Match Moments — Granit Xhaka Puts Himself Between a Rock and a Hard Place
As a lifelong Arsenal fan this article is not going to be the easiest to write as we’ve probably been the guiltiest throughout the last couple seasons of making dumb mistakes that cost games, valuable points, titles, and Champions League qualification. Why are certain players more prone to these types of mistakes? As a long term Arseblog reader, there was a headline for a post which sums Arsenal up well “Arsenal beats Arsenal to beat Benfica” meaning that we first have to not lose to ourselves before we can beat the other team. Just 10 days after this headline comes out, Arsenal were seen defeating themselves again when playing relegation fighting Burnley. The game finished with a 1–1 tie after Arsenal went up 1–0 and then pressed the self-destruct button by practically putting the ball in their own net via deflection player.
Like many of the best teams in Europe, Arsenal tried to play out of the back using their goalkeeper as an extra attacker, inviting pressure from the other team. This creates gaps and space for the team in possession to exploit and play through; and it works. In fact this is how Arsenal scored their first goal in this game. It started from the Arsenal goalkeeper, was well worked through midfield and ended up in the Burnley goal with a brilliant Aubameyang finish. The strategy doesn’t always work, sometimes the opposition team executes a flawless press eliminating any space, or teammates fail to move into positions and give a good option or angle, or the ball takes a funny bounce right before reaching the players foot. However, none of this was the case for the equalizer. Instead, Xhaka ignores the obvious first time pass, takes too many touches and fires the ball right into the midsection of a Burnley player 6 yards out from the goal and it bounces straight into the Arsenal goal. Something largely unacceptable for a professional player, let alone one who’s been putting in some Man of the Match contending performances over the last month. We’ll be going over the decision making process so if you’re not familiar with the OODA Loop and what guides actions on the field, check out this previous article. Now, let’s look at what happened.
Arsenal are set up quite well to play through the Burnley pressure. At the top of the image, you’ll see some great options for Xhaka to make a relatively simple pass. Some pundits and analysts say Arsenal’s goalkeeper Bernd Leno should simply kick it long to release the pressure, however I disagree. This is exactly what Arsenal want. To be able to play through 2 or 3 opposition players and get behind their first line of pressure. Let’s start at the beginning of the OODA Loop.
Observe — Initial thoughts were that Granit Xhaka doesn’t see the options due to being under pressure. However, in the image below, you can clearly see him scan for space before. He sees the space, he sees the options. This is not the issue.
Orient — The sense-making of seeing the space. Now this is where it can get tricky. A seasoned professional, he’s tactically smart enough to know that they want to get the ball into this space. He even tries to do this in the end. So it’s not about not “knowing” what the space means, or what he wants to do with it. The next question is, does he think through this quick enough? This step takes time, and depending on the complexity and speed of situations changing it’s often the failure point. In this instance, there ball travels 10 yards giving him plenty of time to make sense of the situation.
Decide — What we don’t have access to is knowing all possible decisions the Arsenal midfielder had going through his head. One is obviously the first time pass to space at the top of the screen, another is to try to turn but he’s aware enough to know he has pressure. The decision he goes with is to take a second touch. Why he chooses this one, we don’t know. It could be due to him being left-foot dominantThis may go back to the Orient step, or simply making the wrong decision. The two thoughts were that he felt he had enough time to take a second touch, or he wanted to draw more pressure on purpose. The other portion of the decision is not just what to do, but how and where. Here he chose to take the extra touch back towards goal instead of at any sort of angle to change things. This makes is extremely easy for Burnley to squeeze space. I’ll also add that taking a touch right back where it comes from isn’t often a decision (like a touch to the right or left is), it’s more of a lack of decision, or indecision. It’s the default. If you’re a long time Arsenal or Switzerland fan, you’ll recognize that this is a typical characteristic of Xhaka. His first touch too often is a “default” touch that doesn’t seem to have enough purpose. This is in stark contrast when comparing with someone like Xavi (one of the best ever in a similar, deep lying playmaker position) who’s first touch always had purpose and would change the angle, open his body up, unbalance the defenders, etc. Xavi once said:
“Decision making is what controls our physical actions. Some players have a mental top speed of 80 while other are capable of reaching 200. I always tried to reach 200.”
-Xavi Hernandez
The quicker someone thinks and decides, the earlier they act. The earlier someone acts, the more time and space they have. Xavi understood this well.
Action — While we know what the outcome was, the common misconception is that action isn’t about what happened. It’s about the “action” that was intended and decided upon. The intended action was to take another touch and a touch was taken. Of course, there’s 21 other players on the field, each of which were also interacting in real time, changing spaces, opportunities and impacting the environment. And the loop starts over.
Observe — Space and opportunities have shrunk, there’s more pressure. Xhaka feels it.
Orient — The best thing is for the ball to be moved out of pressure and quickly. There’s still players in space, however the path there is no longer simple. Pressure narrows the ability to think.
Decide — Make the pass to a teammate. To who? David Luiz. While there were other options, the pressure and panic narrows vision, thought, etc and quickly moves to the default option; the one in front and the way he’s facing (did I mention it’s a typical characteristic of Xhaka?).
Action — Once again, the intended action was to make the pass, to a teammate. One that I have no doubt he’s capable of making. He knows this too. It doesn’t matter how much pressure he’s under, he is capable of making that pass even with a player in-between. It requires a bit of finesse and technique to lob it over, curl it around, etc. But he’s a very talented professional player. He can do this. It’s important to recognize it because it gives context into why he made that decision. It’s a valid option and in his mind, a possibility and will always remain one as long as he has the technical ability to pull it off. The intended action was simply not executed correctly within the environment. There was a player in the way and the ball ended up hitting him and going into the Arsenal goal.
Was it the wrong decision to try to make that pass? Based on results, yes it was. There’s no doubt about it. It was careless. It cost the team valuable points. Like anything in life, he doesn’t suddenly just find himself there though. There’s decisions by teammates before, the angle he chose for his run, but most importantly (in my opinion), the decision to not pass first time and take a touch back towards his own goal was his undoing. It was where he put himself in trouble. It was an act of self sabotage right before the actual mistake. So often moments of brilliance are counterbalanced by decisions like that one. The world’s best players rarely put themselves in this situation and by making these mistakes, Xhaka is actively keeping himself out of the conversation of ever being a top player.
