Rewatching Arsenal& #39;s difficult first 20 minutes. There was a clear plan to get Saka and Willian into those & #39;Silva and De Bruyne& #39; positions in the half-spaces. Slightly more evolved/risky than what they have been doing and it didn& #39;t work, mostly due to poor distribution.

Willian was not holding the width on the right, he was playing much more as an attacking midfielder. Definitely a back four with the ball, which is why I don& #39;t think replacing Tierney with Gabriel was an option. This was fairly typical: nice spacing but Xhaka pass cut out.

Use of Saka and Willian an effort to be more creative and have some availability between the lines. Quality of pass from deep not good enough to find them/when it did get through, touch and decision making were off. Credit West Ham who were narrow and hard to play through.

I know Maitland-Niles has been moving central too, but mainly as a decoy.