Vardy Bid Suggests Change of Tack from Wenger but Will it Work?
Jamie Vardy was largely ineffective for England against Portugal. He had just eight touches in the game – seven on the left flank and a kick-off. Many blamed Roy Hodgson and his demand that his strikers should split and close down the opposing full-backs. But that is, at best, a partial explanation. It was also to do with the opposition. Portugal sat deep with Danilo Pereira and Joao Moutinho just in front of the back four. Vardy could neither isolate the centre-backs because of the shield nor make runs in behind them because they played so deep. And so, other than when he moved wide, he wasn’t involved. That should be a huge concern for Arsenal.
At Leicester Vardy’s strength was precisely those runs in behind. Think, for instance, of the game at Sunderland, who defended well for a little over an hour. Younes Kaboul then switched off for a moment and Danny Drinkwater picked out Vardy with a perfectly weighted ball over the top. It was simple, clinical and deadly. And it’s the sort of chance a side playing as deep as Portugal will not yield. Drinkwater in total laid on five goals for Vardy last season, the majority of them with just that sort of quick ball.
Leicester would have faced a different challenge next season anyway. Fewer teams will push up against them. More teams will sit back and be prepared to take a point. Early in the season, Vardy often benefited from opponent’s naivety, from their sense of Leicester as a team they had to attack. Later on, as Leicester had a points advantage, bigger teams had to attack them. Of the 115 shots Vardy had last season, eight came on counter-attacks. That may not seem a huge number its twice that of any other Premier League player last season, while 88 came from what is termed open play, which includes balls slid in behind the defence, as well as crosses as he got across the near post after Riyad Mahrez or Marc Albrighton had hit the space behind a full-back.
That space simply won’t exist for Arsenal. Partly that’s to do with how opponents play against them: most sides are content to let Arsenal have the ball and lay deep against them. But it’s also to do with how Arsenal want to play. They had more possession (56.9%) than anybody else in the Premier League last season; Leicester had the third least (44.8%). There will not be an endless supply of quick vertical balls for Vardy to run onto.
Perhaps Arsene Wenger is planning a change of approach. Perhaps he feels Arsenal’s patient style has become predictable and wants to return to the sort of devastating counter-attacks that were their hallmark when Nicolas Anelka, Thierry Henry, Robert Pires, Fredrik Ljungberg or Marc Overmars were running on to Dennis Bergkamp through-balls.
Mesut Ozil, certainly, has the capacity to play just that sort of pass. His tally of 19 assists was a Premier League record and was one of the reasons Arsenal averaged four through-balls per game, more than any one else in the league. Alexis Sanchez, with his pace, has already benefited from that and Vardy could in the way that it was always felt Theo Walcott should.
But he still seems a strange fit for Arsenal. It’s obviously partly conditioned by the side he was playing in and their style, but his pass completion rate last season was just 65.8%. Arsenal’s as a whole was 84.2%. Vardy’s rate will increase in a more possession-driven style but, like Joel Campbell, he is never going to have the deftness of touch to contribute to the long skeins of mesmeric one-touch passing that characterises Arsenal at their best. It simply isn’t his game.
Perhaps, though, that is precisely Wenger’s thinking, that Arsenal need something a bit sharper, a bit more streetwise, a bit less pretty at centre-forward. He tried it once with Francis Jeffers, but Vardy is more experienced and probably better. If this is to work, though, both he and Arsenal will have to change their games.
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