Arsenal’s attempts to wind down their season by the end of January look on course as Mikel Arteta’s side crashed out of the FA Cup to 10-man Manchester United.
Following Tuesday’s humbling at home to Newcastle in the Carabao Cup semi-final first leg, the Gunners continued their downward spiral, creating a slew of half-chances only to squander them in increasingly exasperating ways. From the outside, it appears confidence has drained from the squad.
Ruben Amorim’s side looked equally eager to make things difficult for themselves, but Arsenal were determined to outdo them, ultimately, making the evening as painful as possible for the freezing home crowd.
Diogo Dalot’s red card in the 61st minute should have shifted the game in Arsenal’s favour, and for a brief moment, it looked like it might. Gabriel’s strike, cancelling out Bruno Fernandes’ opener, gave a glimmer of hope, but Martin Odegaard’s missed penalty 10 minutes later drained the energy from the stadium. What followed was a series of missed chances, dragging a laboured performance through extra time.
A defeat on penalties felt inevitable. When Havertz missed, all eyes turned to David Raya to salvage the situation. That he didn’t get close to any of United’s five spot-kicks was a fitting end to a dismal night.
“It’s unbelievable,” reflected Arteta. “Obviously, you measure the performance and what we did in relation to the position, you know, you deserve to win the game by a mile.
“But the reality is we are out and the only thing that’s going to be judged is that, but internally I can’t.”
Compounding a miserable evening, Arsenal lost Gabriel Jesus to a concerning knee injury and also had to sub off both Jurrien Timber and Jorginho with apparent problems. With games every three days, the squad is looking threadbare. It’ll be interesting to see if the club is now forced to enter the transfer market.
For now, Arteta’s focus is on the players at his disposal who clearly need some love.
“I love my players. I love our team and I love how good they are and what they do because in 1000 games, you should loose one and probably it was this one,” said the Spaniard.
“You have to understand this as well, it’s part of our industry, our game and move on because you don’t have time to do that because on Wednesday we have a massive one [against Sp*rs].”
On penalties deciding the game, he added: “When you go to penalties you know that it’s a flick of the coin and it can go either way.”
“It’s an incredible team. I’m so proud of my players. I love my players and I cannot be prouder because it’s very difficult to demand something else than the performance that they put in there.
“The ball has to go in the net and then you have to batter the opponent, that’s the reality.”
Under Emery we chose to drop a creator (Özil) and play two historically clinical finishers (Aubazette). In that context, when we over performed our xG, e.g. in the UEL semi, it wasn’t luck as much as a reflection of our squad-building choices. This is the same, but opposite, scenario. If we had a striker who historically outperformed xG but missed chances today you could say that is luck. Havertz and Jesus are exactly the players we knew they were before buying – players who have never been clinical in their entire careers. That’s ok if you put them alongside a… Read more »
This 👆🏾
They’re doing what they’ve always done, which is squander chances…chances that are too few due to how laboured our performances have been. The inevitability of a penalty defeat (after that penalty miss – WHAT IS IT WITH THOSE STUPID STUTTERY PENALTIES?!?!?) was the most painful thing.
Precisely. There have been periods in which we spend money on strikers, and periods when we spend it on midfielders and/or defenders. You don’t win trophies unless you simultaneously recruit quality all over the pitch. Jesus for the price was a decent interim option for 2 or 3 seasons. 65m on Havertz is a little more difficult to explain, but in fairness he took us within 2 points of a title. The next step was to sign a ‘true’ centre forward – an expensive but unavoidable requirement which the owners seem unwilling to fund. And not because the money isn’t… Read more »
After seeing the coach identify Jesus and Kai as our forward and how they performed, you cannot really blame the Kroenkes for hesitating now.
I’m sure they had their reasons with Emery and post-Emirates Arsene as well. We’ve just been cursed with a remarkable succession of terrible managers. (sarcasm)
We still won nothing with Emery, and his football became worse by the day. Having said that, I cannot believe that Arteta says we will lose 1 in 1000 playing like that. His forwards are not clinical finishers, this probably won’t change much no matter how many games we play. He needs to learn this lesson or we are all f***d.
Lose 1 in 1000? We play spurs and Villa next. I fear we are going to lose 4 in 4 after today and Newcastle
Emery didn’t drop Ozil, Arteta did. In 2020.
Yh because of how crap he was for Emery lol Ozil, Auba, Mustafi and whoever else he had to get rid of was by far the right decisions for the club.
Arsenal couldn’t buy a goal with Ozil ostracized under Emery, and Arteta’s first season. Emery even wanted tó set up Ozil to be butchered at Anfield, only for hím to produce a MoM display in a 5-5 draw. Sideways, laboured huffing and puffing, boring patterns, sutfocating any creativity, improvisations dead, that’s what we are. Workhorses
It was the ball.
When you lose the 1/1000 game for the 4th time in a season you can’t use that excuse anymore. We need to do something different now
I think that Arteta is living in cloud cuckoo land.
Do you expect him to come out in the media and say his bosses haven’t supported him in getting star players required to take us to the next level?
Well the real Arsenal fans are back. The title push of the last two campaigns had hidden our true nature.
With the amounts of injuries and I fixture congestion, I am less fussed about being out of this one.
Never mind we’d have drawn Spurs or Newcastle away while our peers feast on hartogate in the next round anyways
Yeah because we have a real chance of winning the league or champions league don’t we ?
Do you truly believe we could challenge for either of these? I put this to you – Havertz our main striker and goal threat – still confident?
I think he was the last two campaigns. And don’t get me wrong I’d love to have prime Pele as our nine but this is what we have. Is our manager ignoring a number 9? Probably not.
Also how can we stand zero chance with the league, CL and stand 100% chance with the cups and fatigue with the same team?
Always felt we were a rough patch away from the fans turning on the players and soon the manager.
He is just regurgitating PR lines. “Proud of players”, “deserved to win”, “need to move on”…it’s just painfully boring to hear this when you know for a fact no one on that pitch deserved to win and with injuries + bad form we’ll likely see more of the same.
We just managed to be much worse than one of the worst United teams while being a man up at home for half the game.
Just when we thought we were out of banter era….
What do you want him to say? Talk shit about his players to the medias ?
I sometimes wonder if you guys read what you write before posting it here or elsewhere.
Thank you!!!!
There’s plenty to express between “my players were shit” and the constant “we deserve to win the game because we dominated”. But the haughty few here don’t seem to see it.
How the heck donwe have so many injures??
Don’t be fooled by this narrative…..we are missing 2 out of our starting 11……this injury crisis is an excuse not a reality
Having not had partey in midfield for multiple games (due to injuries) has definitely hurt us. Doesn’t mean we should be missing sitters but the injuries are a factor
If Arteta thought Arsenal deserved to win that game by a mile, I must have been watching a different game. Meandering possession, wasted set pieces and poor finishing do not win many matches.
Statements like this provoke opposition fans making fun of him, which is justified. Who is he fooling? What kept us from winning by a mile? His ”control” tactics…
He is defending his players.
Also, this « Arteta is only looking for control » narrative is either naive or a complete lie. Arteta explained very well in an interview on Sky Sports that he was not looking for control but for dominance in every single aspect of the game but it seems few people chose not to consider his explanation but rather to stick with this idea that he’s only looking to control the possession.
The problem is though that watching our games, ‘Arteta is only looking for control’ doesn’t feel like a narrative – it just seems a pretty clear explanation of the way we play
Can you please elaborate ? Yes build-up is slower, yes risks are calculated but I do agree with Arteta when he says that we were the better team today even if we were awful. United provided nothing except their goal which exists because of an individual error.
I don’t disagree with any of that about today’s game….but you have said it yourself, build up is slower. It has been all season. From the start of the the season we have been a worse – and a more boring – team than the last two seasons.
It is not only a narrative but also a very elaborate assessment of the way Arteta sets up his teams. It is not a lie. We almost never ever play quick transition disregarding with or without Saka or Odegard. We never even try to play quick attacking passes without first exchanging 10-15 side passes. Have a look at the stats, more than 70 percent of our passing combinations is Saliba-Gabriel.
Artetas statement that he prefers 1:0 0ver 5:1 will actually give you quite a good hint on Artetas priorities.
serious question from an amateur: would mikel like to quicker and more direct? when yes, why it doesn‘t happen?
*play
Are you blind? Odegaard missed a penalty when he shouldnt and rice trossard havertz all missed sitters. Yes under normal circumstances this game ends 4-1 to Arsenal. Cant blame manager when players miss sitters.
Literally just making stuff up aren’t you? We created 10x more xG than Utd.
Finishing was rubbish but to say we were poor overall disingenuous.
”it’s very difficult to demand something else than the performance that they put in there”
This indicates that he is getting delusional. Which part of loosing to 13th placed Manure, playing with 10 man for over an hour, being gifted a penalty is good performance? Only blind fans would find positives from this game.
This team always fall in the most important time accept year one. 2022, bad luck, we are not good enough. 2023, bad luck, we are not good enough. 2024, bad luck, we are not good enough. 3 years, same reasons, manager’s fault. Nothing else to moan.
The squad is weaker than last season in all areas bar defence. Sterling is no better than Reiss, Nketiah out and not replaced. Merino in for both ESR, Vieira & Elneny. Ramsdale out, Neto in. If we had kept everyone fit we’d most likely be in a strong position in all 4 competitions but instead we are paying the price for naively entertaining this season with a smaller squad than last season. An injury crisis is something we failed to plan for. That lesson should have been learned after the 2023 fell apart when we lost Saliba and Tomiyasu for… Read more »
We are worse in defence and actually weaker though we have more bodies. We are seeing the kind of errors we didn’t see last season or the previous one from our Defenders and that’s a worrying trend borne out of the control football philosophy.
It’s another season panning out just like all the rest – why should we expect or hope for success ?
Thank you. The sooner people just give up any expectations with this club, the better. We keep banging our heads against a brick wall and have been doing so for over a decade now.
We have bottled 2-3 titles and clear opportunities for them. It is time we just accept our fate.
Be prepared for the Arsenal piss takers to go overbored now and cream themselves.
As annoying as it is, it’s honestly pretty deserved since we are about as threatening in front of goal as a bunch of drunk penguins, which just adds more fuel to the fire of another potentially trophyless season. So much for ‘this is our season’.
I love Arteta and I support him. He’s more than earned the opportunity to sort this out. But he needs to stop saying that we deserve to win games in which we cannot score. Once could be considered bad luck but , whatever about protecting the players, I think for his credibility he needs to acknowledge publicly that this is a problem.
I agree. Our two title pushes of last season and the one before has given me confidence that the manager can turn things around again. But he will need to seriously revise his game plan; we are ridiculously slow and over cautious – and the ‘keeper hoofing has got to stop. The throws are fine (even then we halt on the break on the half way line) but the hoofing has got to stop. We also desperately need investment up front – and that’s on both the ownership and the manager to make it happen. If we don’t sign anyone… Read more »
I thought his press conference comment on inward business was quite telling: “I focus very much on the ones that we have to perform at the highest level. That’s it. The rest is not in our hands, in my hands.” Like he’s made his views clear to the execs and now it’s down to them.
This!!
Disappointing but at least they turned up. What bothered me was idiotic method of penalty taking both of which were saved. Run and hit the ball not dance over it like a fairy. The finishing issue requires resolution or we will finish with nothing
People are drawing the wrong conclusion from the fact that Arsenal have been massively underperforming their XG. It’s due to the fact that teams are terrified of Arsenal and packing the goal-mouth (a la Sean Dyche). So a close-range shot may have a lot less value than the XG rating suggests. Will a striker solve this problem? I don’t think so. Arsenal has to just keep lumping the ball into the mixer. The goals will come. But, I’m afraid, I don’t see a new striker as the answer. As I said, teams are terrified of Arsenal. They defend in depth.… Read more »
An elite striker is not answer but part of an answer.
Of course. But it’s also a question of whether the fee is worth it.
I just don’t see Isak scoring many goals against the sort of defence we saw today and he’d be nuts to join us.
I totally agree. Especially with the upcoming rules. Life is not football manager but I just wanted to point out that an elite striker would be part of the solution in my opinion. Let’s see what the club can find.
Seriously?
Seriously?
Said the same thing after Brighton, then after Newcastle. Hopefully he won’t need to say it in the next game.
Can foresee the crowd turning toxic on Arteta if we don’t buy cover for Saka and a striker come February.
He rightfully did. We were better than Brighton even if Anthony Taylor decided to gift them a penalty and we were better than Newcastle everywhere but in both boxes which is exactly what Mikel said.
you are one funny lad. “we were better than Newcastle everywhere but in both boxes”, read that again aloud then think about it.
Yeah, we were great, we were only rubbish in defending and scoring.
Arteta plays the line about the market we will only purchase if it improves what we have.
You coukd argue that he didn’t need merino (& defo on current showing) once he knew he had rice jorg partey and even havertz…similarly califiori…Good player but we had suitable cover.
Yet we refuse to take a risk on something up front…we knew Jesus was injury prone and score shy…trossard has peaked and martinelli is unconvincing.
It would not take a lot to improve upon what we have.
Arteta needs to sort it very quickly
Note that :
– Merino did not have much rest nor preseason with the Euros. He was injured for two (3?) months at his first training with us.
– Partey and Jorginho will leave this summer.
– Calafiori is an upgrade to Zinchenko who will also leave this summer I reckon.
– Havertz is not his dream number 9 but he provides cover for multiple positions and has been forced to play as 9 because we had no other solution and did pretty well ever since except today which was his worst game in an Arsenal shirt.
Buy a no nonsense head banger who isn’t upset when his hair is ruffled.
We need a centre forward who will put his head and body on the line, no matter what. League won. They won’t though.
One of the reasons I love Arteta is that when things are at their lowest, he still responds well. All love, all defense of the club. He’s a good person and a star.
Arteta really needs to look realistically at his attack, and at his turgid square/reverse passing ‘transition tactics’… take a deep breath… an then STOP trotting out the pathetic ‘we really deserved to win that game/couldn’t have done more‘ trope!
That lame, tired phrase is about as toothless as our current attack.
My hope rest with Kroenkes and their business acumen recognising expiring “shelf life”. Arteta did splendid job to bring us wehere we are, now it is the time to recognise it and bring in someone who can bring us further. Because, if Arteta stays and we continue winning nothing I am quite sure that the likes of Saliba, Gabriel and other excellent young players wont be extending their contracts with Arsenal.
How many time have we got to hear this ‘we deserved to win’ but we didn’t and your signings have been very poor Arteta. Buying Havertz as a striker come on!!!
In last week’s Arsecast the guy invited on the show said that we’re so unpredictable attack-wise, that he can see us beating Man U three, four nil right after the Newcastle shit show. His optimism was commendable