Starting XI: Cech, Bellerin, Koscielny, Monreal, Coquelin, Xhaka, Ozil, Oxlade-Chamberlain, Walcott, Alexis
Subs: Ospina, Holding, Gibbs, Iwobi, Elneny, Lucas, Giroud
Arsenal slumped to their first Premier League defeat since the opening day of the season as Everton bounced back from Alexis Sanchez’s opener to win 2-1.
The Gunners looked to be cruising when the Chilean scored from a deflected free-kick on 20 minutes, however, they paid the price for taking their foot off the gas.
Seamus Coleman’s header ensured the sides entered the break level and Ashley Williams, who scored a winner for Swansea at the Emirates last season, crashed home a corner with his head to win it for the Toffees with five minutes left.
First half
Arsenal started with the swagger you’d expect of a team fighting for top spot keeping the ball for long periods as the home side sat deep and invited pressure. Persistent probing by the Gunners was followed by the occasional break, Sanchez pounced on a loose Barkley pass and nearly fed Walcott. Soon after Monreal found Ozil who fired over.
Clear chances were few and far between, but even so, there was only one side that looked likely to break the deadlock. On 20 minutes Arsenal made their dominance count as Sanchez found the net with a set piece from just outside the box.
Francis Coquelin had won the free-kick having been unceremoniously taken out by Phil Jagielka and the Chilean fired goalwards with a low effort that took a big deflection off Ashley Williams that left Maarten Stekelenburg wrong-footed. It was all the more galling for the Welshman who’d accidently taken out teammate Idrissa Gueye with a horrible studs-up tackle on the Senegalese midfielder. (1-0)
The home side didn’t react immediately, indeed a muted Goodison Park seemed resigned to more goals, however, slowly but surely they raised the tempo. Enner Valencia headed over a corner, then Aaron Lennon and Lukaku both shot high and wide. The attacking impetus of the home side slowly roused the home terraces. Lennon again shot wide.
Two minutes before the break, Everton got the equaliser they deserved. Leighton Baines skipped past Walcott with ease and curled in a ball from the left with his right foot that Seamus Coleman flicked past Cech with his head. (1-1)
The half-time whistle was greeted by tepid handbags from both sets of players. Ozil and Xhaka looked like they wanted to pick a fight, but not with the type of menace that made you think they meant it.
Second half
The German should have restored Arsenal’s advantage ten minutes after the break only to curl a clear-cut chance over the bar following great work by Coquelin and a cut back by Sanchez.
Within five minutes Barkley twice threatened. First his free-kick was blocked by a wall of yellow, then he fizzed a low effort on the diagonal past Cech’s post.
The game ebbed and flowed as both sides pressed for a winner. It required diligent defending from Gabriel, who stopped Lukaku, and Koscielny who blocked a series of crosses to keep the home side at bay. In response, Iwobi, on for Oxlade-Chamberlain, nudged wide.
As the game edged towards its conclusion, Everton found a winner. Cech first denied Jagielka with a decent save, however, from the resulting corner Ashley Williams crashed home a header. (2-1)
Alex Iwobi had a golden chance to net an equaliser in the dying moments of stoppage time but his effort was cleared off the line. The final insult was Clattenburg waving away Alexis’ claim for a penalty as the Toffees cleared their lines.
Too little too late from Wenger.
Why don’t we have those goals in our locker? Oh we do – Giroud.
What’s Lucas supposed to do in 2 minutes?
Why can I see urgency in other teams but find it hard to recognise in us?
When we put it in the mix at the end, we nearly scored. What did we learn from that? Nothing.
yet again, when the going gets tough, ozil goes missing.
let the downvotes roll
Don’t talk like a complete John Terry.
Yet again the fickle fans are out and forget all the times ozil has won us games and that its a team game. Get over yourself.
of course the go-to reply was gonna be that i am fickle. If you knew me, you would know this is my view of ozil even when he has great games. The guy has more talent in his big toe than most other footballers. But whenever things get hard, he’s nowhere to be seen.
Everyone bar Sanchez, Cech and the back 4 went missing. No support from midfield in attack or defence. Ox and Theo may as well have not been out there. Ozil was very poor but to single him out is overly harsh. They were all bad collectively going forward
He missed a great chance but that’s as much as I can slight him. I’m more dissapointed by the result than by the Arsenal performance because Everton actually played very well for their standards. What we saw today is what happens when we can’t convert our chances, we don’t defend well enough to sit on a 1 goal lead, for any period of time. I thought we looked leggy but the players still tried, it just wasn’t there. If we don’t see a response against Man CIty then we can ask questions, I just think today the better side on… Read more »
never said he was horrible, but clearly went missing. probably our most talented player, not denying that. but he goes missing time and time again in the tight matches.
LOL all the games he has won us. he has scored 9 goals this season. 4 of them against ludogorets, 1 in a 5-1 win vs west ham, the 3rd goal in a 3-0 win against chelsea. the 3rd goal in a 3-0 against watford. and 2 actual meaningful goals, one against stoke and one against swansea.
great talent but goes missing
I spotted him Aussie gunner. Missed a great chance in the second half. It wasn’t his night has certainly played better but be honest with yourself he was hardly “missing”.
So the 88th minute winner away at Ludogorets was meaningless, then?
Ludogorets…. if that’s considered a big game, then i dont know what to say. Contributions against PSG?
Then we avoid Barca…
I think it’s pretty hard to argue against what you just said.
Lets see if he can stand up and be counted against City
Well there’s my thumbs down for you. Nothing special about it. Exactly the same as the rest of them so just add it to the pile.
Fuck the scapegoating. We were shit from tip to tail today.
Fuck that. We weren’t shit, we just weren’t good enough to beat a very fucking well motivated Everton side. There’s many shades of grey between shit and our performance today.
I thought it was a particularly brown shade of gray by our standards. At Goodison Park, Against a Koeman side, you can’t get away with that.
My point was the failure was a group effort. Not the fault of whomever the flavor of the week scapegoat is.
The OX and Ozil where poor.. There was a moment Monreal ran past the OX looking for options and the OX LITERALLY just stood there and did absolutely nothing!!!! and Monreal took the ball forward and back and still nothing from the OX just STANDING I was shouting at my screen make a move!! do something!! and good on Monreal he didnt lose possesion and found Xhaka it’s soo poor the effort sometimes from the OX and same goes for OZil as far as i’m concerned I’d like Ozil to stay don’t get me wrong he’s still a good player… Read more »
The guy has a point… Ozil was very disappointing tonight. In the first half had two to three lazy diagonals that was easily cut. But hey everyone is allowed to have an off day…
Not Ramsey
The difference between Ozil and Ramsey is that Ramsey has more off days than on.
How dare you! Did you forget his 4 goals against the mighty Ludogrets.
SELL HIM AND BASTA! But against whom will you complain when he’ll be gone???
I hate coming to blogs when we lose
Oh Mesut, how did he miss that?
I thought Wenger’s substitutions were wrong at the time, and seeing how the game went afterwards, i stand by that.
That is a fact…the truth needs to be said
He wasn’t terrible today, just not at his best. His defending against Williams for the winner was really poor though. He just walks away! That wasn’t good enough
What has tonight got to do with Ozil ?? Yes he missed a chance but he was hardly to blame .
I’m a fan of Mesut still… To be fair he didnt go missing. He was the man who missed our greatest chances in a cagy match. 1 to put us ahead another to double our lead. Not to mention his I dont give fuck attitude when being disposed. Its mostly mental when he plays like this. After all he’s never been as passionate as likes of Alexis.
Very average today. We miss Mustafi
Because he didn’t give us the lead when we were drawing at the weekend?!
Why is it some of our fans expect every player to play amazing every game, even the best have quieter games. Especially flair players.
Not his night. Missed a great chance and I´m not sure what he is doing here:
http://arsenalist.com/f/2016-17/everton-vs-arsenal/everton-goal-2-1.html
When his agent insists on £300k per week, show him that clip.
Damn right mate, he’s totally bottled it!
It’s up there with Walcott jumping out of the way of the keeper from last season!
Embarrassing, I hope Wenger has a word with him.
Wow!! Didn’t even spot that. He’s literally just got out the way for Ashley Williams to head it in lol . Ozil shouldn’t even be the one marking Williams in the first place.
Looked tired out there tonight. When Ozil missed his chance it was a game we weren’t going to win!
The whole performance was just so average. Got a goal from a pretty poor free kick, poor aerial defending led to the first goal conceded and the same again for the second, despite a warning shot from Jagielka just seconds earlier. Giroud was on far too late, with Walcott and Ox generally offering little and we only really woke up when Cech went up for the corner in additional time. Only then did we realise that we might actually have to move faster than the snails pace we played the last 90 minutes at.
The weakest link today: Arsene Wenger
No. What was wrong with the team selection?
tactic wise we should not allowed ox to have been on the pitch till the 70 min..
plus arsene sort disturbed the flow of the game by introducing the sub..
OK, so we should have subbed Ox but Arsene disturbed the flow of the game by bringing in subs? what the fuck are you talking about?
Look everton clearly were vulnerable to our counter attack at the start of the second half.. Had arsene maybe introduced iwobe early in the second half for the ox, would have been much better.. introducing Elneny to beef up our midfield would have suited us better midway only because clearly everton were over running us in midfield. coq nor xhaxa had any time on the ball which is why ozil was quiet. giroud should have come on the last 10 min imo
Exactly . Team selection was perfect . Team performance below par
It’s not about team selection only. (I don’t think it was that bad – even if we had 1 striker on the bench with who we finished second last year and two wingers who scored 4 goals 1 week ago) But after our lucky goal in the 20th minute, our offensive players just simply disappeared… It seemd to me we were just waiting for their equaliser. (and it’s not the first time … as somebody wrote it 3 days ago: the best think that happened to us was: they scored the first goal – because it woke us up) Moreover,… Read more »
I do think Arsene can take a little bit of the blame. Clearly when things are not working its OK to sub before the 60 minute mark to give incoming player/s a chance to get in the game and make a difference. I would love to see how many times in his Arsenal career he has made subs before 60th minute that werent as a result of being forced on him through injury or sending offs. In saying all that, the team selection today was practically identical to the one which won easily on weekend just gone. I expected a… Read more »
Oh I have been moderated.. wonder what I did? Must of said a rude word in a previous post. Bugger.
Agree. We were poor but will bounce back
Without a doubt. Do something to influence the game other than sit on your hands and wait. I realize it’s ultimately up to the players to figure out how to break a team down but giroud and Lucas should have been brought on much earlier. Perhaps Lucas should have even been on from the first whistle. Also really deflated by Ozils performance thought he just went through the motions at best. In his defense I don’t think he had to much help. He did have one chance that he should have done a bit better on. I’m pretty disappointed but… Read more »
We lose only to teams from Liverpool
And Southampton
I’d like to see some subs before the 67th minute when we’re not comfortably winning a game. Giroud could have come in much earlier. Beat city on Sunday and we’ll let this one slide.
what’s the point of having all this depth we keep talking about if they aren’t trusted earlier than 70th minute even though things are clearly not working.
Giroud didn’t really do anything even with the time he did get on the field.
To be fair, the same can be said of most of our attackers today. Maybe some rotation would have freshened things up a bit.
Thats the point. You bring your subs anytime before 70ish for once and they would have time to change something. It wasnt like we were winning comfortably or our starting front 3 were performing. Wenger never have been so great with a game changer early subtitution. He doesnt even go for it.
Hear hear! These eternally late subs are frustrating.
I’ve had this feeling before … I hate it!
FUCK
Playing poorly seems to have become the norm with this team. Thankfully, we managed to win most of those games.
Theo and Ox were very poor tonight. Needed them to provide threat and they let themselves and us down time and again with lack of technical ability when under pressure.
Wtf happened after the first goal? The whole team completely disintegrated and put up a shit show
We’ve done this before. vs Spurs, stopped playing after going one nil up. vs PSG, didn’t know what to do when we got to 2-1. Our best performances seem to involve us scoring the second almost immediately after the first.
Sometimes I get the feeling that we don’t know what to do when one goal up in a remotely tricky game.
Shit happens. Forwards.
we shouldn’t never gave them any momentum… how these refs did give us a penalty at the last 10 min i’ll never understand. first the bellerin pull back and the sanchez on the last minutes..
I felt if we HAD controlled the game from our own half and allowed them to have the ball with us causing counter attack style of play, we certainly would have killed them.. I mean why play walcot and the ox if you know they can’t beat the opponent one on one.. perez or iwobe should’ve in my opinion have started
We had to lose eventually. Disappointing that we let them get back into it. A frustrating night for sure. But on to the next game. Need a win at City now on Sunday though.
a very meh performance.
My heart hasn’t beaten this fast in a while, as it did during the last few minutes of that game.
This was clearly tired legs today. You could see it clearly, especially on our attackers
Players misplacing passes, no passion, no fight nothing from the players. We can’t beat a side that has won 1 in their last 10, and to think of beating Bayern lads. Lets hope Sunderland produce some magic against Chelsea
The whole midfield went missing. Xhaka and Coquelin offered neither stability in defence or any kind of passing going forward bar the first 10 mins of each half. Theo was invisible. Ox ineffective. Ozil looked so out of sorts it was baffling. Terrible performance. We were second to all the breaking balls after they hoofed it long all night. They were there for the taking after we scored but we sat back and assumed they’d roll over. We let them back into it by our own inactivity. So frustrating.
Anyone else a bit worried that bar Chelsea (which was great) our only decent performances this season have come in games we were expected to win comfortably? Tonight, Spurs, both games vs PSG, United, all very flat. I find that especially dispiriting as this is a squad I really like a lot. Have to put this right sooner rather than later if we’re going to get near Chelsea.
Isn’t it similar to last season? Early last season we thumped Utd at home just like Chelsea this season. But last season we couldnt beat Spurs , played poorly at Utd, and conceded goals in most of our games against the other top half teams away, City, Liverpool, Southampton, West Ham. Everton are top half this season so th pattern looks the same to me.
Yes. So let’s see if we can break the habit against city.
The unbeaten streak was always going to come to an end, so it’s not the most devastating result.
What frustrated me most was when Giroud came on, we weren’t playing to his strengths at all. Crosses only really starting coming in in the last few minutes. Also, I don’t personally see Iwobi as being the best player to sub on, would’ve preferred the Ox to stay on, despite not having the greatest performance
We didnt HAVE to win against Everton to win the title, but with this years Chelsea we have put ourself in a situation where the City-match is turning into a MUST win for the title. Whole team need to step up for that one, including the subtitons!
subs*
Lets see what chelsea do tomorrow, first, shall we.
hahaha that’s cute. a Chelsea team which have won a bazillion games will suddenly drop points against a struggling Sunderland. Sure.
I really liked the fact we showed so much grit at the death but why oh why didn’t we show that much heart at earlier. Everton were shitting themselves at the end. Dry frustrating but I’m convinced this is only a blip.
Aaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrgggggggggghhhhhh
Great shame, an away point would have been a very good one on the balance of that game. Very disappointed with the input by our two starting wingers and 70 minute subs.
Super frustrating game. Really wish Wenger would be more proactive in changing things.
If only Ozil had buried that earlier chance.
Please pull off a miracle Sunderland!
What were those conceding headers stats again?
Mccarthy should have been off in the first half for that tackle on coquelin, but home field advantage at one of the toughest places to play wins out, I suppose.
Ozil, Theo , Ox were missing. The subs should have come earlier. FFS! This is a game we just gave ! We were in control in the first half and should have killed it and not release the pressure. Bellerin was rusty too. I fear for the game at City.
And so it begins… December is the new November/January/December… We will never win the league with Wenger in charge, simple as.
I understand your disappointment, I’m sure everyone here is feeling flat. But this is only our second loss of the season. There’s no need to write us off so quickly
We have to win against Manchester City. It is a must win game to keep up with a Chelsea who are literally bulldozing through everyone.
a very flat performance…the quickness of the runs and passing wasn’t there. I now have to explain to the office manager why it sounded like someone died when they cleared it off the line at the end 🙁
You win some, you lose some. It’s how we pick up from here that matters
Not sure why bt sport haven’t replayed it yet but thought that was a bailed on penalty for the challenge on Sanchez at the end
True – It was a penalty but the ref bailed on giving it!
I’d bailed on seeing it as I’d already stopped watching the game in frustration!
Nothing good to say about my team tonight.
Eh, poor all around. Xhaka on a number of occasions, Sanchez kicking the ball into defenders or holding on too long, Ox had penetration but no product, Walcott only good at nicking the ball back, lots of poor balls from central midfield, can’t be very win the second ball. Seems like whenever we won the ball back it went straight to an Everton player. It always seems to me that all of our headers in midfield go to the opposition, while the other team always manages them better. To be honest we never look good against quality opposition and Everton… Read more »
Didn’t happen today…We visibly showed alot of fight though..Everton outfought us in the end..That last scramble at the end epitomised the game…Today will be forgiven if we respond at City.
People losing their shit already. The last team to win a league game at their place was us. Worst thing we could have done is score. They were absolutely terrified of coming out of their half until then.
To the game it could have gone either way. Tonight it just wasn’t to be. Mesut missed a couple of great chances and our wingers could have played better.
The ref should have seen the elbow on Kos in the build up to the free kick and non corner. Other than that not much to say.
Over half the season left so just need to bounce back quickly. Would like to see Perez given a chance ahead of Walcott. Recurring themes when not playing well are lack of creativity and defensive shifts from the wingers.
The team need a little bit of a reality check. There are no easy games in the league feel like they underestimated Everton today. Feel like every time the players go out saying how good they think they are performance drops
Ask Walcot… he is the only fool that does that all the time. He explained to us how they would play hard. We never saw that with him tonight.
Bitterly disappointed. Everton aren’t up to much and we only have ourselves to blame for defeat tonight. Allowed them back into the game and didn’t do enough for me to win it. Two soft goals too. Chelsea would have won that 1-0 and as good as we have been this season that defeat brings up all the familiar worries for me. Title winning sides go to out of sorts sides like Everton and win. They certainly don’t lose. Big pressure on Sunday’s match now and afraid that a lot of people spoke about how our title credentials will b tested… Read more »
We need a major upset by Sunderland over Chelsea. Be thrilled with a tie too. Not going to give up. It’s a long season still. Let’s not be fickle.
a result like this is always gonna happen eventually.. its only compounded by the fact that chelsea are flying.. this christmas period is gonna be tough if we’re gonna play as bad as we did this eve. zero penetration.
The common consensus was that we were flying high – and yet next time we play we could easily be 9 points off the top.
The league is really tough this year.
Their better players looked up for the fight more than ours. Only Alexis looked dangerous, but he was let down by very poor performances by Ozil and especially Walcott and Ox. We actually defended well, but is it just me or does Cech look sluggish? I mean could he have held a couple of their shots? This is a setback, based on who are rivals are up against tomorrow. If we lose to City and results go against us, we could find ourselves 9 points off top and only a point ahead of Spuds. Even Manure could be 4 points… Read more »
If you look at our record away from home against top eight teams it’s been poor for the last two seasons. We nearly always score, though our shots on goal stats aren’t that good , but cannot keep a clean sheet. We pitch up with the same game plan each time and it doesn’t work. We try our possession passing game, get pressed, hassled and bullied out of our rhythm with the inevitable result. Koeman knows exactly how to play us as does Mourihnio. I hoped the City away result two seasons ago was a turning point as we sat… Read more »
We lost to a fairly decent team, and will probably lose more before the end of the season . Why all the negativity ?
…..Then the ball fell to Sanchez, who was fouled in the box. But the blind fucking referee didn’t give us a penalty.
Finished it for you.
This is an extremely disappointing result.
We really haven’t been able to win it against a side that decides to go toe to toe with us.
Be it Liverpool, Tottenham, Man Utd and now Everton.
This growing trend is what is worrying.
This team is already missing Mustafi.
Gabriel kind of got me worried throughout the game except for that one brilliant moment where he got Lukaku covered and put in a really good last ditch tackle.
Arsenal took their foot of the gas after they went into an early lead. They just couldn’t get out of second gear. They was just playing with the handbrake on.
This was a mediocre performance of a team naming themselves title contenders. We are not able to dig deep enough in this type of matches to win. If the flow is not with us, there’s no real effort to try to fight harder to win, we rely on Alexis to create some magic. And why we have a defensive coach i dont know, we violate most of the rules in the book.
Bit of a sidebar, but I am a American fan who has been following the premier league, specifically Arsenal, religiously for the past 12-13 years. I am not anywhere near as knowledgeable as some of you when it comes to the history and prestige of other English clubs, but know enough from the time i have been following the league to know that Everton almost always seem to be a club that cause us problems (especially at Goodison), when on paper they never seemingly have the “big names” to really trouble us. Teams like Everton are ultimately the reason why… Read more »
Everybody seem ok to spit on Mesut, but well, what about Sanchez? Untouchable?
Sanchez wasn’t brilliant but at least a 6 out 10 for me. he has active as ever, created chances and scored (even if luckily).
Ozil 5