It is quite clear that Arsenal is one of the best or the best team in PL this season. Here, I want to use just one simple example of how we attack in final 3rd compare to them. 

There is space and timing aspect in offense but it is quite difficult to catch them in stand still picture. So let's ignore them.  Let's just focus on player position. If you have watched arsenal game you will see this picture over and over

Saka with the ball out wide and Ben white making overlapping run behind him. 

This is not a magic formula.In fact we are also doing the same thing. 

This is one of our offensive sequence against bournemuth. It is the exact same thing. We had 3 player in the box/ready to attack (puli was outside the frame), Arsenal had 3. We had 2, player behind the ball Zakaria and cucu. Arsenal had odegaard and zinchenko. 

So we are doing the same thing so why arse looks very dangerous whereas scoring is a rarity for us.

It comes down to player quality. In that sequence, we ended up with a nice cross from Reece.  You put azpi/chalo/ben white in the exact situation and the ball would have gone around and around to nowhere. But we had Reece so it was a nice cross. 

In arsenal case the ball went from Saka to odegaard who had a nice shot. In our case it would have been to Zakaria. I don't think you can ask Zakaria to produce the same quality on the ball as odegaard. I also haven't talked about the difference between Kai on the ball vs Saka on the ball and how much attention do they attract. 

I mentioned about player quality and Reece importance. So what happen if we don't have Reece and we have chalo

As you can see in this picture,instead of rw+rb combo, it become rw+cm combo.This is why I said in forest game where we played Zakaria + jorgi instead of Gallagher that we need more from either zakaria/jorgi. As you can see in this picture instead of overlapping fb, we had underlapping cm from Gallagher. 

So is the different between arse vs us is just player quality? 

Right now arsenal looks like a machine. Their pressing, the timing of their movement and their build up is just very good. So it is not just player quality but player quality is one of the key factor. You took odegaard and Saka from this arsenal team and suddenly everything will change. 

 

 

 

Not really sure what to take from what i just read

I think it’s more that Chelsea, Liverpool and Man Utd have been well out the running. Man City have also had a few wobbles which leaves Arsenal full of confidence! Any other season they’d finish 5th or 6th!