KEOWN TALKS TACTICS

EXPECT BOTH PEP AND ARSENE’S METHODS TO BE ON SHOW AT THE EMIRATES...

ARSENE WENGER would tell us to take as few touches of the ball as possible. The longer you take in possession, the less time your team-mate will have when you finally pass it to him. What’s the point in dillydallying? The great Manchester United teams I played against followed this mantra, too. Two touches at the most, or you’d get an earful. Think of it like climbing a ladder. From defence, to midfield, to the forward line. If I gave the ball to Patrick Vieira, he would then try to get it into the feet of Dennis Bergkamp, and we’d do it with minimal touches. That was missing at Arsenal until their 1-1 draw with Bournemouth on Boxing Day. Lucas Torreira seemed to pick up that message in midfield in particular. Wenger would lift the restrictions on the flair players — they were given licence to take more touches and work their magic. Mikel Arteta played under Wenger and worked with Pep Guardiola and their styles of play are similar. Guardiola previously credited Arteta for the rise of Raheem Sterling. ‘Arteta is working many, many days after training for the last action, for the control in the last moment,’ Guardiola said in 2017, midway through a transformative season for Sterling. It will be interesting to see the impact he can have on Nicolas Pepe, too. He has been one of the culprits needlessly taking too many touches on the ball when it might be nice to see his best work coming off it. That’s what Sterling does. Amid all this change, I do have a degree of sympathy for Arsenal’s players. Unai Emery was sacked on November 29, Freddie Ljungberg took over as interim head coach, then Arteta was appointed on December 20. In the space of three weeks, they have had three managers, three different voices, three sets of messages. Arteta will have looked at his team’s strengths, including his attack. Mesut Ozil started against Bournemouth in a central position and he will have liked hearing his new manager’s analysis afterwards. ‘He worked and could have been the difference,’ his boss said. ‘We could have scored three or four goals from his balls through. The final product wasn’t what we wanted.’ The goal Arsenal conceded was a result of them trying to overplay. Bukayo Saka lost the ball and it left a hole in his position. Bournemouth exploited that. So there is work to do defensively, but they certainly passed the ball with more

urgency. Chelsea at the Emirates will not be easy. After their 2-0 loss to Southampton at Stamford Bridge, a Premier League home table placed Frank Lampard’s youngsters 11th. An away table placed them third, behind only Liverpool and Manchester City. They are dangerous on the road and may stick with the same three at the back that saw them triumph at Tottenham last week. Maybe Chelsea have been slightly naive at home, but they like to keep the ball — don’t forget we saw a Guardiola side record his lowestever possession when Chelsea visited in November. They will try to do the same against Arsenal but Arteta has the players to hurt them on the break.