It was just a week ago when we were flying high in pole position for the final Champions League spot. who knows, maybe we could have challenged Chelsea for that 3rd spot. In a span of two games where we lost 3-0 to Palace and 2-1 to Brighton at home, we have more than likely squandered Champions League football for next season with Spurs winning two games on the bounce against Newcastle and Aston Villa. In typical Arsenal fashion, we have choked away success, this in a different manner than how we usually did it with Wenger but regardless, we still had everything to play for and shat the bed. Let me go into the main issues that confronted and why our season is essentially over
- We didn’t score more goals than the opponent: Doesn’t get simpler than this. To win games, you gotta score more goals than the other team and for some damn reason, we didn’t do that. Not sure if Arteta’s instructions to the team were to in fact not score goals, and if that was the case, they implemented that plan to perfection. Definitely an issue I’d like to be addressed going into the next games.
2. Thomas Partey: Losing him to injury has definitely made me question the validity of life. I have repeated on this site how we absolutely can not lose Thomas Partey to suspensions or injuries. He is the one player we absolutely do not have a like-for-like replacement and it has come to rear its ugly head at the end of the Palace game and the Brighton game. Thomas Partey’s ability to turn our defense to offense with his passing and dribbling is something we do can’t do without him. Thomas Partey was also our main contributor to resisting the other team’s press by controlling the rhythm when it comes to our possession by selecting the correct moments to switch play, pass it back, break the lines etc. The only player that has any experience of contributing to something of that ilk is Granit Xhaka but Mikel Arteta brilliantly decided to put him at left back against Brighton instead of keeping him at center mid ( how stupid can you be?). With that being said about Granit, the next issue that we faced in this disastrous week:
3. Mikel’s incompetence when dealing with the left-back issue: How daft can Mikel be. He showed him to be so frustratingly naive this past week. I’d only keep him at the club if he can pull Top 4 out. None of this Europa league shit. When Tierney went down (which is becoming too often at this point), just plug Nuno Tavares in at that spot and move on. The first mistake Mikel did was subbing Nuno out before half-time against Forest in the FA Cup loss in early 2022. There is nothing more embarrassing for a footballer to be subbed out before halftime as it is such a slap in the face that the manager decides to waste their limited substitutions in the first half because you were so shit and that is what Mikel did to a young player in Nuno. In the game against Palace, with Tierney out, Nuno was put in the left back position and was absolutely dreadful in the first half but he was not the only one. Nuno not being strong enough on their first goal was an issue and was left for dead with Gabriel committing himself on the 2nd goal which gave Mikel no choice to yank him out at half time against Palace which is fine.
He was poor but not the only one who was below par with Thomas and Gabriel being noticeably dreadful on that night as well. With that being said, Mikel was faced with a predicament on how he would deal with the left back position against Brighton, go back and show faith in Nuno or put someone else in that position. What you absolutely do not do if you have a brain, is put Granit Xhaka at left back. You absolutely can not take our only experienced and healthy center mid in Granit Xhaka and take him out of position to a position he has never played well in for us at left back where he is immobile and isn’t useful out wide offensively. Besides the fact that Granit isn’t remotely useful as a left back in any way, the message that you send to Nuno is that you’re so fucking shit, we decided to put a CM in your position instead of you. If you want to instill confidence in a young player struggling and in need of support, you don’t play a fucking CM in his spot. Repeat how dumb that is in your head and try to live with the fact that Mikel did that. If you put Cédric in that spot, that is more calming and easing to the mind for Nuno than sticking Granit out there and hoping it works. Nuno’s career at Arsenal is essentially finished as well as our chances at Top 4 cause Mikel thought he was being clever, what a fucking fool.
4. Lack of urgency: How this team showed up to Palace with such little energy and desire to get stuck in beyond me. It almost was impressive how useless those clowns were when trying to defend the Palace front 3 of Zaha, Mateta and Ayew. As well as the lack of urgency, the inability to make the simple passes that game was jarring, especially from the experienced players in Thomas Partey and Lacazette. Just a clusterfuck of a performance when we needed them to perform the most. You can’t win every game, so after the Palace loss, if you are a professional, you move on and make it up the next game. Luckily for us, we had a struggling Brighton coming to the Emirates. For all of Wenger’s shortcomings as a manager, Brighton would have been deadmeat if Wenger was our manager. With a struggling Brighton team who haven’t won a game in fucking forever and with a chance to rebound after the disappointing Palace performance, how do you respond? YOU GET PLAYED OFF THE FUCKING PARK AT HOME. Absolutely no excuses to show up that flat at home in front of the home fans with everything at stake. Just fucking kill me.
5. Not having Benzema, Vinicius Jr, and Mbappé leading our front line: No fucking shit, having the 3 most in-form players in world football leading our front line would probably not have us in this position but I am moreso referring to the clownish useless performance we got from our attacking line who didn’t make things any easier for our midfield and defense. I am done with Lacazette, I have defended him many times from the Arsenal fan base for his average performances but he offers nothing to the team at the moment. Mateta for Palace at the very least is an annoying body to defend in the box and Lacazette can’t even do that for us. He is so far from the levels of Harry Kane and Benzema in terms of overall center forward play, that I’d rather have Eddie starting for us at this point. Saka seems to have no help when trying to take on players on the right. Pépé needs to be given a chance on the right with Saka on the left. ESR has been pretty much shit in 2022 if we are being honest. Just not good enough from when you are trying to compete for a spot in the Champions League. Mikel needs to shake things up with our attacking line as we have become too stale and predictable going forward.
Featured image credits: Getty
GIF Credits: NBC