Arsenal were awful again as they lost to Brighton at the Emirates and questions are once more hanging over Mikel Arteta’s head following an atrocious week and some awful decisions.
Speaking before the game on Saturday, Mikel Arteta said all the right things about Arsenal.
“[Monday] has happened and it’s happened with nine games to go and we have to react now,” Arteta told reporters.
“We have to show tomorrow the energy, the commitment and the passion that we want to play the game tomorrow in front of our fans.”
Arteta might have given the media that message but his team started against Brighton like a bunch of men who had never heard those words in their life.
This game, that was meant to be Arsenal’s chance to get back on the winning horse, was dead after the first half thanks to Arteta’s inexplicable decision to weaken his midfield as much as possible while also ensuring the left-back role was weakened even more than it had been with the loss of Kieran Tierney.
How, now, can there be any way of recovering Nuno Tavares’ confidence after being withdrawn twice and then replaced in the team by Granit Xhaka, who has shown no positional intelligence for the role, and then Gabriel Martinelli, who is as much a left back as I am a frog?
“His confidence probably wasn’t the best because he wasn’t playing a lot of minutes and he needs the rhythm, the competition and the understanding with his teammates,” Arteta said before the game about Tavares.
“We have to help him to do that.”
Benching him against Brighton to play Granit Xhaka certainly seemed like a weird way of going about that.
That Arsenal find themselves falling apart because they lost two players to injury speaks even further to the mismanagement that took place at the club in January.
No top club should have a squad this thin, with a manager who is apparently incapable of managing players in more than one style – authoritarian.
Do what I say or you don’t play!
Arteta’s in-game changes against Brighton also left huge questions hanging.
Moving Granit Xhaka from left-back to midfield was key to Arsenal improving in the second half, as we all knew it would be, but putting Gabriel Martinelli at left-back?
Why was Xhaka even there in the first place?
Why was Emile Smith Rowe taken off when Alexandre Lacazette was so peripheral for the entire game?
Why leave Lacazette on when you’re taking off Gabriel Martinelli?
Why is Lacazette starting ahead of Eddie Nketiah when Eddie has shown him much more effective in front of goal in 10 minutes than Lacazette has in an age?
Even if Nketiah is not the long-term solution to Arsenal’s striker problem, he cannot be a worse one than Lacazette given his current form.
Can he?
So. Many. Questions.
I want to get behind Arteta, I really do. I was happy to admit I was wrong as we embarked on our run, looking like we were going to sail into fourth place with games to spare.
But what to make of a rookie manager whose team seems to fall apart when things aren’t as perfect as his hair?
Arsenal should have capitalised on Manchester United’s abysmal performance against Everton earlier in the day.
Instead, they set up in such a way it meant they were competing with Ralf Ragnick’s men for ‘worst performance of the day’.
I don’t want to hear from Arteta and Arsenal how the last five minutes showed us anything.
I want to hear why the first 85 were so bad and how they plan to fix it, urgently.
Mikel Arteta on the performance
“Really poor again. The reaction we wanted to show we didn’t make it on the pitch. The first chance they had they scored. We created a cold atmosphere but when we tried to change it, it was too late.
“We were looking at each other too many times instead of taking ownership and doing what we have to do. You cannot play like that.”
Mikel Arteta on Martinelli’s disallowed goal
“(We felt) If it’s taking too long and if there’s going to be any doubt there then it’s going to be a goal. That wasn’t the case. It was a decision that we needed because that was probably the best moment in the game to try to change the momentum of the game”
Mikel Arteta on Xhaka at left back
“Especially the way I thought they were going to play and the space they were going to attack, it fit well to play Emile in that position.
“Especially because we thought that space was going to be there for Granit to use which it was, but we didn’t use it.”
Mikel Arteta on what appears to be the crowd
“We created a cold atmosphere that we weren’t comfortable with, but when we tried to change it, it was too late. It was great not to give up but it was too late.”