For Arsenal, the last two weeks have done significant damage to the lustre of their past successes at Wembley Stadium. First, it was a gut wrenching defeat to hated rivals Tottenham 2 weeks ago which severely crippled their bid for top 4. On Sunday, it was a brutal embarrassment to future Premier League champion Manchester City. In the 3-0 defeat, the attack stretched its scoreless streak at the ‘Home of Football’ to two consecutive matches. There were few positives to take away from either match, and now the Gunners’ only chance remaining this season for a trophy (and perhaps Champions League football next season) is the Europa League. After their feeble capitulation on Sunday, they will need to improve massively if they wish to have any chance at doing so. Fan confidence has now slipped back to the vitriolic levels of last season, when many were hoping Arsene Wenger would leave, and confidence in their ability to recover for a strong finish to the campaign is as low as it has ever been.
Wrong Shape, Wrong Time?
After such a lifeless and embarrassing performance from the players on the big stage of Wembley, they will rightly receive plenty of criticism, but they might have been handicapped from the start by Wenger’s tactics. Playing in more or less a 5-4-1 without the ball, the Gunners were determined to not let City’s attack beat them. However, as was the case in their last Premier League match with Tottenham, this overly-conservative approach would come back to bite them, as City were more or less allowed as much time on the ball as they could want. With Mesut Ozil pushed way back in front of Bellerin and forced to spend a lot of energy defending, Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang spent much of the match isolated up top in the lone striker role. The midfield struggled to get forward in support of him, and most of the long balls sent his way were merely speculative, and often wayward, leading to a loss of possession.
From a mentality standpoint, something seems to happen to this team when asked to defend deep and be comfortable out of possession. They struggle mightily to balance diligence in their own end with creating scoring chances in attack, which is fine when Arsenal don’t concede a goal or are able to take the lead first, but tends to break down after they go behind. Many fans were excited to see Granit Xhaka, Jack Wilshere and Aaron Ramsey in the same midfield, and equally as confident in the decision to use a back 5 against City, but the result on the pitch was disjointed and whole midfield unit looked out of sync. Ozil was virtually invisible in attack because he was pushed so far back into his own end by an aggressive opponent. Arsene Wenger used to receive so much criticism for his inflexible tactics and single-mindedness about playing attractive football, but this season it seems to be his attempts at pragmatism that fail the most. To try and beat Manchester City, Wenger tried to get his team to be something it’s not, and in doing so nullified far too many of his team’s strengths.
Unacceptable Effort
If there is one thing that fans have been able to say about this team this season, it is that they have generally given maximum effort against their top 6 rivals. With the exception of the Liverpool loss at the beginning of the season, the Gunners have fought hard for 90 minutes, even looking like the far better team in their 3-1 loss to Manchester United. However, this graft was nowhere to be found on Sunday, as Arsenal were the worse team from whistle to whistle. Gary Neville was absolutely tearing the players to shreds on the television broadcast, taking them to task for their walking during the match as City beat the, to every loose ball and forced them into mistakes. Not a single player gave the requisite effort during the match, and by the second half, fans were making for the exits with a half hour to run.
The midfield would have easily been the most disappointing group on the pitch if it wasn’t for the shambolic defence giving it a run for its money. All were sloppy in possession, poor defensively, and practically run into the ground by their opponents constantly recycling ball movement. Mesut Ozil was missing passes he typically completes in his sleep, and none of his teammates could pick up his creative slack. Jack Wilshere was the only one who looked ready to compete, but he was beaten up in the first half as he tried to make something happen on the dribble, and by the second half had lost the initiative. Shkodran Mustafi’s unforgivable mistake, letting Sergio Aguero get free behind him from a goal kick, just about summed up the defence’s night, with he, Calum Chambers, Laurent Koscielny and Hector Bellerin also making some truly shocking decisions to pass backwards or sideways just feet from David Ospina’s goal and under pressure. Once City took their lead into the second half, what little composure Arsenal had evaporated, and with it any hope of winning. Fans can forgive losses if a team gives its all, but no group of supporters in the world would have been satisfied with their team’s effort after a display like that.
The Bumbling Backline
When a manager sets his team up to include 5 defenders, he does so with the expectation that those 5 players will offer him greater defensive solidity than a back 4 could. However, he likely doesn’t anticipate those same defenders making life much more difficult for their goalkeeper, but in that regard, the Gunner defence truly outdid itself. To give Pep Guardiola’s side credit, they had the perfect plan to foil the Arsenal buildup out from the back. They backed off enough to bait Ospina into passing it short, which then triggered the City press, forcing the defenders to play a low percentage long pass, or play it around the back under duress. Chambers in particular was not crisp enough when executing his passes, and he caused an audible groan from the supporters in the crowd with some of his decisions.
Neither Nacho Monreal nor Sead Kolasinac, when he replaced the injured Spaniard, were able to make much of a difference at left wing back, and along with Bellerin, they were forced to spend most of their time in the backline rather than providing crucial width to the attack. Koscielny is, sadly, becoming a shell of the player he was just a year ago, and his athleticism is no longer enough to make up for his sometimes questionable instincts. Even Shkodran Mustafi, who has developed a reputation for gutsy performances in big matches, was appalling, particularly with his amateurish mistake that lead to Aguero’s goal. Confidence is in short supply across the entire team, but the defence right now appears to be in full crisis mode. These problems were likely exacerbated by the pre-determined decision to start Ospina, who is not nearly as effective at marshaling his team as Petr Cech. Having focused on the attack during the January transfer window this year, it now seems almost impossible that the club would neglect to address the ailing, leaky defence this summer.
Not Enough Match Sharpness
There are no excuses for the effort put forth by the Arsenal players on Sunday, but Wenger was most unlucky to have several of his most important players either unavailable or off the pace. Mesut Ozil was ill in the early part of the week, and he needed extra training sessions toward the end of the week to try and regain sharpness. Aaron Ramsey had returned, but clearly not fully recovered from, a groin injury that took longer than expected to heal. Nacho Monreal is clearly ailing from something that prevented him from finishing 3 of the last 4 matches he started, and he was forced off again in this one before the first half was through. Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang was fresh, considering how few matches he has played since December, but he also looked out of sorts at times and lacking match sharpness. Adding in Henrikh Mhkitaryan being cup tied, and the Gunners were clearly not in peak form entering Sunday.
As a team that relies on intricate passing combinations and fluid movement to generate opportunities, Arsenal are more susceptible than most teams to falling out of sync. There are few players in the team capable of consistently beating their man on the dribble, so when team struggles to move the ball, the attack stagnates. Aubameyang and Mhkitaryan logically seem like very good fits in this team, and both should become consistent assets once fully settled, but time is winding down on the season and Arsenal are in danger of having their second consecutive “worst season in 2 decades” if they don’t turn their form around soon. From the manager on down through the squad, there appears to be a crisis of confidence at the club, and it shows on the pitch, with players not even playing up to their usual standards. They will get another crack at City in just 4 days time, so we will see if the Gunners can rediscover their sharpness on the training ground this week.
The Most Elusive Domestic Honour
Arsene Wenger will depart Arsenal as one of the Premier League’s most decorated managers, but the League Cup continues to elude him. Typically seen as the runt or the litter of the domestic competitions, Wenger has spent the majority of his time in charge using it as an opportunity to blood young players in first team competition as well as to give minutes to squad players that don’t see much of the pitch. Even during the club’s agonising pre-2014 trophy drought, Wenger was steadfast in his use of non-starters in the competition, at the expense of a possible victory. This often meant fans got to watch a group of kids make a good run in the competition before running into an opponent with a full-strength team and getting knocked out.
However, this season saw the League Cup take on more importance for ever to Wenger, possibly sensing that it represented one of the best chances the club had at silverware this season. He began the competition much as he has every year prior, playing a mix of squad youth players, but by the semi-final against Chelsea, the team resembled the full strength XI from league play more than those early season cup matches. In the final, the Gunners faced a Manchester City team who were anxious to open their trophy account under Pep Guardiola. In the end, the Gunners were outclassed by the club that has a net spend over £20m more in his 21 months in charge than Arsene Wenger has in the last 21 years managing Arsenal (£371m to £349m). Some advantages are too significant to overcome.
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