Champions League performance insights: Arsenal's aggressive pressing against Paris

Arsenal’s Matchday 2 victory against Paris Saint-Germain was built on an aggressive pressing game which left the French champions floundering – and two goals down by half-time.

As Paris coach Luis Enrique admitted, Arsenal "pressed us high from the first minute and we couldn't overcome it", and what this analysis will explore is not just the intensity of that pressing but the plan behind it.

The first point concerns the aggressive way that Mikel Arteta's men pressed. In the first clip of the video we see Arsenal in a compact mid-block shape and once the opportunity arises to force Paris backwards, they go for it with the pressure led by the front two and winger Bukayo Saka before centre-back William Saliba and right-back Jurriën Timber then join in. Indeed, Saliba is highlighted for how he races upfield to get tight to João Neves.

"The timing and understanding of when to press all together was very clear," said UEFA technical observer Rafa Benítez.

Arsenal's intensity was so much greater in the first period and the chart above provides an illustration by showing the two teams' sprints out of possession across the 90 minutes – with Arsenal (red bar) collectively sprinting more than 4km without the ball.

As well as intensity, Benítez praised the intelligence behind their pressing as Londoners looked to force Paris to build up their left – Arsenal's right – and press hard there.

The heatmap above shows where Arsenal's pressure was most intense during the first period and Benítez added: "It was clear that the plan was to send the ball to this side – they were aggressive in their pressing against the left centre-back and left full-back and jumped to press the midfielder if necessary. They really took advantage and regained a lot of balls."

Clip two of the video offers an example of this as we see Leandro Trossard ready to press right-sided centre-back Marquinhos while Havertz stands closer to goalkeeper Gianluigi Donnarumma, encouraging the pass to the centre-back on the left, Willian Pacho. The ploy works with Pacho forced to go long and Arsenal winning the ball back.

With this 3-D visualisation, we can see the players' average positions in the first half as Paris looked to build play – and it reflects the Arsenal players' orientation towards their right side.

The effect of this strategy on Paris is made clear by this chart which gives a breakdown of the visitors' passes in their defensive third before the break. There is an obvious disparity between the number of passes down their left (29%) compared to the right (18%).

As for Arsenal's success in terms of regains on that side, this 3D visualisation from the first half makes it clear, with a predominance of red dots (signifying regains) on their right inside the Paris half.

This final chart highlights just how much more pressing Arsenal's players produced on Tuesday compared to their visitors.

Of the players who pressed the most, the top six were all from Arteta's team with Trossard leading the way with 44 pressures. To emphasise the difference between the teams, the highest-ranked Paris player, Warren Zaïre-Emery, produced 18 pressures.