Principles

When Arsenal lost the league title by a point to Chelsea in 2021-22, I think Arsenal lost out to continuity. Chelsea only made one major signing in the summer of 2021, Lauren James, who missed most of the season with injury anyway. Largely they just kept their very strong core together.

Arsenal were a new team learning to play under a new manager and, in the end, I think that made the difference. Chelsea had had the same players and the same coach for a long time. One of the advantages of that is that the coach’s core principles are totally embedded. Which leaves room for tinkering around the edges.

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During that season, Chelsea were able to play a hybrid system which would flow between a back three and a back four depending on the phase of the game. During the ill-fated FA Cup Final defeat to Emma Hayes’ side in December 2021, Jonas Eidevall held up red and blue cards in the dugout for his players. This was to illustrate when they were playing a back three and when they were playing a back four.

In Magda Eriksson, Hayes had the perfect player to slide across between left centre-half and left-back. Hayes and Eriksson had also been together for some years, so the mutual understanding between the coach and the players was optimal. I think this is the position Jonas Eidevall, now in his third season as Arsenal coach, wants to move to.

When he was first appointed in 2021, I was told that he typically switched between a back three and a back four depending on the opponent. He didn’t do this at all in his first season at Arsenal. Last season, we saw him move to a back three largely out of desperation as an injury crisis gripped the squad. However, he told Arseblog News just before the end of last season that he had in his mind to use the formation at some point anyway.

When the game at Brighton was postponed in January, he said he used the extra training sessions to train in a back three system. This season, we have seen Arsenal start both of their WSL games with three centre-halves, they closed out their 3-0 win over Linkoping in September with the system but didn’t start with it.

Now the squad and the coaching staff is entirely Eidevall’s, I think he is going to want his team to be tactically flexible and trust that the team have his core principles firmly ensconced. On Friday evening, he played Kim Little in a wide role because he felt her qualities would be useful for the specific game plan, which revolved around exposing United in transition in wide areas.

He also played Alessia Russo on the wide right. When I asked Eidevall about the system he said, “you could see we were lacking relationships within that. Sometimes that is the price of changing players.” He also pointed to communication errors in defence as one of the major reasons behind both goals conceded.

In defence, Laia Codina and Amanda Ilestedt came in during the summer, Sabrina D’Angelo arrived in January. Alessia Russo played wide right and arrived during the summer and hasn’t played with Stina Blackstenius before. Cloe Lacasse, who played as a wing-back against Liverpool and came on to score the equaliser, also arrived during the summer.

How Eidevall marries a sense of tactical flexibility and embedded principles with his core long-term players, while integrating the five new players who arrived during the summer is going to be fascinating. It is easy to forget that he is still without Beth Mead, Vivienne Miedema, Leah Williamson and Laura Wienroither too. There is still a sense of upheaval, it might be one more year before Arsenal hit that ‘golden’ summer like Chelsea had in 2021, when there is very little squad turnover.

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