Mikel Arteta shows Enzo Maresca how to coach with tweak that won Arsenal 3 points | OneFootball

Joe Cole was doing punditry for Arsenal against Leicester last night for TNT Sport, and there were some horrible contrasts with the match the night before, where his old team Chelsea had been humiliated by Brighton.

Asked for his feelings on the game, Cole was able to explain quite well why it was so embarrassing for Chelsea fans:

“Chelsea have given Brighton £250m nearly for players and managers and things like that, and then Brighton then go and do that to you,” he pointed out.

He also reeled off a list of some of the reasons the Blues had struggles. Chief among them was a lack of strikers in the squad. Bad luck had it that both Nicolas Jackson and Marc Guiu got injured in the same game against West Ham last week, and were both out here.

Meanwhile bad planning had it that there was no third striker in the squad, just Christopher Nkunku, who doesn’t play like a traditional 9 at all, and can’t lead the line.

You can see Cole speaking in the clip embedded here:

Mikel Arteta shows up Enzo Maresca with simple tactical change

This is where the comparisons to Arsenal get painful though. The Gunners were without any striker, much like the Blues. But Mikel Arteta managed to find a tactical solution – he put big man Mikel Merino up front, tweaked the tactics, swung crosses in and saw his team score twice.

Chelsea meanwhile trotted out the same system that earned them one solitary shot on target against the same opposition a week before, with Nkunku looking totally lost and uninterested up top. They managed precisely zero shots in their second run at it.

Of course there are no easy solutions when your first and second choice strikers are out – but we can still expect better than that.