Mikel Arteta said Arsenal produced their “worst game of the season” as Fulham condemned his side to a 2-1 defeat at Craven Cottage.
Having struggled in front of goal against West Ham, the Gunners should have been buoyed by Bukayo Saka’s early strike, converted after Bernd Leno parried Gabriel Martinelli’s curling effort. However, the home side worked their way back into the game, dominated the midfield and fully deserved their equaliser, scored by Raul Jimenez at the half-hour mark.
Marco Silva’s side continued to look more dangerous after the break and took the lead through Bobby Decordova-Reid’s close-range finish following calamitous defending by Arsenal. The hosts looked comfortable defending their advantage in the pouring rain as a host of Arteta substitutions failed to make any impact whatsoever.
“A really tough day, a sad day,” an irritated Arteta told BBC Sport.
“Three days ago we played a game we lost that we completely meant to win it, today was our worst game of the season. The pace, the purpose we have in attack, defensively we were second best, we could not dominate and had issues because of that.
“We didn’t do enough with that [possession] – not enough purpose speed or threat. We were sloppy with the ball. It wasn’t good enough. We didn’t deserve to win. When you have opportunities to go top of league on 31 December and now end up with a really bad feeling that is football. The lines are really thin.
“If we play like we played in the other 19 games we will be up there [in the league at the end of the season]. If we play like today we will be nowhere near. Today was a really difficult day to swallow.”
In his interview with Sky Sports, Arteta was also asked if he planned to be active in the transfer market when it opens tomorrow. His response was that “the same players” need to get things back on track.
Rather than take that literally, we suspect he simply wants his current players to own their existing issues.
Having gone from top to fourth in the space of a week, there’s now a very high chance the Gunners won’t be in the Champions League spots by the time their Premier League campaign resumes against Crystal Palace on 20 January.
Next up, it’s the small matter of Liverpool in the FA Cup third round.
This is the problem when you have no plan B. This was just the continuation of the West Ham game. Out of ideas no plan B.
Did you watch both games? They were nothing alike. As Arteta says, if we play like we did against West Ham, we win almost every time. If we play like we did today, we won’t win much.
Exactly. Reading the comment sections here after a loss is almost always a pointless affair, barely anyone seems to have their wits about them. To play as badly as we did today is depressing enough, a team with our resources should never play that badly full stop, no need to add insult to injury by wrongly claiming we played as bad as that in the last game too.
I was actually wondering what the object of the nuttiness would be. Can’t be Zinchenko, and you have to be deranged to blame Raya today. So, it’s Arteta. Get a grip.
That’s modern football though. It’s not that dissimilar to reading the comment sections here after a couple of important goals from Havertz; people not having their wits about them, throwing smug comments towards his doubters that had apparently been proved wrong. …
I think the similarity is that both these supposedly inferior teams actually play for a win against us. The Villa game is the same. When do you see teams have that kind of disrespect against Man City and Liverpool? If you play for a win against these two, you will get battered. If you play for a draw, you might just get lucky. We simply dont strike enough fear in these smaller teams. They dare to believe they can come to us and if they stick to their plan, they will get a win. And they actually f*ckin did that…… Read more »
City have earned that respect by winning 3 straight titles though, and I disagree about sides not daring to attack Liverpool, Fulham scored 3 goals against them. With West Ham and Villa we’re talking about possibly the best sides in the league below the serious title contenders, he’ll Villa might even contend this year! Let’s not lose our marbles. For the most part teams do respect us and tend to park the bus, then we complain about that, now when they come and try to play you complain about that too? Isn’t that when we’ve been at our best last… Read more »
What you say is only half true. Against West Ham or was the end product and final ball lacking, that was certainly leaving again, but more often than not we couldn’t even make it to the final ball because EVERY player on the team was shit in this game, but it’s absolutely a continuation from West Ham and arguably before that. We have not been clinical enough all season. Or defense is typically great, a bit soft the last two, but our forwards have not been good enough this year except in the Champions League. Eddie is our leading scorer… Read more »
Both games had fundamental problems. Against West Ham it was goal scoring that was the problem and not having a decent striker doesn’t help.
Against Fulham, no plan b to beat a high press.
Both problems had tried to be rectified by spending £65M on Havertz. It hasn’t worked.
I watched both games. We lost both games. If you don’t get how we got tactically beaten in both games then you need to watch them again. We could have played another 90 mins in the West Ham game and we still wouldn’t have scored. We are too slow, lethargic, predictable, and making useless crosses in the box. I could go on…..
The response to the West Ham game really shocked me. All this ‘we played well, on any other day we would have won’. Baffling. We were terrible. So many games last season where the result wasn’t going our way, but I felt this team would find something late on. West Ham ? 20 minutes left, that game was done & dusted.
Well said. I thought our effort against West Ham was pitiful. It felt like we gave up and we have no other options or alternatives. Pretty worrying because we’re so dependent on Saka, Martinelli and Jesus and they’re all playing ordinary right now. Rice even looks tired and out of sorts. Mikel better find answers and quick smart cause our season is going down the toilet… Fast.
If you’re having 30 shots in a game the problem isnt plan A.
But Only 8 on target, of which mostly were easy catches. Another way of looking at that game is that West Ham frustrated us and left us with very few clear chances
30 shots 28 of which were less than 0.08xg is total BS.
West ham was awful, today was much worse.
If the vast majority of those shots are shots the opposition are comfortable with you taking, then Plan A may well be a problem
He needs to look in the mirror. The squad isn’t there yet, but the league figured us out in the last third of last season. We’re good enough to still win most of the time, but not good enough for the title. He has to adjust if that first half is going to remain true.
To win the title we’ll realistically need to win 17/18 remaining matches. But we need to focus on hitting the target and defending crosses. We only had one shot on target outside of the goal today…just put your foot through the ball and stop trying to put it top bins please.
Yeah I couldnt agree more — and people need to understand this, we are going to find out how good Mikel actually is. Because if he is the top top level of manager that can push on to win a major honor. Then he has to be intelligent enough to compartmentalize the last few results and figure out whats not working, and how can he change the picture sufficiently that it gives opposition analysts and coaching teams something else to think about. As today proved, and the last couple of games, our goose is well and truly cooked. We have… Read more »
No offence, but we are already bang in the middle of a race for the top 4. Any thoughts of the title is just fantasy stuff to be honest.
None taken — I was trying my absolute hardest not to be too overtly negative. But we are fucked league title wise. Last season we’d lost 6 games at the end of the campaign, we are at 4 now.. to be in any chance of getting near the top we have to win pretty much every single game between now and May, and that’s still hoping Liverpool and City drop at least one other game after we beat them both. Its done. The worst part is, I think City wont win it either, I think they’re still too not arsed… Read more »
The media don’t believe we can win the league, it’s amazing that we have a few bad games and even our fans have given up on the title race it’s quite shocking. Liverpool and Man City have also lost matches and they were against mid table teams, no one wrote them off . We’ve had so many injuries to Key players, it’s only natural that players like Rice and Saka are fatigued.
Have some faith guys.
He’s right. It was the worst game of the season; but what to do about it?
1 will he think that his tactics were not good enough
2 will he think the team selection was not good enough
3 will he think that his acquisition were not good enough
4 will he think we were unlucky
5 will he think we deserved to win because we had more of the ball and that basically means you win
He never, ever says this. He says when you have a lot of chances, and the other team has almost none, you should win. That was the case against West Ham; it was not the case today.
We literally got outplayed by Fulham… Like wtf are these guys doing!?
I don’t think Arteta ever thinks he’s wrong
I doubt it.
Remember the start of the season? Big Gabriel found himself on the bench. But this experiment was a crystal clear failure.
See if we can get 15 million for nketia would be a start. He must never start for us again. Terrible player who offers absolutely nothing. Cannot link play, win headers, read the game, tackle, and his closing down is half arsed.
His lack of ability to control the ball and provide hold the ball up directly cost us a goal. Turns out the Sheffield game was actually the outlier. The dataset of him being good enough is now just fat too large. The forward we all thought we needed turns out to have been correct. Or forward line was bad against West Ham, again Fulham they were abysmal except perhaps Martinelli, and he got subbed. Saka needs to step forward big time, his goal was lucky and he’s missing too many chances he normally eats for lunch. Fuckity fuck.
*not being good enough*
Worst game of the season on the back of maybe the second worst. Bottling it early this season I guess… Now we dream of the Champions League… It’s the hope that kills.
Long way to go. Add to the attack in Jan and there’s too much talent in the team not to bounce back
I appreciate this. It’s true, we are much better than this and have been underperforming recently, obviously. But it’s because of our front five really being in a slump and us not being stellar enough in defense to give us a chance in the match. We’re lacking the spark and our patterns are being laid bare. Jesus and Zinchenko were our spark last season and Rice was ours to start this season, but we need something special to get us going again
Certainly was our worst performance, even our Rolls Royce at the back looked like a broken down banger.
Some glaring issues need resolving especially defensively out wide. Got a bit of a break after the cup, hopefully can get back to winning ways.
We lack fluidity and movement in attack. All very static. Hard to say whether it’s tiredness/loss of form hitting all front players at same time or whether it’s something more serious and structural.
Have to say I miss ESR – great player at playing between lines and making late runs which is what we are missing.
Miss Ramsdale too. He’d usually make one great save a match and has more presence than Raya. But once Arteta decides something that’s it.
I also feel ramsdale’s energy is missing. He is more vocal and “passionate” riling up rival fans and opponents. A bit like the bastardness of Emi Martinez. It helps our player not getting as deflated.
Arteta deserved a huge amount of praise last season for turning us from top 4 contenders to title contenders. This season we have turned from title contenders into top 4 contenders again. The question is does he understand why & can he charge it again next season?
No he is clueless. Just watch him on the sidelines, he doesn’t understand what is happening. Thank you MA for turning the club around, time to pass the batton for the next phase of the project.
I wholeheartedly agree. This was always going to happen when you sign a Training Wheels manager. Especially when they are a dogmatic and inflexible Guardiola Mini-Me.
He has knackered Ramsdale & spent 65m on a jigsaw piece that doesn’t fit instead of investing in a predatory goal-scorer.
Pretty passes and lots of possession but with a mental and tactical frailty in the Technical area that brings the whole thing down.
He’s not the Messiah – he’s just a Mess.
Yes Nketiah is not good enough but Jesus is hardly improvement on Lacazette. I would even argue that Laca was a smarter player with his use of the ball.
Laca and Auba at their peak together were much more of a threat than Jesus and Eddie!
Arteta’s tactical changes have been poor plus our attack has been found out. So why hasn’t he changed things? Plus spending 60m on Havertz was a tremendous cock up, not far off Pepe as a failure
They say a manager is judged on his signings and boy has some of his are awful. From Cedric to Vierra to Kiwior to Havertz ( as bad as Antony?) I wouldn’t trust him with the clubs funds
Tavares, Lokonga, Raya
Beat Liverpool and we are being talked about again……it didn’t happen for us this week, it happens let’s look back 4 years realise the progress is there…….f’n coyg!!!!
This really bothers me. I would rather he just kept quiet and fix the problems on the training ground. Losing does not bother me – its a fact of football that you lose games once in a while. Fulham would have watched the West Ham game and have a blue print of what they needed to do to beat us and MA being so utterly predictable obliged – the only difference from the West Ham game was that OZ was “injured” and Eddie replaced Jesus up front. Top managers change it around the keep the opposition guessing – you can… Read more »
Why does this site have moderation for no reason?
I think league has gone now, unless we have near perfect 2nd half of season & we do amazing biz in jan. We have to sell well in january and reinnvest Ramsdale Smith rowe. Rees its pointless having them not sure we would get much for them as they have played so little but seems only way ffp etc
You have no plan for a low block or an aggressive high press.
Oh apart from trying to hit a tall overpriced German (not Kai’s fault) at the far post.
Oh apart from bringing on a back up striker who would never get in a top 6 team.
Excellent work.
Last season Arsenal played fluid football. This season, it looks like the team is running through wet concrete. Slow. Predictable. Boring. Our bench is nonexistent which means saka. Odegaard and rice will be played into the ground. The team barely scores. Top 4 will be a challenge.
Clueless, not worthy, inadequate and should be paid for doing the job not deciding what effort to make once they cross the line. We are doing what Spurs do: come down with the decorations. We need 11 men who run their hearts out EVERY match not just half of them irrespective of the pay or the reputation. Arsenak fans want more effort than we had agianst West Ham and Fulham, more than 4 points from a possible 15. Rubbish!!
I don’t feel confident with Raya. Zinchenko isn’t looking solid. We have a bigger problem with our defence than our strikers. We are going into every game knowing we have to score 2 or more goals, that is a lot of pressure on the forwards.
Don’t pick up the option on Raya, mix up the defence to make it more reliable and see how that works.