I think it’s reasonable no one’s especially bothered about the Capital One Cup. It’s not even a defence mechanism – had Arsenal lifted it in February, I doubt they’d have gotten anything more than polite applause, even from some of our own supporters. Losing hardly the best thing in the world, but I’m certain most of the frustration did not stem from exiting a competition as such.
What worried me – among a whole lot of other Gooners – was how poorly our deputies fared after the injuries. The injuries themselves were no more comforting. Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain knew he was out long-term four minutes into the game, and I find it astonishing that he managed to pass his medical before it. This wasn’t a freak bone snap – it was a muscular injury that tends to grow in size, instead of pouncing upon you from thin air.
It was the same with Theo Walcott. As he limped away with a calf problem (reports suggest he could be out for three weeks), one could be forgiven for openly wondering if Light Yagami was a Sheffield supporter, happily writing away names of Arsenal’s players in his Death Note. However, another muscular injury brings about another huge cause for concern – that Arsene Wenger, like he has proven to do so before, is not paying attention to the marginals and ending up with crocked players.
Some would say the lack of options we had was down to our transfer business, but that doesn’t seem true. Were they fit, Arsene could have called upon Tomas Rosicky, Jack Wilshere, Danny Welbeck and Mikel Arteta to shore up the side. He needn’t use rookies like Glen Kamara and Ismael Bennacer, who don’t look ready for this level at all (and understandably so). The fact that these players are crippling and crocking at Arsenal are not down to lady luck or mythical Shinigami’s. We know for a fact that Welbeck was not injury-prone before he set foot into London Colney.
I think it’s ‘pain’fully clear that something is fundamentally wrong in this club, on this front. It could be the way the players train, the number of times they are played or with the people examining them. Either way, all of these factors are accountable to Arsene Wenger. He must take the blame, and he must take the lead in solving the conundrum. It’s seven years too late anyway.
And even when they were injured, their replacements didn’t cover themselves in glory. You can legislate for people like Kamara, Bennacer and even Alex Iwobi, but what of Joel Campbell? He worked hard and seems a good tackler, but offered next to nothing in the final third, literally lobbing the ball to the keeper once. Olivier Giroud looked utterly lost without Alexis and Ozil beside him. For all his qualities, I cannot recall an Arsenal center forward so utterly reliant on his teammates as Giroud is.
We didn’t suffer any injuries in the back to be defending as shambolic as we did. Kieran Gibbs was woeful at the back, Mertesacker equally lost as Giroud. Calum Chambers and Mathieu Debuchy don’t even look half the players they did in the beginning of last season. Wenger spent more than £25m to replace Bacary Sagna last year, and in the end a freebie from Barcelona had to save the day. Asking Mathieu Flamini to protect this lot is like trying to fix the Leaning Tower of Pisa with Scotch tape.
Absolutely none of them performed remotely as good as they can, and the fact that they tanked against a Championship side shows how worrying that is. Sure, it’s dampening to lose two of your key attacking cogs inside ten minutes, but that’s no reason to entirely lose hope and belief. The loser mentality within the second strings could even serve to make the first-teamers complacent, something that can be nothing but unhealthy.
Till the next one.
-Santi [Follow me on Twitter @ArsenalBlogz ]
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