Owen Goale is Arsenal’s best striker.
The Gunners hoard passes the same way an old woman jealously hoards cooking recipes but then gets meals on wheels to deliver for them. What’s the point? Their passing isn’t all that good either. 797 passes but one can count probably about three that caused any problems for the Toons who played a man down for 75 minutes. They also poured in 9 corners which is akin to a man dying of thirst shown pictures of a drinking fountain. Nothing happens except to generate small spikes of hope and then flat lining to eventual hopelessness.
Four matches in and we don’t have a clear idea of who to play where. Or our best XI. Suddenly, the trope is of a side that is “nervous”. Wenger said his players were “nervous” in their loss against West Ham. Today, this anxiety ridden theme rode like a bull out of Pamplona with Wenger reiterating:
“Yeah of course,” he says. “We were always on top, but once you are 11 against 10 away from home and the crowd is behind them and they’re playing very deep … it’s difficult.”
You have to shake your head. We’re nervous against sides like West Ham and Newcastle? Sides we’ve swatted aside in the past. If that’s the case, then we might as well face ChelseaCity, United, or Leicester wearing Depends.
For all the talk of bringing Karim Benzema, here are Arsenal’s stats on goals attempts through 4 matches: 85 for 3 goals, two of them own goals. That’s a success rate of 3.5%. It’s abysmal.
Just like the passing, there is overwhelming production but no quality. The problem lies in Arsenal spurning opportunities to exploit the flanks as every instinct is to check to the centre. The attack turns into an amorphous blob lacking penetration. The other notable feature was Arsenal’s atrocious ball protection with Cazorla and Ramsey, the two playmakers guilty of giving away the ball a dozen times. The Ox was also particularly heinous in that department. For all he brings to the game with his direct threat, he’s a risk with his careless giveaways witnessed already against West Ham. Newcastle fortunately weren’t able to take advantage being dire in attack.
Theo Walcott had two opportunities, the first more difficult one Tim Krul blocked with the angle narrowing but the second one was completely botched, an Alexis Sanchez snapshot parried by Krul straight to an arriving Walcott who had the easy task of lobbing the ball into an empty net but shanked over the crossbar. This while Newcastle was imploding from a rash of ill advised tackles with Aleksandr Mitrovic receiving a deserved straight red from Andre Marriner for his vicious stamp on Francis Coquelin.
Olivier Giroud, Walcott’s replacement creditably put in more effort into trying to score without really coming very close.
The focus will be on Hector Bellerin being clipped on the heels in the box by Florian Thauvin which should have resulted in a penalty but wasn’t given. The real problems as discussed lie elsewhere. Seeking solace in a sense of injustice is counterproductive. Arsenal never looked like scoring till Fabricio Coloccini bailed out Arsenal with a significant deflection off a fizzing Alex Oxlade Chamberlain strike across goal which looked like it was missing the far post.
The bright spots were Gabriel who looks a formidable customer and Nacho Monreal who continues to maintain and improve on the left back position.