- 5/29/2025
Arsenal are out of the Champions League, after losing 3-1 on aggregate to Paris St Germain. But after a host of missed chances across both ties, should they have actually progressed? Adam Clery looks at Mikel Arteta's tactics across both games to show why they really should be in the final... but ultimately were never going to be.
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00:00Right, hello everybody, Adam Fieri, AC, FC and Arsenal obviously are out of the Champions League
00:06and in a tie where I think it's very easy to just go, oh well, we're beaten by the better team.
00:13You see, the thing is, I don't think they were beaten by the better team.
00:18I think across both legs, they were the better team and should have gone through.
00:23And I think if you look at this and you look at this and you look at this and you look at this,
00:26you can see that and if you look at this, you can actually prove it as well.
00:30But at the same time, the reason why they didn't go through beyond simply just PSG being very good
00:37isn't just, oh, they need a centre forward.
00:40It's considerably, considerably bigger than that.
00:44So let's talk about all of that right now.
00:48But yes, okay, before we start, well observed, I have broken one of my fingers yet.
00:58Do you want to see that?
00:59Shall I show that to you?
01:00Is that really gross?
01:02Is that weird?
01:03I'll do it really quickly, right?
01:05There you go.
01:06If you really want to see that, you can go back and pause it.
01:09Ow.
01:09But yes, right.
01:10Anyway, so what did Arsenal actually do wrong across both these legs?
01:14If we start with the first leg, this was the 11 they started with for that.
01:19The answer is honestly nothing, really.
01:23It was just decided by like the finest of margins.
01:26And even the thing that PSG team was trying to do to this Arsenal team, you could see in the game,
01:32they were set up pretty well to stop.
01:34Now, I'll just show you what I mean here, right?
01:36Because PSG's plan, especially in the first leg, but also always, is to bait you into going lopsided.
01:44They want to focus their buildup through three players, and that can happen in a number of different ways.
01:49Like either the fullbacks, they both push.
01:51God, this is so hard with my hand.
01:53They push up and the goalkeeper joins in, so you get your three like that.
01:57Sometimes only one of the fullbacks pushes up, usually Hakimi, and then this fullback stays,
02:02so you got your three that way.
02:03And then sometimes even from here, they'll rotate and the fullback will then go up and Betinia will drop in,
02:09so you've still got that three.
02:10And more importantly, they will try all these different combinations across the course of the game
02:15to see which one is more likely to draw one of the wide players out of the press.
02:21And then once they have done that, either the central players will come across of their own volition,
02:25creating this gap, or they'll try and drag them out there with their own midfield players.
02:30But either way, you end up with this big central space for Dembele to drop into.
02:34He gets turned, he runs, you promptly fill your kex, and that is how PSG just tend to play.
02:42And if you look at the nice little graph Opti made of the entire passing sequence leading to that PSG goal,
02:47can you see it with all this?
02:49I'll just move it, that might look terrible.
02:51The entire passing sequence, you can see how patient they're willing to be to find that opening.
02:56But they knock it around for like 20 or so passes before finally ending up in this situation here,
03:03and that's their back three that they want to have,
03:05and that is Saka taking the bait and coming out of the midfield line.
03:10So what they've done is they've created this space here,
03:13but that's not the space they want to exploit.
03:15That's the space they want to force Arsenal to cover.
03:18The Rice and Marino aren't going to fall for that easily,
03:20so what Vettinia and Ruiz both have to do is start to motion from that central area into it
03:27to make it look like that's where they're going to receive the ball.
03:30And honestly, the movement here is just absolutely unreal.
03:33They both go at the same time, they both keep checking over their shoulders
03:36to make sure they're being followed in there,
03:38and then once that bait has been taken, you've got all of this space,
03:44and that's where the pass goes.
03:45It is a level of press manipulation not seen outside of general elections,
03:52and that is as edgy as I will get ever.
03:57Ow.
03:58Ow.
03:59Bandage keeps slipping.
04:01And yes, okay, that's how they get in for the chance that leads to the goal,
04:04but it still requires this sort of organisational mix-up from Rice, Marino, and Saka
04:09to enable the shot to come in.
04:11It wasn't that they completely ripped them wide open,
04:14but then even when he hits it, that's 11 players.
04:17They've got back 10 of them are between him and the goal.
04:21It's not some enormous mistake.
04:22And again, it's a tiny, tiny margin.
04:25And look, I'm just, I'm not going to get into XG yet,
04:30but if you give Dembele that chance like 10 more times, realistically,
04:34how many of them does he score?
04:36One?
04:38None?
04:38Like there are several billion realities out there in the multiverse
04:42where this just rolls harmlessly wide or hits somebody's shin,
04:46and it's actually quite a useful nil-nil.
04:49Also, we're all lizards.
04:50But more importantly than just infinite probability and all of that
04:53is the fact that chance never happened again.
04:57They almost never went lopsided again.
04:59Saka did double up on Kavatskelia,
05:01and they even found a way to play through PSG's press pretty quickly.
05:05Like it was man for man in the opening minutes,
05:07and they were sort of struggling with it.
05:08You can see they're giving it away here a lot,
05:10but then they adapted.
05:12They just sort of went really long.
05:13Instead, they reasserted themselves, and they got back into it.
05:17And like momentum graphs are obviously a very unscientific way
05:20of looking at a game of football,
05:21but if you look at it from the first leg,
05:23you can see that.
05:24They're getting absolutely dominated here.
05:27Then the game is more even here.
05:28Then they get themselves on top here,
05:31and they only start losing control at the end
05:32when they are really pushing for that equaliser.
05:36Tells its own tale.
05:37So the problem then in the first leg was not the system or the game plan.
05:42I think Arteta got both of those absolutely spot on.
05:45The problem was that he brought a knife to a gunfight.
05:50And in the second leg, the exact same thing happened.
05:54Those opening 20 minutes, right,
05:56how Arsenal pressed was up there with the most effective
05:59and the most aggressive, just sort of out-of-possession plans
06:04ever seen a team have.
06:06They basically decided that the solution to stop themselves
06:09going lopsided like this and dragging players across,
06:12which is to crunch every single player in that midfield,
06:15and even the defence, further up the pitch,
06:18and just close off that space entirely.
06:20And at 0-0, PSG had zero answer to this whatsoever.
06:26Zero.
06:26And thus this, and yes, very well spotted,
06:29everything is upside down because it's an up-to thing,
06:32so it's a home and away, it's reversed.
06:35Don't worry about it, all right?
06:36This is every single turnover that Arsenal forced off PSG
06:40in just, just that first half.
06:43So it's not like stray passes, it's tackles,
06:46it's interceptions, recoveries, it's stuff like that.
06:49And look at how many of them are in what you would deem to be
06:53a really good place to be winning the ball back.
06:57So my PSG would want you to not win the ball back.
07:00Just to give you a bit of context here,
07:02while all of these are arsenals,
07:04these are PSGs in the exact same time period.
07:08So as you can see, that is a lot.
07:10And from these, they were able to create chances,
07:14but they didn't score.
07:17But Atela also solved the Saka problem he had in the first leg.
07:21Like PSG were just so good at doubling up on him.
07:24There was always too many bodies, too many baddies.
07:27He couldn't do anything and they fixed that.
07:31This is early on in the second leg.
07:32And just look where Durian Timber is in the build-up here.
07:36That's absolutely nuts.
07:39He's physically pinning the left-back infield
07:43so that Saka can have all this room.
07:45And the only player capable of marking him now
07:47is Cavart Schellier, who's got to come all the way back to get him.
07:51Which, I mean, of course he does do,
07:52because everybody in that PSG front line works really hard.
07:55But by the time he gets there,
07:57Mendes can't just leave Timber here on his own
07:59to go and double up with Saka.
08:00They've already got an underlap and an overlap
08:03built in by the time they get the ball there.
08:06So it kept giving Saka really good 1v1 opportunities,
08:09which he was not getting in the first leg.
08:12They solved that problem.
08:13And it meant that Bagayo Saka went from having this heat map
08:16in the first leg, where he's barely able to get into the box,
08:19where he's hardly ever able to get to the byline,
08:21to this heat map in the second leg,
08:24where you can see his efforts are far more concentrated
08:27in the most dangerous place for him to be.
08:30And again, Arsenal were able to create chances from this,
08:34but they did not score them.
08:36And on top of that, still the other major problem
08:39that Arsenal had in this game
08:41was a lack of chances in this optimal zone.
08:44Like, these are all their efforts on goal
08:46from the first leg, right?
08:48And from open play, so bin them two,
08:51because they were crosses,
08:52from open play, there's nothing
08:54where you want your chances to come from.
08:56But again, Arteta fixed that in the second leg.
09:00So they made a real effort to get Rice into the box
09:02alongside Mourinho,
09:03because they're both two great headers of the ball,
09:05and they supplied them with loads of crosses.
09:09They had a grand total of like 11 or 12
09:11in the entire first leg,
09:13and they had more than that,
09:1414 in just the first 45 minutes of the second leg,
09:20which then thus changes all their open play efforts
09:23on goal in the first leg from looking like this,
09:26to looking like this.
09:28And now they've got absolutely loads
09:31in that optimum zone,
09:33but they did not score from them.
09:36And yeah, okay, I am saying did not score.
09:39An awful lot for a team who did literally score,
09:43but I'm talking about like before it got to 3-0,
09:46when it was still a contest.
09:48By the time that goes in,
09:49their chance has gone.
09:51This is when they could have actually won it.
09:53Like, they even added long throws to this plan,
09:55which again, did create chances,
09:58but again, they did not score from them.
10:01So the point I'm trying to make
10:02is that it wasn't the system or the game plan.
10:05They kept getting those right.
10:06They kept making the right tweaks
10:08and the right adaptations.
10:09The problem was that they brought a knife
10:13to a gunfight.
10:15And by a knife,
10:15if I mean Leandro Trossard and Martinelli
10:18and Declan Rice,
10:20and by gunfight,
10:21I just mean scoring fucking goals.
10:24Through every single thing they got right
10:25about the game plan and the strategy
10:27and the tactics and all of that,
10:28they made this and they made this
10:30and they made this and they made this
10:32and they did not score any of them.
10:34Dembele and Hakimi got these and did.
10:38And that is just all this tie really came down to.
10:42And just to like forewarn you here,
10:44I am going to talk about XG.
10:46Arsenal made like two XG in the first leg
10:50and scored zero goals.
10:51And they made over three in the second leg
10:54and only scored one.
10:57You cannot have that many opportunities
11:00and only come away with one goal.
11:04Not if you want to win the Champions League.
11:06Meanwhile, the actual XG of PSG's individual goals,
11:10and this is a tweet from XG Philosophy,
11:12by the way,
11:12who have loads of fun with this stuff.
11:15You would not regard a single one of these
11:18based on the numbers as good chances.
11:20When you look back at them,
11:22none of them are.
11:23But PSG and the players taking those chances
11:25were just ruthless.
11:28And that's what really, really elite players tend to be.
11:32And I mean, oh, well, obviously, Adam.
11:34So you're just saying the need to buy a centre-forward
11:36at the top end of the pitch
11:37to put all these chances away.
11:39I mean, well, gee, gosh, thanks for that.
11:42Not like everyone's been saying it all season, right?
11:45And well, okay, first off,
11:46don't really think the tone was necessary there.
11:48Just trying to make a nice video for you.
11:50That would help to an extent,
11:53but it would not fix the core underlying problem
11:57that Arsenal have.
11:58While they did create chances in this game,
12:00enough, in my opinion, to win the tie,
12:04Arsenal at the very top level
12:06in the very biggest games
12:08have an overall creativity issue, I think.
12:12If I told you that per 90 minutes
12:15in the Champions League,
12:16so take the total number
12:17and divide it by how many matches they played,
12:20PSG ranked second in the entire tournament
12:23for the number of chances created,
12:26where would you say, what would be your guess
12:29for where Arsenal rank out of all those 38 teams?
12:33I'll give you a second.
12:34Where would you guess Arsenal are?
12:36PSG was second.
12:38You done? You got an answer, right?
12:39Well, it's 17th.
12:44And look, don't get me wrong,
12:45it's not the end-all be-all as a stat.
12:47Like, Inter are pretty low as well,
12:48and they are going to be in the final.
12:51But when you are as low as that
12:52for creating chances,
12:54it's really, really hard for you
12:56to get through the latter stages.
12:58But the bottom line is that
12:59when you are creating,
13:00but never creating enough,
13:02and what you are creating
13:03isn't getting put away,
13:05then in these really big matches
13:07against the elite-level teams,
13:10you're very, very rarely going to win.
13:13I think even if you look at Arsenal's, like,
13:15record against the quote-unquote
13:16big six in the Premier League,
13:18they are undefeated in the last 10, right?
13:21But just look a little closer.
13:23If, and yep, granted,
13:25this is a pretty big if,
13:26you take away the 5-1 against Man City
13:29because it's just such a statistical outlier,
13:32doesn't really make any sense, right?
13:33Again, big if, but if you did,
13:35then the record against the quote-unquote
13:37big six is 1-5, drawn 4,
13:40scored 13, conceded 8,
13:43and four of those five wins
13:46are by one goal.
13:48Newcastle beat them 2-0 home and away
13:51in the Carabao Cup.
13:53They went out of the FA Cup
13:54to Man United at home.
13:56In fact, as well,
13:57Saka's goal towards the end of the PSG game
14:00made it one goal scored
14:03in their last seven,
14:05seven semifinals.
14:08That is,
14:10that's astonishing, isn't it?
14:12And just the point I'm trying to make
14:13with this video by showing you
14:14how they did so much right
14:16in a tie they were ultimately
14:18well beaten in
14:19is because this is a really,
14:22really good team
14:24with a potentially great manager
14:26looking after it
14:27and yet it is still just missing
14:29elite players at number nine
14:32on the left wing,
14:33arguably even in midfield.
14:35And, like, the structural side,
14:38the organisation, the tactics,
14:39the training ground stuff
14:40will only get you so far
14:43in these big competitions
14:44and you need the quality
14:46to carry you the rest of the way.
14:49And Arsenal have that first bit
14:51in abundance,
14:51arguably more than any other team
14:53in the competition,
14:54but they are woefully,
14:56woefully short
14:57of the other bit.
14:58And the problem they've got there
14:59is that other bit
15:00tends to be,
15:01unless you get really lucky,
15:03really,
15:04really expensive.
15:06So, yeah,
15:06that's why I think
15:08Arsenal probably deserved
15:09over two legs
15:10to actually beat PSG,
15:11but also,
15:12at the same time,
15:13why that was
15:14never going to happen.
15:16But Arsenal fans,
15:17though,
15:17you watch them
15:18more than me,
15:19I did like to know
15:20what you think
15:20in the comments below.
15:21Were you just beaten
15:22by the better team?
15:23Is this kind of indicative
15:24of the problems you've got?
15:25Or were you a bit unlucky?
15:27Just let me know
15:28how you feel,
15:28thoughts,
15:29get your soul out,
15:30do nice things,
15:31write them down there
15:32and I will read them.
15:34That sounded weird.
15:35You get me across
15:36all the social medias
15:37at Adam Cleary,
15:38C-L-E-R-Y,
15:39of special interest
15:40to those of you
15:40living in North London.
15:41I'm still doing
15:42the Hackney Half
15:43in like 10 days.
15:44I don't know what you think
15:45and you don't need a finger
15:46to run the Hackney Half,
15:48but I did also,
15:48in the same game of football,
15:49I did this,
15:50tear my quad ever so slightly.
15:52So I've now got
15:53the added peril,
15:54as well as having
15:54bad knees and a weird heart,
15:56of my legs
15:57potentially unfurling
15:58like a cheese string.
15:59So if that's
16:00of any amusement to you,
16:02you can sponsor me
16:03at the link
16:03in the comments.
16:05It's going to a really,
16:06really good cause
16:07and I may get
16:08quite seriously hurt.
16:09And yeah,
16:09obviously just on top of that,
16:10please don't forget
16:11to subscribe to us here
16:12at ACFC.
16:14You think you wanted
16:15to win the Champions League,
16:16you do not know
16:17how much I want
16:19100,000 subs
16:20before the end of the season.
16:22Nearly as much,
16:23I would argue.
16:24Sorry Arsenal,
16:25I really,
16:26I was pulling for you here
16:27as a quote unquote neutral,
16:29but always next year.
16:32Goodbye.
16:37Get this,
16:37oh!
16:38Ow, ow, ow, ow,
16:39ow, ewe, ow, ewe, ow, ewe, ow, ewe, ow, ewe, ow, ewe, ow, ewe, ah,
16:42got a bit of what-tits in it
16:44Aроh.
16:46God, it's still really broken.
16:48I don't know.
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