Chapter 822 Another Comeback! Wang Shuo Has an Epiphany! Last-Second Winner! Wang Shuo, You’re Too Fast! Arsenal’s Iron-Blooded Script!

KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK!

"Come in."

Following Wenger’s response from inside, Wang Shuo opened the door and walked in.

"Professor."

"Wang?"

Wenger was sitting behind his desk reading documents. He wore a pair of glasses, though it was hard to tell if he was nearsighted or farsighted. "Come have a seat."

Seeing Wang Shuo enter, he smiled, reached up to take off his glasses, and rubbed the bridge of his nose. He had obviously been reading for a while, and his eyes were a bit dry. "Did you need me for something?"

"Everyone has been giving me feedback, and I thought it was necessary to come and talk to you."

"About the team?"

"About the defense!" Wang Shuo replied.

Wenger paused for a moment. The relaxed expression on his face quietly faded, replaced by a solemn look. "Okay, I should have guessed."

Seeing Wenger’s reaction, Wang Shuo figured he probably already knew what this was about.

"Everyone feels like we should practice our defense. Maybe add some defensive drills? Including set pieces, regular defensive formation drills, and things like that." Pausing for a second, Wang Shuo added, "We’ve really conceded too many goals this season. It’s not sustainable to keep bleeding goals like this. Of course, there’s no disharmony in the dressing room right now; everyone is just discussing it and voicing their opinions."

Wenger nodded, reaching up to scratch his chin. After rubbing it a few times, he stood up and walked over to the tactical board in the office.

Every head coach had their own tactical philosophy. For example, at Bar?a, Guardiola’s training sessions were entirely ball-oriented. In the Bundesliga, Wang Shuo had heard that Magat’s training sessions were strictly off-the-ball. When he got crazy, he would even drag players out to climb mountains during summer training, causing such widespread complaints that Rakitic furiously transferred to Sevilla. Different coaches had different football philosophies, which naturally led to different training methods and approaches.

Wenger’s training was also primarily focused on the ball. Everyone praised Arsenal’s football for being beautiful and fluid, but this was all built on the foundation of repetitive daily training.

Wenger had once shown everyone a set of data. Under the fast pace and relentless pressing of the Premier League, a professional player’s passing accuracy was inversely proportional to the passing distance.

What did this mean?

For passing distances within 10 meters, there was essentially no error, and the success rate exceeded ninety percent. Between 10 and 15 meters, the error margin was kept within 1 meter, with a success rate of over eighty percent. Fifteen meters was the watershed mark. If the distance exceeded 15 meters, reaching around 20 meters, the success rate of keeping the error margin under 1 meter dropped to less than sixty percent. At 25 meters, it plummeted to a mere twenty percent.

Mind you, this wasn’t data handpicked from elite playmakers; it was a foundational baseline that any professional player could achieve. Furthermore, almost every professional head coach knew this.

So why was Arsenal so different? Because Wenger repeatedly drilled his players in daily training, demanding that they keep their running distances relative to each other within 15 meters, or even around 10 meters. This way, passing distances remained short, and the success rate remained high.

Many people said that once the Gunners’ players transferred away from Arsenal, their true colors were immediately revealed, exposing their actual skill levels. The real reason lay precisely here! Many players looked like they had exceptional passing abilities when playing for Arsenal, but that was built strictly upon the foundation of the team’s off-the-ball movement system.

Upon joining other teams, they found that the distance between players frequently stretched to 20 meters, or even over 25 meters. Consequently, their passing errors skyrocketed, giving the impression that they didn’t know how to play football once they left Arsenal. At the end of the day, the player was still the same player. What differed was the tactical environment they were placed in.

So, what was the problem with Arsenal’s tactical system? It was actually quite similar to Manchester United’s: everyone had to run incredibly hard to ensure they were always within a reasonable passing range of 10 to 15 meters. However, doing so resulted in massive physical exertion. This was also why Arsenal was so prone to collapsing in the second half of every season.

Another subsequent problem was that when their side had the ball, all the players would run freely to ensure they were in a reasonable receiving range. Naturally, this scrambled the team’s formation, leaving players out of position. Offense could afford positional fluidity, but defense relied entirely on structural cohesion. The moment the team transitioned from attack to defense, their overall formation couldn’t take shape immediately. The freer the offense, the greater the pressure during defensive transitions.

If one didn’t believe it, they only needed to look at Bar?a. Right now, all of Europe knew that the key to playing against Bar?a was to hit them during their transition from attack to defense. Mourinho’s Inter Milan and Real Madrid were the perfect examples! The Gunners were much the same.

Mitigating this problem relied on pressing and closing down from the midfield and forward lines. But this was only a mitigation. Once the opponent rapidly penetrated into the heart of their defense, they still had to rely on the defenders.

Many people understood defense as stopping the opponent from scoring or preventing them from carrying the ball into dangerous areas—namely, the 30-meter zone. But this philosophy had long been outdated. Or rather, it was far from sufficient to cope with the modern development of attacking football.

Nowadays, the emphasis was on proactive defending. Once the opponent entered the 30-meter zone or threatened the goal, the defense became extremely reactive. How does one defend proactively? By restricting the opponent from utilizing their strengths! When Bar?a couldn’t control the ball fluidly, when Arsenal couldn’t execute their passing and cutting smoothly, when Serie A teams were forced to take the initiative and attack...

And when it came down to the specific mechanics of defending, it was basically a combination of man-marking and zonal marking; the two were not distinctly separated. Generally speaking, zonal defense was adopted outside the 30-meter area. Inside the 30-meter area, man-marking defense was employed.

Of course, there were exceptions.