West Brom vs Arsenal PL 15/16

Team news:
West Brom: Brunt (groin - doubt), Foster (knee)

Arsenal: Wilshere (ankle), Welbeck (knee), Rosicky (knee), Ramsey (hamstring), Oxlade-Chamberlain (hamstring), Walcott (calf)

Tony Pulis and Arsene Wenger press conferences

Scouting report by Michael Cox

In Tony Pulis’ first full season with West Bromwich Albion, the statistics suggest he’s implemented the approach he became renowned for at both Stoke City and Crystal Palace.

So far this season, West Brom are averaging the least possession in the league (43.5 per cent) and the fewest shots per game (9.5). This is a very defensive side that concentrates on sporadic, quick attacking through the wide players, and direct passes to centre forward Salomon Rondon.

Boaz Myhill will keep goal in the continued absence of Ben Foster, and he’s protected by a four-man defence which stays deep and narrow. Gareth McAuley was dismissed against Manchester United last weekend, which means Jonny Evans will be joined by either Jonas Olsson or James Chester.

They’ll be helped by the fact right back Craig Dawson is essentially a converted centre back, although peculiarly left back Chris Brunt is more of a natural winger, and in the side primarily because of his exceptional delivery from crosses and set-pieces.

Pulis has used both a 4-4-2 and a 4-5-1 system so far this season. The shape of the central midfield combination will vary accordingly, but either way Claudio Yacob will perform a solid holding role, with Darren Fletcher playing slightly ahead, albeit in a less energetic role than in his peak Manchester United days.

James Morrison is the main creator from central positions, can spread play nicely and is a long-range goalscoring threat, as he showed at the Emirates on the final day of last season.


Out wide, Pulis has used a host of players - James McClean, Craig Gardner, Callum McManman, Stephane Sessegnon and Saido Berahino. McClean and Sessegnon have been the favoured combination in recent weeks, because both are excellent at running with the ball, though Pulis is always tempted to use Berahino, essentially a second striker, to support the target man Rondon.

While Pulis’ previous sides have been accused of tough tackling, West Brom are the only side in the league who commit fewer fouls than Arsenal - evidence of the fact they stay extremely deep and only attempt to win possession inside their own third of the pitch.

Read more at http://www.arsenal.com/news/news-archive/20151119/scouting-report-arsenal-v-west-brom#xEsFFmzsF7t8Fiph.99

Stats Zone

Read more at: http://www.arsenal.com/news/features/20151120/west-bromwich-albion-v-arsenal

A view from the other side:

TheJacko2000 wrote:Can't wait for this, will be the best part of a month since I've been the game. Fancy a sneaky one nil to the Albion.

MisterAT wrote:Going to be another tough game.

With the international games coming up, we have to hope a couple of their players are tired and try and sneak a strong 1-0 win.

beechyboy90 wrote:i fear that we are due an absolute spanking. depends what Arsenal turn up and if we have some luck...

MarkW wrote:Spurs showed that when you press their central midfield and assert dominance and physicality on players like Cazorla, Arsenal can't handle it. We need to get amongst them and not let them settle on the ball.

Unfortunately, Pulis will make us drop deep and not apply pressure until they're well inside our own half.

Jimmy wrote:Should we do a prediction on the amount of completed passes by Albion for this game?

WBArgo wrote:Sadly I can see us getting battered here, similar to the Arsenal away/Tottenham home games last year under Pulis. He can't handle Wenger, and never really has done as a manager. There's not much shame in that as Wenger is a great, but I just can't see the 'sit back and defend' method working against this lot.

https://westbrom.com

Jimmy wrote:
Should we do a prediction on the amount of completed passes by Albion for this game?

pls guys. Let's do

Going to miss the game tomorrow due to work


But let's hope we smash them so badly that they beg Gnabry to play for them

Most like a 2-1 win or a 1-0 win though

I hate Pulis. Can totally forsee an upset coming along.

The fans seem much less disgusting than his previous club(s) though.

Hope Alexis is on the bench.

Arsenal team:

Cech; Bellerin, Mertesacker, Koscielny, Monreal; Coquelin, Cazorla; Alexis, Ozil, Gibbs; Giroud

Subs: Ospina, Gabriel, Debuchy, Flamini, Arteta, Reine-Adelaide, Campbell

West Brom:

Bus

Gibbs as a winger

The state of our attack

Hope we can keep a clean sheet and nick a goal somehow.

For the love of god, you can't lose to freaking WBA

How can you make these sort of mistakes, not even the likes of Bournemouth and Norwich of this league do this

Defensively that was the worse I have seen us in a while, West Brom are not even having a go yet we look shaky. Mertesacker and Bellerin are having a shocker, for some reason Bellerin refuses to close down any West Brom player everytime they come forward on his side. The less said about Arteta the better, he looks so off the pace. Going forward we are not creating enough from open play, the only way we win this is if we fluke a couple of deflections and get one from a set piece.

Exactly what I expected from us. We've been playing like shit since Walcott got injured.

urbaNRoots wrote:Exactly what I expected from us. We've been playing like shit since Walcott got injured.

not doing the basic cost us the lead, I doubt Theo would be able to do anything about Mertesacker getting beaten in the air by the likes of Morrison or Bellerin not closing down in the wide area or Ozil loosing the ball when he is the last man in midfield.

Arteta-Cazorla Midifield

we cant create anything on other end

Mesut has struggled in this sort of match again like 1st half vs swansea

EL Patron wrote:

urbaNRoots wrote:Exactly what I expected from us. We've been playing like shit since Walcott got injured.

not doing the basic cost us the lead, I doubt Theo would be able to do anything about Mertesacker getting beaten in the air by the likes of Morrison or Bellerin not closing down in the wide area or Ozil loosing the ball when he is the last man in midfield.

With Walcott we would actually be attacking instead of passing the ball around until we lose it and get caught up.

Why not take the corner short ffs

Campbell

sight

iftikhar wrote:For the love of god, you can't lose to freaking WBA

Yes, we can.

Sometimes, its just not your day.

Pathetic stuff. Gave away too awful goals and struggled to breakthrough in open play all game - and the odd time we did, we missed a sitter and a penalty. Coquelin gets injured, then Arteta comes on and has the worse cameo I've seen from an Arsenal player in a while before getting injured as well.

This after United had won, so we needed to win, and before the City game, so we could put pressure on them. And this is the shit we produce.

We will definitely regret these dropped points.

Also, I like how we're playing against a deep, narrow block, and don't play with any width at all, and force everything through the middle. All the time. No variety whatsoever.

You know you are f'd when you rely on Flamini/Campbell to make runs off the ball.

It's really frustrating to have the best passer in the world and yet still unable to use him at his best because the manager and players have forgotten what movement off the ball is.

That shocking first half performance cost us this game, despite being crap going forward we created enough to win the game but when you make the mistakes we made in the first half then its not surprising to go home with no point. We literally handed these 3 points to West Brom, embarrassing from the entire team, from the forwards to the defenders. No one comes out of this with any credit sorry lads.

Injury list mounting, I hope Coquelin is alright because we are a Santi injury from having nothing in midfield

Ozil and Alexis weren't that bad but they had so little to work with all game. Giroud scored but had a terrible game where he was bullied by WBA's centre backs and offered no movement at all, and Gibbs is clearly a limited attacker despite his effort.

This is yet another game that I thought we didn't use our fullbacks well enough. We took so long to get the ball into wide positions, that by the time it got there West Brom have barely broken shape.

The defending... no authority there at all. Bellerin got beat so many times by McClean, who's a very average player. At one point a big snowball of a punt caught out our whole defence.

Well Arteta is finished...but we already knew that.

We don't know how to beat park the bus/physical teams...but we already knew that.

Our attack always tries to play through the middle despite Giroud being surrounded by 8 defenders and we don't vary up our attack...but we already knew that.

So in other words same problems again and again...

Glad I couldn't watch the match

Looks like a typical away defeat.

not helping we're quite unlucky, Santi slipped, post & Campbell awful finishing.

Tough loss, but it seems as though the collective feeling amongst the fanbase is to chalk this up as one of "those" ridiuclously unlucky games and move on.

Of course we will regret these dropped points, but I do see us recovering considering our upcoming schedule.