No longer TOTL. I took my own advice and waited 24 after the debacle of yesterday before committing my incoherent thoughts to this post. A post containing the full range of my swear words would not have made for an interesting read. Though it would have been helpful therapy. The only silver lining yesterday was the scoreline down at Brighton. That, at least, was able to bring a small to my face. I mean, if that can’t make you happy then there is no point to life.
Instead, I’m left with the miserable realization that we are, in fact, not quite ready for prime-time. No team that aspires to win the league can wither away in front of goal as we did against WHU. And no team can afford to drop this many points over the Christmas period. OK, maybe that last part is not quite true.
We dominated that opening 10 minutes. It looked like one-way traffic. We played with a high tempo and moved the ball around rapidly. We started to create chances and all seemed right with the world even if all our activity was down our right hand side.
I’ll say this early and without any sense of irony. We missed Have-that yesterday. Trossard was not as comfortable or available in that positions where he often drifted infield. It’s a shame ESR was not fit enough to start but I have no doubt that was the right decision. ESR has to be reintegrated slowly and carefully given his Wilshire-like injury record.
Their first goal was entirely against the run of play. As was their second. But for that first goal it just looked like a comedy of errors. I believe it started up field with White being out of position. But even then, there seems no obvious reason for concern. Emerson’s cross seemed relatively harmless. But then Zinny proceeded – as he did at Anfield – to effectively collide with one of our own – Gabriel this time to cause chaos in our box. Raya stayed on his line and then drifted out to the side where the ball was passed back for the to score into an open goal.
Then we had to wait 3 minutes for VAR to see of it could see what we could all see – which was, as was the case against Newcastle – that the ball had gone out before Bowen crossed the ball back. The commenters claimed there was not sufficient evidence. Yet, as they played it frame by frame it was clear and obvious that this ball went out. What is the point of VAR if they can’t get the objective decisions right. This is not a subjective matter of judgement; it’s binary. But yet again, as with Newcastle, we were penalized again.
Of the many vageries of VAR, I don’t understand why there cannot be a chip in the ball to unequivocally determine whether the ball is in our out. It’s nearly inevitable that, around the by-line, neither the linesman not the cameras will have a clean line of sight. There will always be too many players around (though not in the case of Willock)
Having seen the way we started though I figured there was ample time for us to score multiple times to retrieve the points. We continued to dominate but a degree of repetition set in. The activity down our right, with tight triangles, was very cute but only generated a few direct chances. After another glorious Odegaard pass Saka hit the post. And then Martinelli, as he has been doing for the last few games, squandered another chance; missing the target yet again.
Someone has removed the mojo from Martinelli. As feeble as he was against Brighton and then again Liverpool, he was even worse against West Ham. He needs to be rested as he’s lost his way. This was, hands down, his worst performance in an Arsenal shirt. He was incapable of arriving in the penalty box at the right time, was unable to beat his man on the wing and incapable of putting in any decent crosses.
With this abject performance from him combined with Trossard floating infield and Zinny being Zinny, out left hand side was completely ineffective. And even on the other side Saka was not at his best. The only players who seemed to turn up yesterday were Odegaard, Rice and Saliba. Odegaard buzzed around and tried to create. But there was little movement.
We had chances mind you. I admire Jesus and his work rate. He keeps the pressure on their defense and provides so many options for us. But, and this seems reasonably obvious, one would expect him to be able to score important goals for us. And that header he missed in the second half was important. I could not imagine Halland, Kane or even Watkins missing the target let alone not scoring that.
And that’s the core of our problem. Where do our goals come from? Against Liverpool it was Gabriel and there were none at Villa. And you can’t win the league if you can’t score goals. That seems pretty obvious. That does not mean we’re not a good team. We clearly are. We were unlucky against West Ham. I believe they had two shots on goal yesterday whereas our count was in the twenties. We dominated possession. But we lacked some creativity and movement. As the game wore on we ran out of ideas. It seemed inevitable that we would not score.
Our team has some world class players. Rice and Saliba. And there’s an argument for Saka to be in this group. But that’s not enough to win the league, sorry. Even 24 hours later that realization is sinking in. And I know, I never imagined we would win the league this year. it was just that game against Luton that opened my mind to the idea.
We have a decent right back in White but our left-back, again, was key to our defeat. Maybe that’s a little unfair. But you just can’t defend like that. Though clearly he can. Even if Rice did give away a penalty right at the death and, amazingly, misplaced some passes as well, he’s still the lynch-pin of this team. And Saliba, who was imperious as ever. But, to win the league we need more than these two or three.
Thankfully we removed Martinelli after 65 minutes along with Zinny. But even then as we huffed and puffed it was not clear how we’d ever score. Nelson was an improvement whereas Eddie was, well, Eddie. You have to give some credit to WHU for the way they defended. Not only did Mavropanos score against us but we made him look like a world class defender. But that came about because we were incapable of scoring.
Raya had very little to do whereas Areola only had a few meaningful saves to make. It’s not like he made a string of world-class saves to deny us. We just did not test him enough. There were so many half chances we just failed to take. I suppose we should at least acknowledge that Raya saved us from further embarrassment by saving that penalty. It retained a slice of respectability I suppose.
So where does this leave us? A little bit of a wake up call for all of us I think. We’re not as bad as we were against WHU but nor as we as good as we were against Luton. We live in that in between state. We have a few issues to solve if we want to sale the heights of winning the league.
We need a goal scorer. It’s fine to get goals from our midfield players but so far, this season, Martinelli couldn’t hit the side of a barn door and even Saka’s production is down. And, as for Jesus, as important as he is for us, he’s not a natural goalscorer.
There are may elements to resolving this issue. We need a defender given both the absence of Tomi and Timber and our non-defending left-back. Also we are too vulnerable to an injury to Rice. So we need cover there as well. We have limited financial room as demonstrated by the need to take Raya (yuk) on loan. So we already have needs.
Maybe the solution lies with recognizing that you can’t have Ramsdale as a back-up goalie. He’s too good for that. He should be starting but if that’s not going to happen let’s raise some money by sending him off for an exorbitant fee. He needs to play for England and go to the Euros. But first he needs to play for someone.
Then, maybe, we need to cash in on Eddie. As much as I like him we have to face the reality that we need more than Jesus and Eddie as our primary goal-scorers. Combined this could raise an additional £50m. And that might be enough to get us a Toney or someone equivalent.
My suspicion is that Arteta will take this defeat on the chin. Rationalize, that if we played that game ten times, that we’d score goals in 9 out 10 of them. This was that anomaly where whatever we did we’d not score. He will search out a defender and maybe some midfield player as well. But any major surgery will have to wait for the summer transfer window.
The Fulham match will be interesting as they are also in a funk. Either them or us will find a way to rebound. Let’s hope it’s us. We just aren’t as bad a team as we looked against WHU (I repeat this because i’m trying to convince myself). Arteta has to work his magic and help us rebound against Fulham – which will not be so easy.
Lets pray that one of our attackers can find their scoring boots. And we’ll have Have-that back in the line-up. As depressing – and it was *really* depressing – to sit through that defeat, losing to Fulham or, even, drawing, would cause alarms bells to go off.
Having said that, maybe, we’re just ahead of schedule. We normally have our poor patch in April. Maybe we’re just getting it out of the way early. I doubt it but hope strings eternal. This squad needs a little more depth and quality. A world-class forward would do the trick. But they ain’t that easy to find. Evidently, you can’t just pop round to the local Tescos and bring one back.
We might not be good enough to win the league but we have to be good enough to stay in the top four. That has to be the minimum objective for this year. And with Villa, Newcastle and those wankers down the road all dropping points, that definitely helps.
For sure my Christmas has been trashed by these results – and by VAR. Let’s hope we go into the New Year with a minor recovery at Fulham. That we can rediscover some believe and that we can score goals. To be precise, I’m referring to goals in the oppositions net. I’m not looking for any own goals (Zinny, i’m thinking of you here).
-LB7