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That was objectively bad yesterday. No ‘ifs’, not ‘buts’ – Arsenal just sucked a bit against a team who have made scoring goals and keeping them out look like Mission Impossible this season.
I spoke about Wolves’ form, about the problems they have, about the fact that they an injury to a key player and how defensively they don’t park the bus and play a higher line than you’d think. But unsurprisingly given the two positions in the league each side occupies, Wolves came to The Emirates with zero intention of playing the way they have been doing this season. And so the bus was parked and it was on Arsenal to put the keys in and drive it to one side.
Arteta made a few changes that surprised me personally; no reward for Madueke’s midweek heroics, no Odegaard from the start (which let’s face it Arteta NEVER does) and it was Hincapie at left back instead of MLS. What that message sends to Myles I don’t know, but whatever the line up and starting XI, this should have been a game won at a canter.
But it felt like a slog. A real grim one in that first half. Wolves shut it down with stoppages, niggly fouls drawn, the usual slow ‘keeper kicks and by halftime even though the stats sheet read that we’d had three big chances and six shots, I don’t really remember much to write home with. There was just too many players off it yesterday. Eze and Gyokeres were anonymous, Martinelli didn’t do very much and the back line were hardly tested. The only player who comes out of yesterday with major credit from the starting XI was Bukayo Saka, who once again looked the most lively and our biggest goal threat. It was his corner from which we scored from the goalkeeper knocking it in to his own net and at that point in which we’re one up against a team who struggles for goals, you’re just hoping that we can see the game out and say “not the best day at the office” and move on.
But Wolves suddenly started getting more of the ball. They were stringing passes together and conversely, we just weren’t. We looked edgy, nervous, more like the team who was low in confidence because they’d lost a bunch of games. And so inevitably the old Championship Manager 98 adage rang true – Wolves scored with basically their only shot. I am so glad that I don’t have to watch it on TV because that absolute twat ‘Fletch’ lapped it all up. You could hear it in his voice just as you could last weekend against Villa. He loved it. It was poor from Hincapie to lose his man though – that just doesn’t happen with Big Gabi and you can start to see just how much of a miss he is in this side. And it felt like the title was imploding in front of my very eyes. So when Gabriel Jesus had his impact just four minutes later, pandamonium set in. Of course ‘Fletch’ just showed his twatty colours; he was obliged to comment on it but then he just went silent. Absolute bell.
But we did the dirty late on just like we had it done to us against Villa and the points were secured. I think the impact Gabriel Jesus is already having is important and telling, but we should have never had needed to get to that desperate point in the first place. Afterwards Arteta was rightly raging, calling some of the play “horrible defensive habits” and it’s hard to disagree with him at all. We keep having to chop and change the back line and Arteta admitted that even Saliba probably shouldn’t have played 90, but White also limped off with a hammy in the first half and now we find ourselves with another injury we have to deal with. Perhaps you can argue that it was avoidable playing White in consecutive matches that he has, but we keep losing players every week and so as Arteta pointed out before this game this week, the players aren’t being given the opportunity for rest and rotation because of all these frigging injuries we keep picking up.
Defensively though I have to say I am getting a little bit worried. This is a team who went however many games without conceding earlier in the season, yet here we are finding ourselves conceding late goals, conceding set pieces, dropping defensive mistakes and given we aren’t a high-scoring, free-flowing football side, that is a worry because we do not look like we are going to keep out goals. Sunderland, Chelsea and Villa have all looked concerning and I’d imagine the work that Arteta wants to do on the training ground this week is looking at those “horrible defensive habits” and how he can counter them.
We should probably talk about Gyokeres and Eze. Neither worked in the slightest and the fact that Big Vik mustered a measly 0.04xG through one decent spin and shot in the second half just isn’t what you expect from a striker for the current best team in the league. He completed just three of a total of six passes in this whole match. Six. He was just a non-entity and with Gabriel Jesus looking busier and busier in this Arsenal team, you have to wonder how long it might be before the Swede loses his place to the Brazilian. I know we do need to feed him more, he needs to be played in when he’s making the runs and perhaps I didn’t see enough of it because i’d been on the beers all day, but I just didn’t see him do as many sprints as usual and it felt like he was so heavy-legged.
But Eze too just didn’t impact the game at all. He had 35 touches in total which is what you don’t want from your chief creative playmaker and I can’t really remember any incision or cutting edge to his play. I don’t know whether it was an off day, or the fact that he doesn’t quite work in that right eight position, but it felt to me with the benefit of hindsight, that opting for even an Nwaneri if you want to rest Odegaard, would have been a better option.
Ultimately though what we need to fix on is three points. It’s a win and it means we start today off five points clear of City and a hope that Palace can maybe even pick up a point when they host City at 2pm today. Arteta gives the lads a couple of days off now, they can spend some time on the training ground and prep properly for Everton away.
I’ll be back tomorrow with some more thoughts and fallout from the weekend’s results. Speak then.