Morning all.
Twelve shots, four on target and one goal. Would have been two if Gabriel Martinelli had been paying attention to Fulham’s back line. At this level of the game, he should have been smarter.
Two more points dropped in a game which we should have won. We were all over Fulham at the start of the game before one quick break saw Jimenez give Fulham the lead.
After the break, we equalised. A Declan Rice free kick ended up going out for a corner. Rice crossed it, Kai Havertz nodded it down and William Saliba poked the ball past Bernd Leno. VAR checked for offside but the big toe of a Fulham player kept William Saliba onside.
As the end of the game drew near, Gabriel Martinelli found Bukayo Saka at the far post and he headed home what every Arsenal fan thought was our winner. However, after another VAR review, it was disallowed.
Whilst is easy to be frustrated with Martinelli for straying offside, I found it frustrating to see a number of really good opportunities to score squandered, the best falling to William Saliba and Thomas Partey who headed wide from really good corners.
Mikel Arteta:
> Gutted that we didn’t win it, because I think we deserved to win from the beginning to the end. We did almost everything that we had to do to win it. But this is the quality of the opposition, with one chance they score a goal. And then the margins of the league as well. For millimetres we could have been sitting here with three points after a really strong and dominant performance against a really good team.
Were Fulham that good? I’m not so sure. We just lack a ruthlessness in front of goal or rather a player who is ruthless in front of goal. I know, I’ve written that so many times I’m boring myself.
Thomas Partey at right back deprives the team of something special down our right. As good as Partey is, he isn’t able to get up and down the pitch in a way both Ben White and Jurrien Timber can and do. As said yesterday, if Kieran Tierney is fit enough to make the bench, then surely he’s fit enough to start so why not start him, him or Myles Lewis-Skelly – keep Timber at right back which in turn leaves Partey in midfield where he belongs. That way, it’s less shuffling around of players or as we used to say in Arsene Wenger’s time, fitting square pegs into round holes.
Lastly, not so long ago, Mikel Arteta said he wanted to play Raheem Sterling more than he has so far yet he seems to prefer Gabriel Jesus instead. Sterling has pace, a bit of trickery and has been known to score a goal or two whereas Jesus has been little short of dreadful for a while. If our “striker”, which I assume Kai Havertz is these days, is substituted, what’s the point in bringing on a player who has forgotten where the goal is, in his place? A player who yesterday, completely bottled going 1v1 with Leno for the ball.
Mikel Arteta said in his press conference that he wants the club to be the best at everything which is great but he’s not going to achieve that without a goal scorer or two. The goals we score from set pieces, our wingers and midfielders etc should always be in addition to the 20 odd goals a top notch striker might score, not instead of…
Moan over…
Monaco at The Emirates on Wednesday night is Arsenal’s next game.
Catch up in the comments…