Atlanta were just playing base on instructions we all know how dangerous Arsenal as a Club are when it comes to set pieces that will lead to an air attack. Arsenal have players who are very good in the air and this has been one of their routes to getting goals. Last season Arsenal defender Gabriel had 6 goals with which all of them were headed goals from set pieces. Yesterday Atlanta knew Arsenal wanted to use it against them and stopped them from doing, if I can remember the only corner against Tottenham in the league was the goal they got to score and win the match so maybe most teams are actually studying how they arsenal had deployed method to get goals off opponents.
Overall yesterday Arsenal were simply just poor, I think Arteta needs to find solutions to the lack of creativity coming from the midfield in the absence of Their club captain. Against Manchester city it will be very risky to try out a new formation yeh so they could stick to the Tottenham formation for now but if it doesn’t work again like the previous too matches then it will be worth for Arteta to actually experiment the young man Ethan Nweri who is their only creative midfielder left
The coach of Atalanta is actually a gem and I wonder how good of results he could actually bring if he was given a better squad! I am pretty sure everyone realized that he is a great coach when he was able to beat Leverkusen in the last season when any other team or coach was unable to do so. And yes I absolutely agree that Atalanta players were just playing as per the instructions that the coach had given them. That is why sometimes it is very important to actually listen to the words of the coach. I don't think anybody expected Arsenal to not score in this match. But Atalanta has been able to pull that off.
Arsenal was not that bad in this match. Arsenal was just trying to do the things that worked for them in the past. It's just that Atalanta was just better prepared for that. I bet Arsenal didn't even think that Atalanta would play so well.