Arsenal vs. Fulham: Tactical Miscue Costs Arsenal Victory Against the Cottagers

Misshayleywright, who video blogs on YouTube, in her latest post on the Arsenal-Fulham match, wonders why Arsenal could not maintain—in the entire match—the same high level of energy with which they finished the last 15 minutes of the game.

She wonders this even though she notes, somewhere in her vlog, that Arsenal suffered from fatigue that resulted from their midweek game against Borussia Dortmund. Nonetheless, she wishes Arsenal had played the entire 90 minutes with the same energy with which they concluded the match.

Now Miss Wright is quite an astute analyst. Her observations and comments display a measured balance. She is not your run-of-the-mill mindless fan, who raves about how bad the players are when they lose a game, and how wonderful they are when they win one.

She is evenhanded when she analyzes players' performances after a game, and when she talks about rival teams. You may be carried away by her charms, but you have to give her the due regard for her effort, which is why I check out her opinion after games.

When she thus asks this question, it stands our more prominently in the light of her customary astuteness. When she expresses the foregoing wish, I see it as case of being short-changed by the"English-blinders." Now before you get up and about in arms—I'm talking now to the English—first hear me out.

The “English-blinders” in football, in my opinion, is the same factor that makes the premiership the best league in the world. I am talking about its high and incessant tempo, or rather colloquially, its speed. It is that proud element, which every coach in the premiership talks about when he signs new players from outside the premiership, the element these players are required to adapt to as a rule.

Put differently, it is a sophisticated way of defining the traditional, old-fashioned and quintessential trait of English football: kick-and-run. For what is the underlying trait of the premiership but a modern version of this old English way of playing football? It is a blinder because it is often supposed to be a quick fix for a myriad of tactical problems.

The English, in contrast to, say, the Spanish or the Dutch, are always talking about upping the tempo. "Oh, if only we had played faster, we would not have lost to Germany!" "Did you see how slow John Terry was?" "Why isn't Theo Walcott using his pace more?" "The Premier League is very demanding of foreign players, not many of them can adapt to its physicality..."

I chuckled, therefore, when I heard Miss Wright talk about increasing the tempo of the game. High tempo is the very reason why Arsenal could not beat Fulham in their Round 13 game. Not that playing a high tempo-ed game is bad, on the contrary, it is one of Arsenal's strengths adapted to their trademark passing and makes their version of tiki-taka quite different from Barcelona’s.

But while high tempo is well and good, while it may be the dominant strait in the EPL and makes it what it is,  while it may have it uses, clearly, for Arsenal, it was the wrong tactic to employ against Fulham. Why?

Simply: it was ill-suited for fatigued legs after a grueling Champions League match just three days before.

It should be of little wonder then to the keen observer that Arsenal's energy level dropped quite noticeably in the last 15 minutes of the first half, reaching an alarming level deep in the second, resulting in Fulham's forced error on Vermaelen, which gave them their goal.

If you watch the highlights of the game, you'd notice that Mikel Arteta is momentarily taken out of the game. This gives an advantage to Fulham and leads to their goal. Arteta simply sits there after he is forced off the ball, an infringement the referee deems unworthy of penalizing.

For the entire team, lethargy and heavy legs were the hallmarks of most of the second half. The alarming drop in energy resulted from the high tempo of the beginning. The ill-advised tempo eventually wrecked Arsenal's midfield, which is why Aaron Ramsey had to be substituted. Arteta survived the match by the skin of his teeth.

To state foregoing differently, Arsene Wenger fell victim to the English way of playing football when he demanded a fast tempo from his fatigued players. He should have reckoned that this would affect them deep in the match and opted instead for a patient approach.

Notice, as an example, that even though Barcelona do move the ball around, they rarely play at a high tempo (except in the Clásicos, of course). Spain, arguably the best national team in the world currently, do not play at a hectic tempo either, they opt, rather, for a patient chipping away at the opponent's defenses. This is what Arsenal should have done against Fulham.

In the first 30 minutes of the first half, barring the chances that Arsenal carved out, but did not take, I thought the hectic tempo suited Fulham better than it did Arsenal. It clearly worked to their advantage in the long run.

Had Arsenal started the game patiently at the beginning, conserving their energy as a result, they could have gradually increased the tempo as the match wore on, and could therefore have avoided running themselves into the ground. If the match had lasted another 10 minutes, Arsenal could have scored the winner, that's because they dug deep to eke out the equalizer and then pushed for the winner, which did not come, unfortunately.

What if they had worked patiently and did not punch themselves out, as happened in the match, and then had gradually increased the tempo in the second half to pile up the same kind of pressure they exerted on Fulham in the last 10 minutes of the game, devoid,  however, of the accompanying dead legs? Would they have not prevented the Fulham goal and won the entire thing?