“Today we have to look at ourselves and think we were not good enough… we were not good enough, we were not convincing. And that’s basically it.”
I’ve done tons of match previews before, but this is, officially speaking, my first match review. And sadly it had to be after a limp, desperate 2-0 defeat at home to West Ham on the opening day of the 2015/2015 Premier League season. The lead-up to the game was generally optimistic, with a lot being made about Arsenal’s squad depth and how we have never been better placed to challenge for the league title. We were facing West Ham, a side that finished 12th and we beat home and away last season, a side that is perhaps in transition with a new manager in Slaven Bilic and five new signings, and spent the better part of the summer playing the earlier qualifying rounds of the Europa League, a side that had not picked up any points against Arsenal either home or away since January 2009…we were optimistic.
The line-up was largely predictable with only two changes from the same starting line-up that beat Chelsea in the Community Shield last weekend; Mathieu Debuchy coming in for Hector Bellerin, and Olivier Giroud starting ahead of Theo Walcott. Now having played and beaten Chelsea, Wolfsburg, Lyon and Everton in pre-season; one would have thought we would be nothing but prepared for West Ham. But we were not. The rhetoric that was coming from the Arsenal camp before the game about cohesion and “automatisms” appeared to be just talk, as there were misplaced passes all over the park. Part of the problem was that Francis Coquelin was partnered alongside Aaron Ramsey in midfield, and while last season Coquelin had Cazorla for a partner, Ramsey is not all about ball distribution. With West Ham defending deep and in numbers, Coquelin often found himself in space with the ball at his feet… he ended up attempting and misplacing long passes towards Monreal and Oxlade-Chamberlain. Coquelin was 2/5 on long balls. This is why, I presume, Arsene Wenger decided to switch Santi and Ramsey in the beginning of the second half… our ball distribution from deep was poor. Coquelin and Cazorla was the midfield combination that worked last season after all.
Also of note was how Giroud played. He showed his excellent first touch a couple of times, and held the ball up well, but we’re already accustomed to seeing that. What we hardly see is Giroud working the flanks and the channels in between centre-back and full-back as he did against West Ham. The Frenchman often picked up the ball down either flank, dribbled (admittedly with limited success) and occasionally got useful balls into dangerous areas. Problem was none of Ozil, Chamberlain or Cazorla looked to exploit the spaces in central areas that Giroud vacated; so no one really got into goal-scoring positions to take advantage. For all the talk about getting more goals from our attacking midfielders, I found this particularly frustrating. The service into Giroud was also either wanting or non-existent altogether, and an illustration of this would be to look at the number of crosses put into the box… Debuchy attempted five, none successful, Monreal attempted five, none successful, Santi attempted five, and with only one successful…well you get the drift.
After West Ham scored their second, Arsene reacted swiftly by first hooking Coquelin off for Theo. I actually thought this move should have happened sooner, seeing as West Ham were content to sit deep and defend narrow so Coquelin’s abilities were no longer a necessity. Nine minutes later, on came Alexis Sanchez for Debuchy and I instantly felt apologetic for the Chilean… I mean, it shouldn’t even have some to this. It was a poor reflection of the efforts of our creative players thus far in the game, that the manager was forced to call on a player who hasn’t even trained for a week with the squad after his summer break? It also smacked of desperation from Wenger, but he really had no alternative. Sanchez clearly wasn’t ready or sharp enough, he was dispossessed once and had three “unsure touches” (instances of bad ball control as recorded by whoscored.com). Sanchez usually averages two/three bad touches per 90 minutes, and today he had three in 29 minutes. And how about Theo? He had two attempts on goal, none on target, one dribble, attempted five passes (three successful), zero key passes and had only thirteen touches on the ball. Thirteen. After 38 minutes.
“I think our performance was not convincing. On the two aspects of the game, going forward and defending… On top of that, I feel we gave two very cheap goals away.”
We’ve already looked at possible reasons for our lack of penetration, so let’s turn our focus to why we conceded twice, and to our debutant Petr Cech. A debut to forget? Definitely. Was he culpable for both goals? Certainly. But those ahead of him certainly didn’t cover themselves in glory either… in fact; whoscored.com attributes the error leading to the second goal to Oxlade-Chamberlain and not Cech. But the way Cech was left in no man’s land for Kouyate’s header was eerily similar to when we faced Chelsea in 2007 at the Emirates and William Gallas scored from a corner after Cech had again been left in no man’s land…remember that one? Scary, but anyway. Here’s what Arsene had to say on the goal:
“I knew that if that if the delivery was good; we would be in trouble before the free-kick was taken. The concentration and organization was not perfect. Positionally we were too far from our goal and gave them too much distance to run into. We killed ourselves.”
I think that nails it, really. Therefore, Cech might have decided to stay on his line and Kouyate would still have had a free header at goal. He might have made it easier for Kouyate to score, but the errors began with those in front of him. Oh and Monreal was playing everyone onside as the free-kick was taken. For the second, Oxlade lost the ball trying to run it out of defence, and Mauro Zarate tried his luck and Cech appeared to be wrong-footed as he took a step to his left before diving to his right in vain. Still, something about how Koscielny stood off Zarate’s attempt suggests that he expected Cech to save it, and in truth we all did. Overall, West Ham scored off their first attempt on target… an all-too-familiar tale for the Emirates faithful.
Offensively blunt and defensively shocking would sum it all up aptly. How a sixteen-year old debutant Reece Oxford and Cheikhou Kouyate were sufficient to stifle Ramsey, Ozil and Cazorla is simply beyond me. I’ll let you ponder on that one.
Till next time folks.
*Quotes adapted from Arseblog.com*
*Photo credits: Arsenal Media*
That game is what you can term "A game to Forget" if you were to go back to primary school and write a composition about it. No flow, no urgency to win, and the midfielders looked clueless.
ReplyDeleteYou're right Ambrose, we do need more from our creative players in that regard.
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