Written by Mean Lean
on
Sunday, 26 September 2010 09:08
*Sigh!* what on earth happened there? Everything was going according to plan, Manchester City had beaten Chelsea earlier in the day and a home game against newly promoted West Brom would have certainly been a fixture that I would have signed up to before the kick off.
Wenger rang in the changes from the impressive Carling Cup team that dismantled Tottenham at White Hart Lane, only Samir Nasri and Emmanuel Eboue started in midweek and then again yesterday.
From the very start of the game you could see that something was not going right with our team. Early misplaced passes from Abou Diaby and Emmanuel Eboue set the tone, The strongest part of our game was just not clicking. West Brom started the game well, showing plenty of purpose going forward and closing ush down quickly, not allowing us to pick out our passes. Normally that would not be a problem, especially at the Emirates because we would (as Stewart Robson would say) play around the pressure.
Even after saying all of that, we could have taken the lead when Arshavin struck the post twice following a whipped Emmanuel Eboue cross.
The spark was certainly left behind and the Arsenal players were struggling to find any sort of real rhythm, I felt like I was continuously waiting for the switch to go on and the players to revert back to the level we know and are used to. Our movement was lacking, our combinations were far too slow and what was worse was the amount of space that was given to West Brom when they had the ball.
Before Saturday afternoon, our work rate off the ball to win it back had been fantastic, we didn't allow the opposition any time to play, thus restricting the opposition to a limited amount of scoring chances, for some reason that had disappeared, vanished in a puff of smoke. At times it felt like it was only Alex Song who was closing players down
Diaby was off the pace both offensively and defensively, as he is usually a slow starter, I expected him to start from the bench and come on late to gain some valuable minutes for our Champions League game on Tuesday. Wenger decided to leave the likes of Denilson and Wilshere on the bench after having played into extra time a few days ago. I said in the match preview that Arsene would have to choose between players who have played too much football in a short space and players who haven't played any.
West Brom striker Odemwingie was denied by a superb Alumnia save when he cut inside his man and unleashed a left footed drive into the near post. It was great reactions from the keeper who would have an eventful afternoon.
Seven minutes before the half, Odemwingie was played through by Brunt, Koscielny couldn't keep up so Almunia came charging out in an attempt to get to the ball first, Odemwingie was too quick, nicked it past him and Almunia took the striker down. With Squillaci on the cover, Almunia's card was only a yellow,
As soon as Brunt stood in position to take the kick, I called the corner and the save. Almunia's record from penalty kicks has to be up there with the very best.
We had been left off the hook at half time, Arsene would get the boys in and sort them out for the second half, well at least that was what I was hoping. I was wrong. It took barely five minutes before West Brom took the lead, Jerome Thomas skilfully evaded the attentions of Bacary Sagna on the touch line and fired in a cross to the unmarked Odemwingie to tap into an unguarded net. It was nothing less than the visitors deserved.
At one down, I was annoyed but hoped that it would give the team the kick up the Arsenal that they needed, what I didn't expect was for West Brom to come straight down the field again and score a second in less than two minutes. Chris Brunt who was having an influential game, played a delightful back heal to the overlapping Gonzalo Jara who fired in a shot that Almunia should have dealt with, the ball cannoned off Almunia and into the net.
As expected the knifes are very much out for Almunia, many have been waiting in the grass, waiting patiently for the first real mistake of the season and vitriol begins. Lets make no mistake about it. It was a poor goal to concede and it came at a terrible time in the game, at 1-0 down we could have turned it around but at 2 it became more than an uphill struggle.
In current form, Almunia has been one of our best players this season, he has stood up to pretty much everything that has been thrown at him and has kept us in games. I did not for one minute expect Almunia to go through the entire season without making a mistake. I am sure the managers of Reina, Hart and Mark Schwarzer to name a few were not expecting perfection either. Mistakes will happen, regardless of what position you play in. Van der sar and Cech will make costly errors this season, it is a question of how many so jumping the gun at his first error of the season is a little pointless at this stage.
Wilshere and Rosicky replaced Eboue and Diaby just before the hour mark, hopefully the changes would allow us to keep the ball better and start dominating the game further forward.
The changes seemed to make a difference as we started to up the tempo and create chances, Nasri fired at Carson and Alex Song headed over the bar from a corner kick. Wenger threw everything at West Brom in an attempt to come back, he replaced Koscielny with Carlos Vela, dropping Song back into defence.
We needed to get the next goal if we were to turn it around but score line meant that we had to over commit, we were punished twenty minutes from time as Jerome Thomas crashed in a cross from Chris Brunt. Almunia had to challenge Brunt who was left alone in the area, had he stayed on his line and allowed Brunt to pick out his man or go alone then he would have been crucified for that also
West Brom didn't have much time to celebrate their goal as Nasri quickly twisted and turned in the penalty area and struck low past the keeper.
We kept putting balls into the box and trying to find openings but the West Brom defence held firm until Nasri struck again in injury time but time had run out. The whistle was blown and West Brom had taken an unlikely three points.
First things first, I would like to take off my virtual hat to West Brom and Roberto di Matteo who had come to the Emirates without parking the bus, without kicking lumps out of everything that moved, they are a proper footballing team who actually work on their footballing abilities. They stopped us playing by closing us down and not giving quality players time to play. When they got the ball, they were positive and played some good football for long periods of the game.
It just shows that the old school thought of the only way to play Arsenal is to kick them is a whole load of rubbish and it is more a reflection of the managers who do not know how to coach football properly. I admire the braveness and game plan that the visitors put in. I hope they can go on to thrash Stoke, Blackburn and Bolton and have a successful season in the Premier League.
As for Arsenal, we were woeful from the very beginning of the game to the last. It was a far cry from the fluid interchanging of the mixed team in midweek. Arsene made the point very clear that the team would be fully focused and wouldn't underestimate the opposition. That message didn't seem to get across to the players.
Arsenal did not turn up for the game and should have been reported missing because what we saw was not Arsenal and not an Arsene Wenger team.
In hindsight our team was set up without our creative players so keeping the ball would not be as easy as usual. Without Cesc, Rosicky, Wilshere and Van Persie our combination football was lacking. It is no suprisise that Nasri was our best player on the day, he just needed help from other midfielders. Abou Diaby was poor but as I said he is a slow starter, Emmanuel Eboue was also poor but that could be because a) he played 120 minutes in midweek and b) he suffered a knee probem after that game.
Those lambasting Diaby for his below level performance need to remember that players often take a few games to adjust to the pace of the game again after being out, especially after injury. Cesc Fabregas was being accused of not being interested at Blackburn because he had just come back into the side. This however does not excuse the application showed at times to close down West Brom when they were on the ball.
We will only win trophies when the players give their all in every game. Hopefully this will be the slap in the face that the team need to push on and not a regular occurrence.
While bombs will be thrown at the direction of Almunia, I am much more inclined to point the blame at the collective application of the team, a little more fight and determination could have changed the dynamics of the game. While the rest may have done some good to the players physically, it seems to have made some of the players forget their responsibilities and that is very disappointing.
Five points dropped in our last two league games is very disappointing against teams that we should be beating but as disappointing as it is, it is still far too early to be making concrete conclusions of our season ahead.
We have no time to start feeling sorry for ourselves, we have a very important Champions League match on Tuesday then it is the big league game at Stamford Bridge next weekend.
Almunia (5)
Sagna (6)
Koscielny (6)
Squillaci
Clichy (6)
Song (6)
Diaby (5)
Nasri (7)
Eboue (5)
Chamakh (6)
Arshavin (6)
Please note that ratings are only my interpretations of the game and that others will have differing opinions.
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very objective post.it was bound to happen to the boys after some decent performances thus far.song has been making noise about joining in attack and midfielders joining to defend when possesion is lot but the problem is arsenal play with 3.5 defenders.ie our 2 cb and sagna and the 0.5 being clichy because arshavin hardly helps him out.to improveor barnish days like this we need a cm who will just in front of the cb ie frimpong no fuss cm.song was good last season because he was performing a cm role simple.towards the end of last season he became overconfident and started to do extra stuff.the blame has to be on pat rice and aw heads because they both have enough experience to spot this and put a clamp on songs role. it will be different if we had ramsey or a darren fletcher type of play along side song to cover ground.I told a mate on tuesday night during the first half if we play against any team with a player in the hole between our defence and midfielders we will conceed 3 or more goals but he said, i was too pessimistic about this team and i should just look at the understanding between our midfielders. we always struggle against teams who play 2 up front with the second striker or midfielder playing in the hole because there is too much gap between our defence and midfield.ie messi, lampard,scholes last season for them to give us a sucker punch.anytime i watch pat rice i ask myself what he brings to the team because he should be the one screaming at the defenders but he looks more disinterested than arshavin on a match day.we need to freshen up the backroom stuff to bring more defensive ideas into the team because we never learn. the thing with arsenal is that 70% of the time what we try will work but that 30% is the difference between conceeding less than 2 goals in a march on a bad day ie chelski,barca and us who conceed 3 04 4 on a bad day
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