A first half goal for Jarhead Bowen was enough to condemn Arsenal to a 1-0 defeat at the Emirates this afternoon.
Mikel Arteta’s side struggled from the off, and the challenge was made more difficult when substitute Myles Lewis-Skelly was sent off in the 73rd minute for denying a goalscoring opportunity.
An already slim chance of challenging Liverpool for the title has now more or less evaporated, after our lack of forwards and lack of January action came home to roost today.
Here’s how the players rated this afternoon.
Read the Arsenal 0-1 West Ham match report and see the goal here
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I think our injury crisis can be summed up by the fact that down a goal we subbed on two left backs, zinchenko who will move on in the summer and our 18 year old surprise of the season who learned an important lesson today.
I bet arsenal buy some attacking players this summer. Even with martinelli, saka, havertz and trossard we are paper thin in attack.
By I bet, I mean I hope.
I agree and think we will go for several attacking players since I expect both Sterling and Trossard to leave if the latter does not sign the contract extension he was offered. I am not sure I would approve this contract extension to be fair since he has been disappointing every time he was given the chance to be a regular starter at Arsenal.
By hope, you mean get down on your knees and pray, to all the gods, old and new.
The thing with us, which is very sad, is that we tend to hardly take advantage of it when we have a very good squad. Teams like Man United, Liverpool, and even Man City, recently, get a good squad/coach and they win things. Think of the time we had the likes of Fabregas, Hleb, Adebayor etc. Even when we had DB10, Thierry and co we couldn’t win the UCL. Now, this great crop of players and manager that we have are falling short again and again. And when it comes right down to it, it is always usually because we… Read more »
Well can’t say we’ve been lucky with injured can we ?
Nothing like a lot of other teams have dealt with to be fair,
Several have been without 10 or 12 players for a while,
A decent squad just has to deal with it.
I think we dealt with it pretty well since we lost one game in our last 16 games in Premier League didn’t we ?
Too many draws. And the area of need that needs addressing isn’t in defending – it’s in attack. Tell me how “we dealt with it pretty well” when we signed one attacking player – a washed Sterling – in both transfer windows.
Depends. Depends on whether you have ambition to be champions or you are happy with 2nd place. If it’s the latter, then yeh I guess we’ve done enough.
Sorry to say it, but l think it could be quite a struggle to finish second.
Spurs and United. That’s it.
i think with that slow play without any creativity even 3 attackers would n‘t have scored… ☹️
I know this may seem harsh, but I think this season has been absolutely catastrophic in terms of decisions in and around windows that should see certain people lose their jobs. We came extremely close to winning a title last season, everyone knew the thing that we were missing, and we didnt bring anyone in who can score goals. Its absolutely criminal that we have gift wrapped a title for Arnie Slot in his first season in the Premier League, absolutely criminal. We allowed so many strikers that would have scored a fair amount of goals for us go to… Read more »
You can only buy a player in January if a team wants to sell and you certainly don’t pay an eye watering sum for a stop gap player. Plus if daddy stan, he with the cheque book says no money then there is nothing Mikel can do.
I can’t take anymore copium
In the five stages of coping that starts with booze, I’m on glue right now.
Glued to the telly are ya? Can’t divert your eyes from this glorious car crash of a season?
But seriously, now I need to know what the other stages are, and how many of them come after glue, and is the Sonoran desert toad involved in any of it.
0/10 for my enjoyment of football, I hate it, go away football go away…….I’m a hopscotch man now
That’s a foul on MLS. Boys gave it all they could. Just not enough. I think we were hoping we would win most games after this but the reality is with 4 of our starting frontmen out, that’s never going to happen.
I think it’s too light from Kudus for this to be a foul even if there is an elbow/arm there. Is MLS out for 1 or several games ? Not sure I understand these suspensions anymore
3 games I think because it’s a straight red.
There were less obvious ones awarded to West Ham, and quite often they would be given. However, even allowing for the missing forward line, our players went missing. I couldn’t work out our tactics at all from minute one, we basically choked.
I will be honest, it looked extremely rough by Kudos, leading with his forearm. I have to agree, but i just dont think it had enough impact to be considered.
Odegaard’s form has fallen off a cliff, let’s be honest. His shooting is appalling even moreso for someone with his technical ability. Don’t know if he has suffered some trauma from his earlier injury, but he pussies out of each any every tackle or duel now, which for a captain is criminal.
Highlight of the game was absolutely Raya’s savage sprint back, semi-Cruyff turn, and sliding tackle to retain the ball. Literally more physical commitment in that moment than Odegaard, Trossard & Martinelli can stomach combined over a standard 90 minutes.
Fuck Liverpool.
Why pick on Martinelli? He’s out injured and his defending is top class.
Yeah, and Trossard was quite diligent & aggressive with his defending & ball-winning today too. His shooting was off, but I have no complaints about his physical effort today.
If I have to defend him I would say his ankle injury and the flu or whatever it was really fucked his physical qualities.
It’s called having a kid
I wonder if Odegaard is fatigued as well. We have no one like him in the squad really, the closest is Nwaneri and we need him elsewhere, so he’s never rotated. The failure to replace ESR and Vieira looms large over the season and I think that has been more consequential than us not signing a striker in either window.
Totally agree about Odegaard. I am watching him closely last few months. His overall play is not good. And I think with him as our playmaker and captain we will win nothing
Too true I think we have to move on from him. Doesn’t turn up when it matters most. Which is b really sad for a club captain
Odegaard looks like he so exhausted lately. He has no one to rotate with and has to play 90 minutes game after game and it isn’t good for anyone to do that.
If we had an actual back up keeper I would suggest Raya start in midfield.
And always fuck Liverpool.
That was just careless laziness in the January transfer.
Any new injection of ideas into the forward line will do..
But they decided ot overthink..
Another “nearly” season
We look like a blunt kitchen 🔪
Odegaard actually had some quality passes today. What hurts him is that he has no attacking players with him. Ethan is still raw. Trossard is all we have. And once rice left the midfield was weak. Odegaard needs to score more. He needs to trust his right foot. But the team is built for him to hang along the right. We have overloads on the right and the left winger has nobody to pair up with since we have no striker and rice is actually a 6 not an 8. All teams have to deal with injury, except Liverpool this… Read more »
Wishing you all a great summer. See you next season.
Happy to see Benjamin back and that’s it. Horrendous performance by all players but Raya.
Just realised that at best 3 players out of 9 on the bench today will be there next year : MLS, Kiwior and White. I think we’ll see more than 2-3 incomings this summer thus am struggling to see us spending +100M on a single player.
At least Zinny, Tierney, Jorgi departures will free some space on the payroll which is good for PSR.
Are we having an open-bus parade for the PSR trophy?
Sterling and Zinchenko shouldn’t make our reserves
We should sell Odegaard in the summer, while he still has some value.
Martinelli first
I’d consider selling both if a good offer is on the table.
I”ll have whatever you’re smoking on a lovely night like this.
He has not stepped up at all when we have needed him, although it would be foolish to write him off. If his little one-two’s don’t come off he is pretty ineffective. Without Sake, he looks ordinary.
Are you crazy?
Agreed. We should cash in on him like pool did with Counthino that allowed them get VVD. He could fund our missing attacking piece.
He is missing his partners on the right wing and striker in front of him as well as his partner at right back for overlaps. He has none of his normal targets playing in their normal roles
I’ve seen some stupidities on these comment threads occasionally but if this is a sincere comment it would be a new nadir of dim-headededness. So it has to be sarcasm, surely?
I think we need another LB to stand a chance next season 🙄
At least 2 to replace the 2 leaving, we don’t want to run low on LB’s
The amount of people disliking your comment tells me our fan base is quite stupid 😭. IT’S CALLED SARCASM PEOPLE
9/10 for the Raya moment … We cannot do anything about the lost , that’s football .. We’ve tried , we need desperately a striker , I hope we can still challenge Liverpool for the title
To quote Elsa, Let It Go
Its not only the loss of strikers. Its the loss of intensity and speed! Odegaards level has dropped considerably – I would say two levvels – compared to last season (it was his slowness btw that initiated the counter attack that let to the goal), Rice is a level down and Partey, although mostly solid as he also was today, is not an inspiration for the team. Compare their goalscoring record with 2023/24. Kwaneri offers hope as does the return of Ben. But the league title seems very far away now. And succes in Europe with Real Madrid a most… Read more »
I don’t want to single them out, but I was personally quite frustrated with Timber and Calafiori from an attacking perspective. West Ham score through their fullback making a long run forward and crossing the ball. Why can’t our fullbacks do that?? Why are they always coming inside? Timber was especially guilty of this, which had the double whammy of occupying the spaces that Nwaneri would actually want to run into. Maybe it’s okay when we have real width and pace from Saka and Martinelli, but as it was we needed much more from fullback today. Felt sorry for Merino… Read more »
I’m with you. Timber in that spot is not a good offensive option. But it is by coaches design for sure. His play with the ball has been not great for awhile now. MIght need rotating now that Ben W is back. on the left I’m okay with Calafiori and MLS there they are a little more creative with the ball but it is one of those things that are not just clicking right now.
This is what Arteta wants his fullbacks to do unfortunately. I feel like this tactic only works in short burst throughout the game if at all.
With our injuries, it was only a matter of time. I’d rather it happened now so I can enjoy the next few months stress free.
Must be a pretty good life if football is the only source of stress for you. Please share your secrets!
Does Mikel / this team have a mentality problem?
21/22 slipping to 5th from a dominant CL position…
22/23 & 23/24 slipping to 2nd from strong 1st place positions…
Feels like we always perform especially poorly when an opportunity opens up and the pressure is on.
We’ve overcome so many hurdles but I’m wary of how long-term trauma can impact a side (England men’s national team being a case in point).
Some demons both the manager and the players need to exorcise, fast.
It’s reasonable to start worrying about this by now. The week last season where we lost to Villa and Bayern was quite damming in my eyes. Watching those games you could tell that they were potentially season-defining matches, but nobody stepped up to take control, just risk-averse pattern-based passing.
I don’t b think his teams have the mentality and character to get things over the line. Look how poor our knockout competition record has been with MA. Zero final appearances. Winning breeds winning. If we can’t do it a cup how can we do it over a 38 game season?
I agree this is a big concern. Shit the bed way too often for my liking.
2’s for Califiori, Gabriel and Rice for Bowen’s goal. Clownish!
Amateurish defending at best
Slow, slow and slow.. sideways pass, passing the ball to death is killing us. It’s killing the atmosphere in the stadium.
Fault has to be pointed at Arteta, he can see it, why’s he not changing it?
I counted on 5 different occasions a player made a darting run through the defence, clear for a through ball, but we’ve instead put our studs on the ball and look around and then a short pass to nothing.
There have been too many gutless performances for us to be title winners!
Easy to point fingers at the coach who has lead us to 15 games unbeaten in the premier league while he does not have much option with this bench.
I think the players deserve most of the blame. I saw no desire in their eyes today and they paid the price.
all of our last 6 goals came from quick play, why don‘t we try more?
For the last few seasons anytime we get opportunity to close the gap we screwed.
The 🛠️ now constantly beat us when it counts, alas
Freaking pathetic all around, no sense of urgency especially in the first half. We are content to play the ball way too slowly and are way too easy to defend with the current group of players. Obviously missing our three starting attacking players and a key reserve makes it tough up front, but we still have Trossard, Rice, Odeegard, Nwaneri and a spanish international playing in the front five and our full choice of defenders and should never lose to West Ham at home when we are trying to win the title. Calafiori is constantly outpaced on the wing (and… Read more »
Scenario 1: Free kick in their half. Do you:
A: Cross it in?
B: Pass it to Saliba, then back to Raya?
Scenario 2: Free kick on the edge of the 18 yard box. Who takes it?
A: Sterling, a player who should be retired, with a confidence level of -2
B: ANYONE ELSE
This one hurts.
We need to be more sharp all over, and the midfield needed someone to aim at.
Kai Havertz have missed obvious chances, but we missed his skills today. (Merino is doing ok but he seems to be out of position several times)
I hope Arteta can find a way to give the team the energy we need.
Zero chances created, so predictable. Same pattern each attack. No creativity. Even before the injuries we had the same problem.
I watch Liverpool play and some games they create tons of chances, attacking from every position.
Why can’t we do the same?
It’s like Liverpool are playing a different league.
Season over.
not only pool, fulham, brighton, bournemouth etc…
Lackluster in the 1st half and no belief. We should all bury the dream of the premier league this year. We do not deserve it this season.
Pedestrian pace from the off was biggest fault. Also, every time ball went to the flanks, on either side, Potter sent three or four players to throttle any passing lanes. Needed to attack more through the middle, and in build up switch sides with long balls.
Our captain’s role – his job – is to dictate the pace of the game and for whatever reason (Fitness? Fatigue?) Ødegaard has lost the ability to do that. He doesn’t dictate play, he r rarely goes into the box, he rarely shoots from outside (and never with his right foot) and today his passing was too slow and too inaccurate. All he seems to do is recycle the ball, looking for an overlap on the right (one that Saka and White usually make, less so Nwaneri and Timber). With Rice also having a bad day at the office, and… Read more »
Gone.. Onto the next..
At this ime i think we start sterling. Exhaust the option and then throw in randomness. Now it was too meh…
Looks like I chose the wrong week to quit drinking.
How many reds for the season, and how many times have we ourselves played against 10 men?