Kolasinac inside movement:

During build-up, Kolasinac varied his movement to create options for Luiz on the ball. Kolasinac moved inside, attracting Meyer, who follows him. Now there is more space on the left and Luiz is able to find Aubameyang.

Luiz’s diagonal balls exploit Palace’s narrowness:

Palace play with a very compact defence, which leaves space on the wing. Their compactness was epitomized by both their full-backs being former centre-backs (Kelly and Riedewald). Luiz played diagonal balls to Aubameyang and Kolasinac to exploit the space on the left-wing caused by Max Meyer and Martin Kelly’s narrow positioning.

Arsenal’s average positioning:

Arsenal’s shape vs. Bournemouth (a) Arsenal’s shape vs. Chelsea (H) Arsenal’s shape vs. Man Utd (H) Arsenal’s shape vs. Palace (a)

As a result of Luiz’s long passes towards the left, Aubameyang was Arsenal’s highest player with Kolasinac close behind.

AMN recorded his widest average positioning of the four Premier League matches under Arteta. He was glued to Zaha and perhaps Arteta wanted AMN to stay a little wider with Zaha. Even when Xhaka moved to CB, AMN did not push up into midfield.

Ozil returned to a higher position on the pitch and as shown by the goal his ability to find space was crucial. Luiz’s average positioning was almost on the halfway line. During the first 30 minutes, Luiz was given plenty of time on the ball because of Palace’s passiveness and he recorded the most passes for Arsenal (50).

Palace’s press exposes spacing of Arsenal’s centre-backs:

As I mentioned in my previous article, during build-up, sometimes there is too much space between centre-backs. Arsenal were great for most of the first half as Xhaka dropped into the LCB role and the quasi-back-three used Torreira to play around Palace’s press. However, as Palace pressed higher and Xhaka wasn’t able to drop, the space between Luiz and Sokratis remained large. This was a problem and we fell into Palace’s pressing trap multiple times. As shown above, McArthur is waiting for the long lateral pass from Luiz to Sokratis to press.

Tactical reminder: Short distances are desireable at the back because they enable short passes, which lets teams quickly play out of pressure.

It was a sequence of short passing between Luiz, Torreira, and Sokratis that slightly disorganized Palace’s 4-1-4-1 (Kouyate turned his back after pressing the trio) enabling Luiz to bring the ball forward and the pick out Ozil with a pass.

Asymmetrical right-side defence works vs. Wilfred Zaha:

Max Meyer’s inside positioning helped Arsenal compact the right-side and minimize Wilfred Zaha’s impact on the game, as Arsenal did not have to worry about a crossfield switch to Meyer. Look how narrow Aubameyang and Kolasinac are in this video.

Palace did not take advantage of the space on the right-wing that Arsenal conceded because of their compactness. Hodgson started Meyer, who is a technical playmaker and likes to cut in. In the video above, when Palace tried to switch play, Kelly, who was in the penalty area, was Palace’s widest right option. Palace had no width in attack and Arsenal’s defence were able to concentrate on suffocating Zaha.

Aubameyang’s perfect goal:

Watch Ozil’s movement into the right half-space behind Palace’s 4-1-4-1 defensive shape. Luiz capitalized on Ozil’s intelligence, playing a beautiful defence-splitting pass. Ozil laid the ball off to Lacazette, who had dropped deep and brought Tomkins with him, creating the space for Aubameyang to run into.