The deja vu feeling reared it’s ugly head again for Arsenal yesterday when they lost 2-1 to Newcastle. Like so many times already this season (Watford, Bournemouth and Swansea) we took the lead away to a team at the wrong end of the table and ended up losing. We have only won three of our 16 away games this season and we have lost nine of them.
To make matters even worse it was our fifth away defeat in a row in the league which is our worst run away from home in 34 years. Burnley are only two points behind us and will move ahead of us into sixth place if they beat Chelsea on Thursday night. That might seem like an unlikely scenario, but they have won their last five games and Chelsea might just have their minds on their FA Cup semi final against Southampton next Sunday.
Up to now I have thought the best thing for the club would be for him to realise the job is beyond him and walk away. I know he has never walked away from any contact and he’s not going to change that, but I had hoped against hope that he would come to his senses. It has now reached the stage where the club have to take control and remove him from his position at the end of the season regardless of how our attempts to win the Europa League pan out.
Speaking of which the thought that we can somehow beat Atletico Madrid over two legs seems laughable at this stage. They are a team that know how to defend and while they might not be a thrill a minute to watch they look ideally suited to making our semi final as painful as the Champions League semi final was against United in 2009. I can’t see us holding them at home or away and our only hope is to outscore them over the two legs, but we will have to go a long way to score away to a team who haven’t conceded a home goal in 10 games.
We might have had a sub strength team yesterday after the trip to Moscow on Thursday night, but the team we had out there was good enough to win and particularly after we had taken the lead. Newcastle didn’t even have to do an awful lot to get back into the game as we handed them the goals with yet more individual mistakes. Our ability to self harm is unbelievable and nobody has a clue how to change it.
When the manager tells us after the game that he can’t understand it and the players are lacking confidence away from home because of the run of results it’s hard to take. It’s his job to prepare them for games and instill the required confidence and belief in them. He is the man who told us there is no reason for the difference in results for a team away from home compared to at home and yet his team is the one with the biggest disparity in those results.
I don’t normally like to single players out, but Shkodran Mustafi is having a torrid time at the moment. He seems to have a huge part in almost every goal we give away and he seems incapable of learning from his mistakes. I think he ideally likes to attack that ball from distance and win challenges, but when it goes wrong for him the whole team suffers.
With Laurent Koscielny nursing an injury which is severely limiting his playing time and will do even more so going forward I imagine we are left with Mustafi as our senior central defender. He should be the one leading by example and telling others what to do, but the way he is playing he should really be on the bench. We don’t appear to have enough defensive options and I wonder if Nacho Monreal could be played centrally again with Sead Kolasinac getting a game on the left.
For me we just haven’t invested properly in our defence (or goalkeepers for that matter) and we are paying the price. The money was there last summer, but we got a left back on a free transfer and the manager doesn’t trust him enough to play him now anyway. I think it’s more than just the players faults though and I cannot see how the same mistakes could be made game after game if they were being coached properly or believed in the coaching they were getting.
We were on a very good run before yesterday, but that was disguised by five of the last seven games being at home and the away games being in the Europa League where our away form is the opposite of what it is in the Premier League. With the Europa League so important to us now we could be set for more Premier League horror shows and finishing seventh is a very real possibility. We still have to visit United, Leicester and Huddersfield and it’s difficult to see where our next away point will come from.
We have to play at home to Burnley too and the result of that game could have a huge bearing on our final league position. For the sixth or seventh richest club in the world to finish seventh in their own league is almost laughable, but it’s a very real possibility. Other clubs among the current elite of English football have suffered the same or similar fates in recent seasons and the common outcome was the manager was shown the door.
We had our worst season ever under Wenger in terms of our league position last season, but that will be surpassed this season without doubt. When his contract was renewed last summer the talk was of strengthening and building for the future and looking to get back into the hallowed top four. We will spectacularly miss that target and while the Europa League might help us achieve the Champions League goal it’s impossible to believe this is a team or club that is building for the future or progressing. The only way we will progress is with a new man at the helm with new ideas to depart to the players and the sooner it happens the better. I’m not sure what the catalyst for that change will be, but it is coming and it’s only a matter of time and possibly how low we can go before it happens.
That’s it for today.
See you tomorrow.
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