18 March 2015

Walcott needs to improve on practice run before Monaco

#AFCvWHU #MONvAFC


Since the huge disappointment of our loss to Monaco, our performances in winning our next four games have been really encouraging. Professional performances against Everton and QPR enabled us to brush them aside without needing to play our best, and against Man United we deployed a very similar system to the one that we used so successfully when we travelled to Man City.

By this I mean that we were happy to give up the lion's share of possession and organise ourselves defensively such that there was not much space between our defence and midfield, making it very difficult for the opposition to create any openings. With patience, the opportunities arise for us to score. Firstly, a mazy but forceful run from Chamberlain caused havoc in their defence, leaving Monreal with plenty of space to find a calm finish. Rooney equalised soon after from a dangerous cross from di Maria, cutting inside from the right to cross with his left foot. Di Maria's crosses had been Man United's only real threat to our defensive stance and, later in the game, Welbeck was able to capitalise on a terrible back pass to score the winner.

While this approach seems to be a great blueprint for playing away against the bigger teams, it's not going to help us against Monaco on Tuesday, as they have no reason to come out and attack us. The onus will be on us to attack in order to score an early goal, and I feel that this influenced our line-up against West Ham:

Ospina; Chambers, Mertesacker, Koscielny, Monreal; Ramsey, Coquelin; Walcott, Özil, Alexis; Giroud.

If we are to stand any chance of winning against Monaco we need to play all of our most direct, incisive and dynamic players and I believe that Walcott for Cazorla was an attempt to give him some match-sharpness in order to unleash his pace against Monaco. What I loved about the team against West Ham was that every one of the front five players offers a different attacking threat, with Walcott's pace and runs behind, Alexis' pace and direct dribbling, Giroud's strength, finishing and interplay, Özil's creativity, vision and ability to play others in and Ramsey's movement and finishing. This is at the expense of Cazorla's ball-carrying ability and drive but has the potential to cause Monaco real problems with our pace, movement and one-touch interplay.

I could see Walcott getting in on goal with his clever movement, but he will need to drastically improve his finishing from what we saw on Saturday. It has been great to see the rise of Özil over the last month or so as he has really grown into the number 10 role behind Giroud. Earlier in the season I suggested that our main challenge was to find a system which could allow all of our best players (Alexis, Özil and Ramsey) to be at their most effective, and the game against West Ham was beginning to make this a reality. This game allowed us to fine-tune some of our movement and one-touch interplay, particularly between Giroud, Ramsey and Özil. Not only this, but Özil now seems to be putting in a shift defensively, meaning that we are not left exposed with him playing centrally.

What has made this week all the more pleasing was seeing Chelsea crash out of the Champions' League despite employing their usual dirty tricks, and then seeing them drop points in the League too, along with Man City, Spurs and Southampton. While on the subject of the Chelsea - PSG game, I was very impressed with Rabiot, who looked to combine defensive tenacity and strength with offensive drive and running power.

Anyway, back to Monaco, and I'm hoping for the same attacking line-up as we saw against West Ham, in order to keep building on the relationships and understanding between players in order to play one-touch, dynamic football with pace and directness. This will give us the best chance of getting an early goal.

Predicted line-up: Ospina; Bellerin, Mertesacker, Koscielny, Monreal; Ramsey, Coquelin; Walcott, Özil, Alexis; Giroud.

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