don't know about zubamendi but could give it to rice i mean other than that kai was really the only guy out there martinelli no i don't love it so look kai takes the responsibility he scores great for him great moment doesn't celebrate which makes makes me laugh and the reason it makes me laugh not that there was any doubt about this he does not celebrate this goal he raucously celebrates his goals against chelsea so so now it's you know it's not just one of these well he celebrates goals that's what he does no he doesn't celebrate goals against teams he cares for uh and i like that even more so but chelsea's chelsea and they're a horrible horrible club and said terrible things about him and they're just terrible is his uh natural birth mother and gave birth to him so yeah exactly um so let's let's read some mikhail comments about this draw a line under it and look forward to a very very very big week because it's everton uh well i say week i don't know how you measure a week.

1:09:07I think it's seven days. So it's Everton and then it's the cup final, right? Am I right about that? And then... No, I wasn't. I didn't. Oh, no, sorry. It's Everton and then Leverkusen and then the cup final, right, of course. That was a horseshoe of death explanation there, Elliot. Well, not... Wasn't the first, won't be the last, just like with Arsenal. Okay. On Kai Havertz's goal, Mikel says it's, quote, very important. The game had different phases. Some in the first half when we were very dominant and had a big chance with Gabby to make it 1-0. By the way, Mikel loves nothing more than calling out a Gabriel Martinelli miss in his post-match comments.

1:09:37So how do you feel about those? Like, I don't think he is... I know what you mean. I choose to think he's just calling out the fact that it was a good chance. I don't think he's bashing Martinelli. I'm just saying he calls out Martinelli's misses in a way he doesn't seem to do with other players. And I'm with Billy Carpenter here. Billy Carpenter did a post on social media that I fully align with, which is, I don't have a lot of time for managers pointing to specific missed chances in games where you didn't create a lot like if you create 30 chances and miss them all I'm here for you talking about your misses if you have six shots in a game right and I believe is that we had surely we had more than that nope we had six shots including the penalty so five non-penalty shots I think calling out a miss is a little bit we had two shots on target plus hitting the crossbar so three well so anyway he says uh obviously that could change the game then after that we didn't finish enough actions every time we got in and around the box we gave the ball away and that allowed certain counter attacks and that was very unlike us without really considering anything we needed to show certain things for what it's worth i do think that precipitated the sack of change um there was a really good Bayer-Leverkusen counterattack that was started when Saka sort of fell to ground and gave the ball away.

1:11:01Quote, we discussed that at halftime and we expected to start very fast, especially because we knew certain routines that they have on kickoffs because they had three at the weekend and still we got caught. We weren't ready enough. We conceded a chance on the header and after that, we conceded the goal. So when you give that hope and advantage to the opponent at that level, they're going to take it. And then we had to really dig in because emotionally it becomes a very different challenge. We had 10 to 15 minutes that we didn't really have enough threat and enough understanding of how we had to attack that block.

1:11:27But in the last 20 to 25 minutes with the changes, I think it was much better. In the end, we found a way to score the goal and draw the game. And I have to say, that could be the podcast because he just summed it up excellently. We had a good first half. We got caught out poorly at the start of the second half. We had a bad 15 minutes. We made changes. We had a good ending. And so it is what it is. We get out of there with a draw. The only other Premier League team not to lose was Newcastle. And really, they should have won. a very, very stupid challenge to give away a penalty there at the end.

1:11:54Similarly, tired defenders, tired minds make bad decisions. But we're on to Everton this weekend. And we can wrap up on the Everton game, Paul, by just saying this, to me, was the bigger game of these two. I trust Arsenal to come back in the second leg and get this done. Other people may disagree, but I believe we will. But the Everton game is the big one. City are going to be licking their wounds and going to West Ham. And we're home to Everton. So I think we could see some really interesting and surprising lineup options. I think Leo will come back in. I have just this sneaking suspicion that Kai Havertz could start.

1:12:35Now, will he start in place of Eza or will he start in place of Jokras? I don't know. There's obviously then the big decision about whether he wants to go right back to Saka or reward Nani Medueke for showing that he can be a real difference maker. So what do you think? uh yeah it's it's interesting that kai started in the uh in the mansfield game uh got quite a few minutes there but he only wanted him for 15 20 minutes for this game so i think you're right he played a lot more minutes against mansfield i think he's warming him up for an actual start and uh you know a somewhat defensive Everton setup might be a good formula for getting Kai on the pitch.

1:13:19And look, we're all dying for it. I hope they've really mapped out. Kai's talked about kind of priming himself and what he wants to contribute and like implications that he's really geared up to provide a strong injection of his capabilities for the rest of the season. we all know something needs to change in the attacking end of the pitch. It's like the opposite of my toothpaste analogy. We're just, I think the constipation and congestion up the far, I guess those two go together, up the far end of the pitch I think is having its effect everywhere else. It's putting pressure on the midfield. It's making us second guess ourselves.

1:14:02you know you take the Martinelli example of him dribbling halfway across the pitch to put it to the other side that's kind of the kind of thing if you don't expect to be able to look up field and see a guy making a move that opens things up that's who Kai is he moves defenders around he brings center backs with him um he can really I I take Tim's point that it's a shame when you have to go to if we had player x things would be very different but but kaya's player x that we play differently with him on the pitch so this might be the start of how we reshape the run-in we need something extra in the attacking end we need movement um something to stir the pot open up the gaps and although jacores had a decent game against byer laver kuzin especially early on still wasn't enough to move around their three center backs, their structure.

1:15:00They always seem to have players in the right spot. We did a lot of good attacking at the end of this game, but not a lot of getting on the end of stuff. So it'll be very interesting to see. That's the big decision, okay? Is Kai available? Would Trossard be back? Could we do something on the left-hand side? To your point, has Maduecki earned a start on the right in this game? Yeah, but if we have Maduecki's start, I want Trossard on the left. I don't want Martinelli and Trossard because they'll be sitting in and we don't need two guys who run direct and try and dribble. We need somebody for control and recycling and kind of on-the-ball intelligence and that either has to be Saka or Trossard.

1:15:49I think that's the kind of balance you're looking for. So if we get Saka back, Trossard or Martinelli can do a job on the other side. If we have Trossard on the left and Maduecki, that can work with Kai moving around the place during the pot. Yeah, we really need to find some in-form attackers one way or the other. And again, I accept that some people might say, it's not the attackers, it's the system. Like I said, you're going to go to your pet issue when an attack's not firing. but we need some attackers to do some special stuff and feel like they're in form with the return leg coming in midweek and then the cup final the weekend after that.

1:16:24And then there's the international break. So you got three competitions that are going to have major outcomes in the next week because we play before City and they go to West Ham. So you're going to have a major outcome potentially in the league. You're going to have a major outcome in the Champions League. You're going to have a major outcome in an actual trophy, in a cup final, all in the next nine days or so. Yeah, I do think the... So the player I'd like to see is Calafiore come back into the team. Hincapier has been very good. This particular game didn't show to his strengths, really, in that he was the inverted fullback on that side, and he played an inverted role, and he underlapped.

1:17:06I think a player you would want getting on the ball where Hincapier did a couple of times would be Calafiore, and against Everton if they're going to sit in a bit. Like if I look at players who can help stir the pot besides Kai, if you go past that, okay, besides the Kai trick, what do we have? We haven't seen Calafiore doing Calafiore things for a while. So is he fit? Is he ready? Did that tweak, does that set him back from being a starter for a little while? I hope not. I would love to see him come on for the Everton game because that means two things. We think he's fit and he should be match fit and ready to go.

1:17:47And I do think he adds a spark. We're looking for a spark from somewhere and it can't be. Even if Kai starts, he's not playing 90 minutes. He's probably going to play 60 to 70 minutes in an intense Premier League game in which he's going to have to run his socks off. So we need more than that and I think we would love Calafiore to be back ready and in good form. Yeah, Everton coming off some reasonable results. Not amazing, but they beat Burnley 2-0. They beat Newcastle away 3-2. Lost to United narrowly at home. Lost to Bournemouth narrowly at home. Beat Fulham away. We're going backwards, by the way.

1:18:26Then draw away to Brighton. Drawed home to Leeds. Win over Aston Villa away. So some mixed results, as you'd expect. We know, look, the thing we know about them is they're big. They're physical. They're going to be quite direct. You know, they have the players to play that way. Certainly, you know, they have Beto up front, who's sort of a big bruiser. Yeah, obviously they got they got guys like James Tarkovsky. They can just they can be very physical. And I'm you know, we can be physical with the best of them, too, Paul. but it is one of those games that feels to me like there's going to be balls chucked into both boxes.

1:19:15Could be very horseshoe-y of Deathy. Yeah, I wonder about that. Look, I'll admit that Vitry O 'Kress is on my last nerve at the moment right now. He started the game really well against Leverkusen, but I do think that when we're in settled possession, increasingly you see that he's not able to contribute. And if this is going to be a case where we have 70 % of the ball, and I would suspect it might be, I'm not saying I want to go to Gabriel Jesus. this is where I really think Kai Havertz being able to come in and play nine would be good. As for all the years we complained about Lacazette drops too deep into midfield and Jesus drops too deep into midfield and they don't wind up in the box when we need them.

1:19:50I think we are feeling the absence of a forward who can come in and make an extra man, combine a little bit, help us move teams around, you know? Yeah. It's, it's, let's hope we look back at the end of the season and say, you know, this was the Kai moment where he started coming back into the picture. He doesn't have to start every game, but he gives us an unpredictability we don't have at the moment. We feel predictable to ourselves, and it would appear to opposition teams. So we need something. We need the stir-the-pot element to move around their back line, and Yaccaras will look better if he doesn't have to start every game, and every defense isn't set up to face him.

1:20:35a game where he plays the last 30, he might enjoy that too. We've seen Maduweki be nullified, but if you bring him on on 60 minutes after they've kind of grappled with Saka for a bit and then you have this whole different energy and directness with Maduweki, Kai can make Yaka Rache better for the rest of the season too. I think again the unfortunate way especially that social media works but just that the sort of modern narrative dynamics are around football a player is either great or he's crap and so there is a desire I think by some people to talk about Jokras like he's useless he's unusable he's not good enough and I simply don't align with that remotely we even saw at the start of Leverkusen game how he can be quite useful and effective.

1:21:28I think there are situations where he is tremendously ineffective. And so far for me, the games where we have settled possession and we're passing the ball around the horseshoe, I think he's just too easily missed out. And those little intelligent darting runs when we have deep possession not coming off for him necessarily either. So I'll be curious to see what Mikel does. He does have options. Does he go back to Saka? Does he reward Nani for the sub-performance? You know, is Kai ready to start? And if so, is that in midfield for Ezzo or is it up front? I do think a Kai 9, Ezzo 10 partnership could be really interesting to see as well.

1:22:03So lots of decisions for Mikel. As you talk, I bet he plays Saka. I bet he starts Saka. It's a lot to pull him off at 60 minutes in a Champions League tie and then seemingly drop him is the potential narrative. I bet Saka starts. Yeah, I mean, it depends how he also sees the importance of the cup final the next weekend though, right? because he's got to think a little bit about who can give me the minutes Saturday, Wednesday, or Saturday, Tuesday, Sunday. So we'll see. The interesting thing is, again, we play right before City. So if we can beat Everton, we really, really put the pressure on a wounded Manchester City team at a team battling relegation, but that means they have everything to be up for, everything to fight for, and they will see a vulnerable team coming to play them.

1:22:51And then we've got a very fun Sunday, by the way, because United play Villa, but more importantly, Spurs go to Anfield for their latest round of humiliation, which should be fun. So lots to come. Friday night, Clive tomorrow with Clive. We'll have an instant reaction after the Everton game on Saturday. Main pod on Monday and on we go. We will have an event in Washington, D.C. on April 11th. Paul and I will be there. Jacob from Poorly Drawn Arsenal will be there. We're trying to see if Clive can be there, and it's going to be a nationwide event for all Arsenal fans in the U.S. to try to link our community together and make something positive out of that.

1:23:19So we'll have news on that coming on the Monday pod next week. but you can start to circle in your calendar there if you want to join us in DC. So we'll leave it there. Thanks Paul. My name's Elliot Smith. We love you. And we'll talk after Arsenal 10, Everton Owe.

1:23:53Thank you.