A 2-1 defeat to Fulham rounded off a terrible week for Arsenal who have slipped to fourth in the Premier League standings.
Raul Jimenez cancelled out Bukayo Saka’s early strike at Craven Cottage before Bobby Decordova-Reid pounced in the box to score the winner on an afternoon when the Gunners were seriously below-par.
Here’s what the managers, players, stattos and pundits had to say…
Mikel Arteta on the defeat…
We weren’t good enough. We lost three days ago when we deserved to win, but today we were nowhere near that level. We conceded two very similar goals, giving the ball away. Defensively we were second best. We had a great performance against Liverpool, against West Ham, this is the one you have to isolate as it is our worst performance of the season.
Source: Sky Sports
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Declan Rice on where Arsenal go from here…
There’s still a long, long way to go in the Premier League, still 18 more games. We’re such a good side, we’re not going to let this get us down. Obviously, we’ve let the fans down today, we’ve let ourselves down but overall 2023 has been positive for Arsenal and we’re looking to go one step further in 2024 and stay on it.
Source: beIN SPORTS
Arsenal have conceded 10 goals from the last 19 shots on target faced in the Premier League.#FULARS
— Orbinho (@Orbinho) December 31, 2023
Marco Silva on his side’s performance…
We spoke before the match, the aim was to react from the last game which was under our standards at Bournemouth. We did it really well, coming from behind so early after the goal. The players stuck with the plan, we were always able to beat the first pressure from Arsenal, you know they are really strong at that. Today, some really good moments of football, the first goal we scored is a good example of that. I’m really pleased, the players deserved it.
Source: beIN SPORTS
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Fulham captain Tom Cairney on his side’s win…
We have been great at home, not so good away. We were very disappointed with the Boxing Day performance [3-0 loss at Bournemouth] and wanted to make a statement today. We were on top form. To react the way we did to going a goal behind was very good.
Source: Sky Sports
10 – Bukayo Saka has scored 10 goals in Premier League London derbies, the second most of any player before turning 23:
15 – Harry Kane
10 – Bukayo Saka
9 – Jermain Defoe
8 – Bale, Dele, Hartson, MartinelliTerritorial. pic.twitter.com/uRwv0YWB2y
— OptaJoe (@OptaJoe) December 31, 2023
Arteta on the impact of his substitutes…
When you don’t change the result, they didn’t [make an impact], that’s for sure. It didn’t work the first half and it didn’t work the second half. So throughout the 100 minutes, we were never at the levels that we wanted to be.
Source: Post-game press conference
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Arteta on the seriousness of Oleksandr Zinchenko’s calf injury…
We don’t know. He felt something in his calf so he could not be available. We’ll scan him tomorrow and see how far he’s put in the schemes.
Source: Post-game press conference
The last time Arsenal lost to Fulham, a London club went on to win the Champions League that season. As the only London club in the thing this year, I’ve decided for a positive spin. Happy new year and all that shit
— Tom Ede (@TomEde1) December 31, 2023
Ex-Gunner Matthew Upson on Arsenal’s struggles…
When it’s all going right for Arsenal, the ball is firing. They carve teams open. That hasn’t been the case of late and they’ve looked a little bit suspect at the back as well.
Jason McAteer on Declan Rice not being vocal enough…
If you’re on the pitch, you can take it upon yourself to go ‘i’m not happy with this’ you don’t need to listen to your manager. I watched him there, he played a ball into Odegaard, okay it was the wrong side, Odegaard gave him one of them [a shrug], and Declan Rice gave him one back, and they turned around and chased back. I’ve seen Jordan Henderson scream at any player on the pitch, ‘not good enough, show more, do better’.
Source: beIN SPORT
Arsenal have dropped five points from winning positions against Fulham this season.#FULARS
— Orbinho (@Orbinho) December 31, 2023
Arteta on the need for a reset…
Today we had a chance to be top of the league after 20 games, and that tells you the consistency and the quality that we have shown in the first half of the season. But the reality is that today we are in pain because we have lost a game playing in a way we don’t want to. We have to reset and take that defeat away with us. It will be painful for a few days, but we have to move on.
Source: Arsenal.com
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Jamie Redknapp on Arsenal’s current situation…
They’re a bit lost, they’ve got to find their confidence. I think Man City are probably breathing down their necks, they’re looking at other sides. I think people thought that Arsenal would just go on and now this might be a little bit of a procession for them. But this might be the reality check they need because they’re right off it at the moment.
Source: Sky Sports
Mikel , I love what you’ve done so far!
However, let me spell it for you……
R…..O…..T……A ……T……..E
And that includes Saka
Only once they get hurt
The issue is, players need games to find form, but he doesnt trust the likes of ESR, Nelson etc.. sufficiently to give them game time. Therefor they can never get enough pitch time to find some form. So when Mikel does actually give them minutes when he needs them to make a difference, they can’t ever deliver. So its just this fucking shit circle now that these guys are stuck in. Where the manager doesnt trust them and wont start them. That means they cant ever get into some kind of decent enough form to be effective, to play well… Read more »
You’ve nailed it mate.
There are potentially just shy of 60 games in a season for top clubs.
Then there’s international games.
It’s not rocket science that Saka etc is fatigued and needing an occasional break.
The lads that can do 60 games season in, season out are freaks. Amazing athletes but they’re most unusual.
Artets reckons top players all have to do it……. I just don’t agree.
Agree with your point about rotation but Wenger was fucking awful at it. He seems to have morphed into some sort of saint in some peoples minds. He wouldn’t even start a fully fit Rosicky when we were busy playing the horseshoe of doom. He played Pires into the ground until he broke him and cost him his place in the French winning team.
He barely rotates players and that keeps making our players rusty and out of form. He really needs to start rotating our players to avoid burnout
This is silly. Prior to City’s financially doped up cheat code, PL winning sides featured the same 11-14 players in almost every match (unless injury) for the entire season. Despite the incredible investment in the team over the past few years, we aren’t able to buy world class back ups for every position to enable the kind of rotation people would like that guarantees three points every week. But I am sure that will be the hope on the kind of budget that Arsenal can lawfully maintain. We have a young squad still, and we have to be patient at… Read more »
Players want 3 things. 1. Big wages. 2. The faith of the manager. 3. To play. Arteta has given a few players all 3 to a fault. And they’ve repaid him like most modern footballers. By not being able to handle the pressure they thought they craved and feeling sorry for themselves when the other team decides to do tactics too.
Let’s just hope 2024 is better than 2024.
It’ll be similar
Lol
One of the obvious problems today (only one of several unfortunately) was how rarely we turned possession into attack, how we never seemed able to put consistent pressure on a team whose players–on average–are not the very best. For everyone who thinks Zinchenko is a liability, this is a glimpse of how we play without a player of his technical ability getting the ball from Rice, Saliba, and Gabriel, keeping the ball, and moving it forward. Without him (or Partey), Rice must do that job, and that is not (yet) his game.
Spot on comment. We’ve been missing an in-form Partey, who was better than Rodri for more than half of last season. You see how much City lose when Rodri is out of their team. We’ve got Declan who is another level in so much of what he does, but he doesn’t quite have the same capacity to pick a pass between the lines. Number one transfer priority should be to replace him with someone who can stay healthy most of the time, which would also mean less reliance on Zinchenko.
We’ve always struggled progressing the ball without the Zinchenko role, with or without Partey. We badly need this profile in our team and Kiwior/Tomi aren’t suited enough for this.
We have returned to the latter Wenger days when we had a squad of millionaires who simply did not turn up, had no idea, no leader, no invention NOTHING.
Once again we are losing to teams we should not be like last year (and so many before) and yet no one seems to care.
We need something but please, please NO Toney! He will cost the earth and is not the answer to this problem. No point making another millionaire if he does not turn up 50 % of the time.
I think your struggle to find a PL team with any player who isn’t a millionaire.
It is just the one’s who don’t turn up that annoy me. They have these at many clubs but we have had this for 6-7 years.
August – December of last season was the outlier. Mikel’s first three seasons, the second half of last year and this year so far is what we are. 3rd/4th/5th is our level.
The people down voting either think we’re at 6th/7th, or they’re delusional. This team is worse than last year. 8th, 8th, 5th, 2nd, now 4th. 2nd was a one-off, because we surprised people with our style. We’ve been figured out and Arteta has shown he can’t figure out a Plan B. Sorry for the realism.
An awful performance, slow-paced, one-paced, predictable, no cutting edge and players unwilling to track back, put in the hard yards and losing all their personal duels. Fulham simply wanted it more.
Saka, please change your hair color back to stop this downturn 😉
another defeat in our next PL game we can honestly say our title ambitions are truely sunk, woeful performance is the best i can say at Fulham after going a goal up early, i didn’t realise how slow Kiwior is, or not a leftback also, schoolboy defending for 2nd goal, we are in serious trouble when we can’t beat west ham & fulham when are players didn’t need to travel outside London, going an early goal up in this fixture is what you hope for yet it proved fruitless, Eddie doing what he does best in a hard game like… Read more »
There’s nothing wrong except the speed of attack.Themgunners prancing around the box dates back to Wengers time.This gives defenders time to regroup and once the attack breaks down,its the sucker punch.
Watch how other teams score, Speedy in attack and shoot on sight
This is where Arteta goes wrong….this season and last season::
You need to rotate the squad when the preferred starting eleven are doing well. When confidence and performance is at a top level,, that is when Arteta should rotate squad players into the team. Bring them in against “weaker” teams when we are having a good run. To rotate now is a little bit too late.
Spot on. Rotation is something Arteta still needs to work on. He has had opportunities as you mentioned against weaker sides and sticks with the same 11 again and again. We rack up more wins this way until the injuries appear and the squad becomes very thin and jaded. This is where we are now. As a club we are still climbing out of the hole from late stage Wenger and no executive structure to replace him. We can do better on the transfers and squad building.
Westham forced themselves on us. Fulham came next, forcing themselves onto us; they grabbed our balls and came deep in our loins. Brutally assaulted by the bottom feeders. Alarm bells are going.
Look physically and mentally spent. I called it after Anfield last year. It looked the same against Fulham. I hope I am wrong.