Unai Emery picked a strong team with only three changes from the 2-0 win at home to Chelsea last week. Petr Cech came in as the “cup” goalkeeper with Alex Iwobi replacing Matteo Guendouzi and Ainsley Maitland-Niles getting the nod to play at right back with Hector Bellerin out for up to nine months. It meant a change of formation from the one which worked so well against Chelsea last week.
Arsenal started off quite well, but not as well as they did against Chelsea. The signs were positive early on, but they took a turn for the worse when Sokratis Papastathopoulos went down with what looked like an ankle injury after only 20 minutes. He had to go off with Shkodran Mustafi replacing him and not only did we lose the pace in the centre of our defence, but we also lost our momentum.
United gradually came back into the game and they took the lead just after the half hour mark when ex Arsenal man Alexis Sanchez finished from a tight angle after our defence made a mess of trying to play him offside. It was a bitter pill for Arsenal fans to swallow and it wasn’t made any easier by his replacement being unable to play due to injury. What we couldn’t afford to do was gift United another goal right away, but in true Arsenal style that’s exactly what we did.
The ball was lost too easily as we tried to push forward and when United attacked there were gaping holes in our defence. Romelu Lukaku squared the ball to Jesse Lingard who couldn’t really miss and we were two down to a counter attacking team after conceding two goals within two minutes of each other. The signs were ominous and I struggled to see how Arsenal were going to get back into the game without leaving themselves so open at the back that United would take advantage of them yet again.
We did manage to regain our momentum though and we got back into the game shortly before the break when Pierre-Emireck Aubameyang tapped home from close range after great work from Aaron Ramsey. We piled on the pressure as half time approached and it was United who were glad to hear the whistle. I hoped we could approach the second half in a similar vein to which we started and finished the first half.
I got my wish with Arsenal again taking the initiative and going in search of an equaliser. It was Ramsey who came closest with a header which was well saved before fate intervened to rob us of yet another player. This time it was Laurent Koscielny who suffered a facial cut when Lukaku accidentally stood on him and the injury was too much for him to continue after eight minutes of treatment on the pitch.
We were only an hour in and we had lost both of our central defenders to injury which also robbed the manager of the ability to affect the team from the bench. With the departure of Koscielny we also seemed to lose our momentum and impetus again. Mesut Ozil came on for Alex Iwobi at that stage while Guendouzi replaced the injured Koscielny with Granit Xhaka dropping back into defence and Guendouzi coming into the midfield.
While we had the upper hand our attacks kept breaking down on the edge of their box as we cried out for a wide player to punish a defence that was just as bad as ours. With just under 10 minutes to go United put the game to bed after Paul Pogba ran right through us after a clumsy pass saw them overturn possession in midfield. Cech could only push his shot in the direction of Anthony Martial who finished with relative ease and ended the game as a contest despite their being eight minutes of normal time and 10 minutes of added time to go.
Arsenal barely managed an attack of note in those final 18 minutes as they ended the game with a whimper rather than banging on the door to try to break open a porous defence. Ozil did very little after promising at first when he came on while we played absolutely everything down the left, but couldn’t get a good ball into the box. I have no doubt the injuries played a large part in limiting the manager’s hopes of changing the game from the bench if needed.
It’s hard to be too critical of a team who lost their two central defenders to injury after losing their right back in the previous game. We were still too open in front of our defence and maybe the midfield we played against Chelsea would have coped with United’s counter attacking a lot better. It’s hard to see how a team with a central defence of Mustafi and Xhaka can be expected to be able to defend I suppose. Also we are really struggling to break down teams who sit deep and let us attack them while they wait to hit us on the break.
With the transfer window nearing closure we are in dire need of additions to our squad and the injuries are piling up too. We’re without Bellerin, Rob Holding and Danny Welbeck for the rest of the season at least while it looks like Koscielny might be out for a while with a broken jaw too. We’ve been told the cupboard is bare and we’ll have to hope for a loan move or two if we’re going to bring anyone in. It’s hardly an ideal situation and it looks as if the manager will have to work with the squad he has minus the injured players.
We play at home to Cardiff in midweek and we quite simply have to take the three points to try to keep pace with Chelsea and United and especially as we travel to City next weekend. I can’t see us getting anything from that game which makes the Cardiff game even more important. At least we won’t have the pesky FA Cup to worry about any more and we know we have a maximum of 24 games to play if we make it as far as the Europa League final.
While I would like to have seen us progress and it’s never nice to lose at home to any team, never mind United and even more so with Sanchez scoring, but the FA Cup should not be where are priorities lay this season. We are losing more money with each season out of the Champions League and we have to concentrate on the competitions that can see us qualify for it. Luckily for Arsenal they’re the only two competitions we still have an interest in and hopefully one of those interests will come to fruition.
That’s it for today.
See you tomorrow.
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