For the second year in a row the English football season ended with Arsenal winning the FA Cup. The Gunners beat a revived Aston Villa team 4-0 and never looked like conceding a goal, let alone losing the tie. A lot of credit has been given to Alexis Sanchez and Santi Cazorla for sensational individual performances and rightly so, they are both world class players and they turned up in a big game yet again.
However, one part of their game that has been somewhat overlooked by the experts is their pressing. For years Arsenal have practised a style of defending based on making the opposition uncomfortable and by pressing the key spaces that the other teams use to start their attacks. Aston Villa are a direct side and they do not have anyone who can really dictate the tempo of a game, so they often play long balls straight from the back 4 or from deep midfielders up to targetman Christian Benteke. Arsenal’s pressing was extremely well drilled which meant Villa didn’t have time to make their passes into Benteke accurate and it therefore turned into the dreaded ‘hoofball’.
One player who makes Arsenal’s pressing game tick is Francis Coquelin, he has been overlooked for a long time but has stepped into the holding role extremely well. I was firmly in the camp of ‘Arsenal must sign a new centre defensive midfielder’, but Coquelin is good enough to hold that role down moving forward. Positionally he is absolutely superb, and that means that the five most attacking Arsenal players can all move forward and press without worrying about key pockets of space opening up behind them.
Above is a screenshot from the beginning of the game. Arsenal have pushed both their full backs on in order to try and drag Jack Grealish and Charles N’Zogbia; Villa’s creative players, deep in order to nullify the counter attacking threat. This was a feature in the early part of the game and in honesty Grealish offered absolutely nothing to the game. By going 4-1-4-1 Sherwood invited Arsenal’s full backs on and at times Villa had a back six.
This meant support couldn’t get to Benteke quickly enough. Arsenal did not only push the full backs on for an attacking purpose, but on the rare occasions they lost the ball, the full backs stayed high up the pitch meaning Villa were forced to counter attack through the middle. With Coquelin always well positioned, he was able to easily break down any potential threat from the Midlands side.
Arsenal were always in a position to either win the ball back quickly or press the opposing man with the ball to allow the defensive players time to restructure.
Above is Villa’s first attempt to try and create something. Arsenal effectively used a trap and made it difficult for Tim Sherwood’s men to play into the space in the middle of the pitch. Westwood and Richardson are well positioned open at the bottom of the screen but Arsenal have compressed the space that Fabian Delph can play in, meaning that Villa were again being rushed into a poor decision.
In the unlikely event that Delph could spread the play, Arsenal’s pacy Hector Bellerin would come bombing out of defence quickly to meet the man with the ball and the midfield would drop into the central zone to nullify any creativity that Villa could utilise.
Coquelin was a big part of this pressing, he was often the trigger for the extra press and was terrific at closing the gaps in midfield.
The final image shown is when Arsenal are 3-0 up and on the way to victory, but their pressing remained relentless. Villa have previously scored a number of goals from simple long balls, but Arsenal show that they would not let up the pressure, even in the late stages of the game. On this occasion, Alexis Sanchez presses Jores Okore and does not allow him any time to float a pass up to Benteke.
They instead force him to punt it as all of his passing options are marked tightly. This was a big feature of the game, Villa were not drilled well enough to play out of the high pressing game and Arsenal took advantage of this. Villa’s passing patterns were predictable and easy to cut out, but looked better when Agbonlahor came on as his quick speed and good dribbling ability meant that they could play their way out of trouble. In reality it was too little too late and Arsenal got the win that they deserved.
Arsenal’s play is all about passing and moving and as the old cliché goes, ‘trying to walk it into the net’. But Wenger is an excellent defensive tactician as well, his use of pressing in the final meant that Villa would have had to rely on a serious stroke of luck in order to come away with their eighth FA Cup.
Arsenal made Aston Villa play poorly because of their intense pressing and great discipline in the central areas of the pitch.
