Sokratis Papastathopoulos says that Arsenal made it too easy for Chelsea in yesterday’s 3-2 defeat at Stamford Bridge, but also bemoaned the fact the Gunners missed so many good chances in the first half.
The trajectory of the game may well have changed had Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang made it 1-1 in the 19th minute, instead 60 seconds later we were 2-0 down after poor defending allowed Alvaro Morata to double the lead.
The defensive lapses were obvious though, it’s something that will trouble boss Unai Emery, and the Greek international pulled no punches in his post-game assessment.
“We didn’t defend very well in the first half, all the team,” he said. “It was too easy for them to come into our half and score.
“After that, we started to play better, we pressed better, won a lot of balls in midfield and had chances. We had to score more because in the end we lost the game.
“We have to improve in the next game. We need to improve our work, how we defend, how we attack.
“We have to score from the chances we create and we have to look at taking those points into our next game.”
Teammate Henrikh Mkhitaryan tried to find the positives, suggesting the team would learn from their lapses in concentration – something he was guilty of in the build-up to the first Chelsea goal.
“There is no success without making mistakes,” said the Armenian. “Obviously we have to play and we have to try.
“If we try, we can do whatever we plan to do. If we don’t try, then we’re not going to play football. That’s why we had lots of mistakes, because we’re trying.
“I’m pretty sure that in the next games we’ll have better results and play better football.”
Demis Roussos was more mobile than the fat greek.. Another waste of money.. Well done Sven
Well done Wenger for a 35m Mustafi.
You’re being unfair to Wenger. Mustafi was an established German international when he was signed and was regarded highly. He started well for us but sadly has regressed.
And Wenger would have kept attacking in the second half and scored more goals, rather than sit back and defend, which we proved in the first 20 minutes of the first half we weren’t doing well.
I am reasonably sure that with Wenger, we would either have won that game or given up a goal on the counter and lost. People may laugh at that–but the way we played the second half, we had only a chance to draw or a chance to lose.
I think Emery will not make that sort of mistake again and I am happy to give him the time.
Those of us who watched the spanish league knew he was reckless, had trouble reading the game and gets stressed out easily.
He was not and never ever will be the kind of quality we need in cd.
Any sane scout in the world knew he wasn’t worth the money.
great perspective, also agree according to my scanter knowledge
Well he got Seville to runners up in Copa del Rey and won the Europa League in 3 successive years so he wasn’t exactly a failure
Wenger tried to sell Mustafi after one season. Maybe Mustafi would have left this transfer window under Wenger.
35 million for mustafi and over 300k a week for ozil.Both laughable both sanctioned by Wenger and gazizdis. If Milan want Ivan then please take him as this club is left with this piss poor legacy.
Mustafi?
What about Mhkitaryan. Sure he scored a goal and set the other one up but went missing rest of the game and missed the MOST passes.
Reality check for you.
You must have watched a different match as Mkhitaryan was one of our best players.
I don’t think Mustafi was a bad purchase when you consider Gabriel and BFG who were injured at the start of that season. Naturally we had to pay over the odds to bring a defender in. Xhaka on the other hand was bought very early in the window and that too we got him over Kante. We should have offered Kante the wages he was demanding. Kante along with Wilshere and Cazorla would have been a game changer for this club. Atleast now we should build around Torreira, Mkhitaryan, Guendouzi and Ozil. To be like Pep’s Man City we need… Read more »
To win like Pep’s Man City sure but I am certain there are other original ways that Emery can have us playing and winning. All we can hope for is for us to be a dangerous team, that is hard to play against.
“I’m pretty sure that in the next games we’ll have better results and play better football.”
This I believe.
I can see us getting better and making a streak of wins.
Yeah we’ve got West Ham
Expectedly so.., hopefully by the time we meet Liverpool, Turtle-ham and Man Mou, we would have built a more cohesive team capable of enforcing their own game plan on the top four teams.
The hardest test in the form of MCity & Chelcy has passed..now we are going to have a win streak..
Can someone please cut Mustafis arm off with a really slow razor the next time he raises it (while running) on a near-offside call? Probably the thing about him that annoys me the most (except for his awful defending).
Awful defending was not Mustafi, it was our left side.
Go do your homework and watch the game again (not just highlights)
Time and again we were attacked down our right. No surprise they loaded on Hazard and Kovacic down their left. Bellerin was not getting any help from Mhkitaryan.
First off, I was talking about Mustafis defensive ability in general. Not this perticular game. How about you go do your homework on reading? And yes you’re right, they were toying with our RIGHT hand side. Against City it was the left side (AMN/Micki). This time it was Bellerin/Micki. Conclusion: Micki is a shit defender. All our fullbacks (except nacho) are shit defenders. Bellerin lacks the two most important attributes for a fullback in a back 4, positional awareness and crossing. It doesn’t matter how many times he makes it to the byline if he’s gonna hit Martha on the… Read more »
Agree. But bellerin did show some good skill in his cutbacks re auba miss but he definitely does need to improve his flighted crosses… perhaps time to give Lichtsteiner a go.
That was what was frustrating me the most about Bellerin. We were giving low passes into the 5 yard box – we made passes like that around 4-5 times and yet he kept trying to cross the ball in and knocking it too long or way out.
Useless.
The manager used playing a 19 and a 21 i n central midfield as a reason for detest .hold on. You bought. Then both and played them..
His English maybe poor . But that really is a stupid stupid response
Are you really one to criticize someone else’s english?
To be fair, I think he’s having a stroke.
Sounds about right.
Sorry predictive text..But instead of detest add defeat and you will get the drift
What? You really should not be complaining about anyone’s English. I’ve read your comment five times, and I have no clue what you’re talking about.
If blogs get lazy on some day and is struggling to write a long enough blog, he may just choose to write one on Papapapasthatatapopolous!
Aubameyang & Ozil, how did you really make a name for yourself?
So ineffective.
Over a career spanning many many matches
2 Absolute key chances missed by Aubameyang today. Struggling to see why people want to have a go at say Granit when Torreira also got dispossessed a number of times and gave away a penalty on edge of box. Mhkitaryan misplaced the most passes although in a brief spell he did score and set up Iwobi but that doesn’t tell the entire story unless you pay heed to “By the Numbers”. We were lucky Giroud was merciful to us today conspiring to miss that chance at the end. BUT Whenever we don’t put it away, we heap pressure on the… Read more »
I know the team is still facing some teething problems but you can’t help but feel that the same problems that plagued us in the later part of Wenger’s reign are still very evident. Create chances, don’t take them and concede easy goals. Having said that, Ozil, really has to step up and be the leader he is supposed to be. He is slowly running out of goodwill. You can’t just collect 350,000 every week and disappear during big games. I look forward to better results starting next week. COYG!!
We weren’t as good in creating clear chances.
At least we’re creating the chamces. Lets be hobest the defence can’t get any worse so if ee improve that we improve our league position.
It’s 350k now?
We all knew this would be a tough first two games. I thought we might get a point at best so I’m not surprised.
Seems like we woke up at two down and I hope that was the beginning of something.
At least we have two horrible fixtures we’re not considering any more and we know what is ahead of us.
This is Ozil’s 5th year at the club and he has never had a season where you could say he was really good throughout. I find it laughable that fans think he is going to come good soon. What a bit of intrnet hype can do for a player’s reputation is crazy.