Arsenal fans have taken to Twitter to react after Mikel Arteta revealed that he thinks his side need to keep crossing the ball.
Football London quote the Spaniard as saying: ‘I think it’s the first time in the Premier League that we put 33 crosses. I’m telling you that if we do that more consistently we’re going to score more goals. If we put the bodies that we had in certain moments in the game in the box, it’s maths, pure maths and it will happen. It’s how consistently we can do that with what level of quality.’
While the Arsenal fans below don’t seem too happy with these comments, you can see where Arteta is coming from if you remember how he and Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City side operated.
The Gunners boss isn’t necessarily referring to aerial crosses.
Just cast your mind back to how many open goals the Citizens scored in their title-winning campaigns, where Raheem Sterling and Leroy Sane were getting in behind time after time before squaring the ball.
Hopefully, that is what Arteta is referring to, because his forwards aren’t the most dangerous aerial presences around – the stats back that up.
Transfermarkt shows that Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang has scored 74 goals for Arsenal. However, just three of those have been headers.
In Alexandre Lacazette’s case, the Frenchman has scored 51 goals for the Gunners, but just seven have come with his head.
Currently, WhoScored shows that Arsenal cross the ball an average of 18 times per game in the Premier League. Clearly, Arteta wants to see that figure rise.
However, the Gunners supporters on Twitter don’t seem to have been won over by his comments…
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