We all knew Arsenal weren’t exactly on a storming run of form. Sure, we were getting the results, but poor performances and scrappy goals were dragging us through. And even if we dropped points like against Liverpool, Stoke or Southampton, coincidental slippages by Leicester and Manchester City kept us just above in the league.
Not anymore. The loss to Chelsea not only pulls us down to third place, but also erases any assumptions that we were the most stylish or swashbuckling side in the league. We’ve been neither. For around a month, we’ve been a mentally unpredictable and under confident side. Liverpool and Stoke nearly exploited that. Chelsea did.
After Willian was afforded acres of space in midfield (that’s what Ramsey-Flamini gets you), his typically excellent pass to Diego Costa offered problems. On another day and at another club, an experienced German defender like Per Mertesacker would not have made that challenge. He would have let Costa go through on-goal by realizing the bigger picture, and maybe gambled on Cech to save it.
However, at Arsenal – with a lack of leadership in the players, an uncertain run of form and Arsene Wenger’s track record with player management in tough times – Mertesacker panicked. He lunged for a ball he knew he couldn’t get. It doesn’t matter if Costa dived to enhance that. The intent was clear, the mistake was made, and an asshole like Costa was always going to make the most of that.
The sending off was terrible enough, but it was compounded by Wenger’s decision to substitute Olivier Giroud. It doesn’t take a person to work one day in football or one thousand to know that a player like Giroud would be very handy in a 10-man team. He can hassle, harry, hold play and try to even the scales as much as possible.
Aside from offering end-product at set pieces (a rare attacking outlet for a 10-man team, by the way) Giroud also defends them rather well. Counter that to a one-dimensional, Goldilocks player like Theo Walcott, and it’s ludicrous why Giroud was hooked. Did Wenger want some fairytale story to reach full-circle by hoping for Walcott to score?
Instead, poetic comedy was offered to Costa – a rapidly hated figure in the Arsenal camp – when he tapped in an Azpilicueta cross to score. Quite how anonymously Arsenal defended was bleedingly obvious. Watch Gabriel – even though he’s just come on, the Brazilian’s focus is absent and he’s in no-man’s land. Such loss of focus when the scales are high has come to be part and parcel of Arsenal, regardless of the player.
When we needed them to perform, they tanked. Laurent Koscielny had a rare bad game, Mathieu Flamini missed two presentable chances and Theo Walcott was utterly anonymous. Mesut Ozil and Joel Campbell tried to little effect, but considering their form, surely they can be forgiven a couple of off-days.
The return of Alexis Sanchez highlighted just how static we were, by injecting with life into proceedings. With Mesut Ozil tiring and Santi Cazorla injured for the foreseeable future, we need the Chilean to explode into life and ensure we deliver the goods until Ramsey and Theo get over their mood swings.
Inconsistency has been a hallmark of our season, but has been for the entire Premier League too. Bar Tottenham and maybe Leicester City every team seems every-bit capable of a shock win, or a shock loss. If we weren’t slaves of this phenomenon winning the league would have been much easier, but the reality is that we’re every bit as bad as our competitors.
This isn’t a time to fret about our confidence, or our morale. Almost every other team in the league is doing the same. This is a time to put our flaws and insecurities to one side, and drag ourselves into a winning streak. Manchester City’s stop-start form and Leicester City’s general lack of quality means that if we propel ourselves into a 5-10 match winning streak, racing ahead of our competitors is a plausibility.
Losing to Chelsea is forgivable if we don’t lose the league. Let’s do that then, shall we?
-Santi [Follow me on Twitter @ArsenalBlogz ]
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