While we didn’t exactly play well in the first half two goals from Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang had given us a seemingly comfortable lead. What occurred in the second half was shambolic at best and we were incredibly lucky to come away with a point in the end. The fact that we handed Watford their two goals on a plate made it even worse.
When you look at the stats for the game they make for very uncomfortable reading from an Arsenal perspective. Watford had 31 shots against us which is the most by any team ever against Arsenal in the Premier League era. Two thirds of those shots came in that second half which saw Watford have a shot almost every two minutes.
In five games this season we have handed the opposition five of the eight goals we have conceded on a plate. No other team conceded more goals from errors last season and we’re already well on our way to obliterating that total this season. We signed David Luiz to solve our central defensive issues and he has already gifted the opposition three goals in his four games and probably cost us three points in the process.
Anyone who couldn’t see the possibility of Luiz’s propensity for errors making out defence even worse than it was last season was looking at his arrival through rose tinted glasses. I said when we signed him that I honestly didn’t think he was a good fit, but we needed a central defender and we probably didn’t have very much to spend. You have to feel for Callum Chambers who played well in our first game against Newcastle, but has had to watch from the sidelines ever since.
You can’t completely blame the defence though as they didn’t get any protection from the players in front of them. Watford were given free reign to run at our defenders and they didn’t have a clue how to cope with it. Despite all of that Watford couldn’t find the back of the net until they capitalised on two ridiculous errors from us.
As bad as Luiz’s penalty they gave away was it had nothing to compare to the goal Sokratis Papastathopoulos gave away. The insistence on playing the ball out from the back is admirable, but there is no point in doing it if you haven’t got a clue how to do it. The casualness of his pass to Matteo Guendouzi was unbelievable and it made it far too easy for Watford to score.
The admission by Granit Xhaka afterwards that we were scared in the second half was almost unbelievable. These are supposed to be professional footballers and to think they were scared by the teamat the foot of the table attacking them is quite incredible. Not only that, but it also gives every other team in the Premier League a template for how to play against us and how to get at us.
If it wasn’t for Aubameyang who knows where we would be and there were fans saying it made sense to sell him during the summer because of his age. He now has as many goals as we have gifted the opposition (5) in our first five games and the rest of the team have three between them. He’s going to have to score a lot more goals than he did last season if we’re going to have any chance of a top four finish.
For me it’s up to the manager to get the message across to the players as to how he wants the team to play and then to get them to put that plan into operation. I wish I knew how he wanted to play though because we don’t have a style of play and we’re dependent on players making something out of nothing rather than imposing ourselves on the game and the opposition. There’s a long way to go this season, but performances like the one against Watford fill me with fear rather than the optimism I want to feel.
The games are coming thick and fast now with a trip to Frankfurt on Thursday night followed by a home game against newly promoted Aston Villa. It’s a Carabao Cup game at home to Forest then and that’s followed by a League game away to United. It will be very interesting to see how all of those teams approach their games with us and whether we will be capable of dealing with any pressure they put on us.
That’s it for today.
See you tomorrow.
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