Attention turns to the Premier League with Saturday seeing the visit of Liverpool to The Emirates. Whilst the match comes amid a run of consecutive defeats against strong opponents, arguably it is the right time. The adage of climbing back onto your bicycle immediately after having fallen off rings true in this instance. Another tough game ought to be the inspiration the players need.
Whilst the majority of the team who started against Chelsea will not do so for Liverpool, four of them surely will as well as two of the three substitutes. That depends on injuries of course but it seems unlikely that any of those currently out will be returning at the weekend so the squad is once more pushed to the limit. Tiredness is will not help Arsenal’s cause. Individual errors which seemed to have been eradicated for the most part, have crept back in the last two games. They need to be cast away once more as those mistakes have been costly.
Arsène pointed out that the positives were how well we had restricted our opponents in terms of their goalscoring opportunities. He is being disingenuous. We might have kept them both down to three or less shots on target but both Chelsea and Dortmund scored twice. More discouragingly, both restricted Arsenal to fewer shots on target. The positive is a negative spinning on its head; when it stops an uncomfortable truth emerges. Arguably Arsenal could have – should have – ended with a draw in the Champions League encounter but tactical naïvety on the players part cost them dear. The first goal won the League Cup tie, the visitors found a car park of buses to string across the pitch following that moment.
Both were entirely different games to Saturday, a different style of football. The intensity of the European club match is somewhat neutered by the group phase but Arsenal know that defeat in Germany may leave them needing to get a positive result in Naples, a scenario they will be keen to avoid. Upcoming games are such that three draws in the next three games may not be so bad a run as is perceived without the opponents names. Draws at Old Trafford and in Dortmund are good results; at home to Liverpool, it is fast becoming the norm.
More than anything, I think Arsène will be looking for signs that the timidity of the opening spells against Chelsea and Dortmund has vanished. Arsenal were on the back foot quite quickly in both games and in ceding the initiative, left themselves exposed to technically adept opponents. Perhaps there is an insularity in Arsène outlook which manifests in these games, too much focus on our strengths without necessarily exploiting opponents weaknesses. I don’t for one minute subscribe to the view that Wenger does not watch opponents or plan for upcoming matches, simply that we do not vary our game as much as we might to suit the conditions, the opposition. Is it naïvety or rigidity?
Patrick Barclay used an interesting turn of phrase in his Evening Standard piece on Tuesday’s home defeat to Chelsea. Speaking in praise of the performance levels shown by the West London club’s second string, Barclay observed that “[Azpilicueta] was not alone among Chelsea squad members anxious to show Jose Mourinho the ferocity of competition for places“. Flamini’s absence highlights the problem, we miss his energy and That will worry the manager, the reliance upon one player has returned albeit this time not for their goals but their personality. We have a nice squad, nice people whose parents will be proud of their manners and respect. We lack a little nastiness; Jack has it but Flamini’s is different, more streetwise. His experience of three different European leagues has augmented his natural instincts on the pitch. He knows how to knock an opponent out of their stride and that is something which the squad as a whole needs to take on board. Most worryingly, we don’t have a natural replacement and this is true of several positions. Some are strongly represented when injured players return but that must be the most used phrase of the last six or so years. When injured players return, we will have a strong squad. If only injured players would return and stay fit.
As such Arsenal need to adjust to accommodate this problem but we don’t seem to have and this was an issue in the past, one that we thought had been overcome. Maybe it has and it was entirely coincidental that Flamini’s absence coincided with lacklustre performances. Maybe the lack of rotation is taking its toll on some players. We will know more on Saturday.
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