Super insightful read from Billy as usual. Something that really surprised me that might’ve changed my mind a bit about Raya: he is claiming crosses 3x as often as Ramsdale. This was something I thought he was doing poorly from, and was hurting us as a result but I didn’t realise it was just my nostalgia goggles talking.

Also I think something underplayed in this article is set pieces. We all sort of know, and Billy talks to it here, that Arteta’s big MO is minimising variance in the game in the team’s favour. Yes, our open play goals have been lacking, but you don’t need to break down a low block from a set piece. If we scored 8 goals every game from corners and had 0 open play goals all season, you would be stupid to bemoan the lack of open play goals.

So yes, our finishing has been woeful, but the amount of corners in our last few games that have hit the first defender instead of our players has been as bad, if not worse.