Calamitous First Result For Arsenal's First Choice Defence

Match Review: Southampton 2 Arsenal 0 - Premier League 01.01.15

2015 is off to a bad start for the Gunners, as a bare bones Arsenal team imploded and lost at Southampton. We had a chance to finish the tricky Christmas period with maximum points, but the game on Thursday proved a hurdle too far and also means that Southampton retain a three point cushion ahead of us in the league. I suppose the one thing you could say is that things can only get better this year…

Football giveth with one and hand taketh away with the other where Arsenal are concerned and it was no different on New Year’s Day. On the one hand we were finally able to play our first choice back four, on the other, our midfield partnership consisted of a nineteen year old centre back and a player who had been hastily recalled from a loan at Charlton to help with our injury crisis. Chambers and Coquelin is not a midfield pairing that I ever thought I’d see, but Flamini’s injury now means we have no fit first team centre midfielders. None at all, it is quite incredible. Not only that, but Danny Welbeck was also injured, meaning that with Giroud suspended, Alexis was forced to play up front. Lukas Podolski was also left out of the squad, with rumours of injury, a training ground tantrum and a move to Inter Milan swirling around him.

It was always going to be a huge task to get anything out of the game considering our line up. We had no creativity from the deeper midfield positions, no physical presence up front and Alexis looked like a man who has started and finished every game since the dawn of time. However, we didn’t look too bad, with Southampton also suffering some fatigue and not closing down with the aggression we’ve seen in previous games. Our best chance of the half came when Alexis got to the byline and pulled the ball back for Cazorla. Cazorla’s shot was too close to Forster though and the Keeper made a good save.

With so many problems and weaknesses in other parts of the team, you’d hope that the one area where we had all our first choice players, the back five, would provide a solid base. Unfortunately they provided the exact opposite and after being cut open a few times by Southampton’s passing and movement, they then combined to concede a calamitous, almost comical goal.

It started with Mané outmuscling Koscielny to run onto a ball over the top. Szczesny then had a brain melt and came running out to close down the striker, when he should have stayed put. Mané was had to take the ball wide and Szczesny ambled back towards goal, only to see the Saints striker curl the ball over his head and into the net, evading Mertesacker’s despairing lunge. It was a stunning cock up, with mistakes from three different players leading to us going behind in game we were going to struggle in without mistakes. Koscielny got schooled by Mané and didn’t recover quick enough, Szczesny came running out and then changed his mind, but didn’t get back quick enough and I think Mertesacker reacted far too late to the lob over the Keeper. All in all, it was an infuriatingg mistake from experienced players who should know a lot better.

As if that wan’t bad enough, Szczesny dropped another clanger right at the start of the second half. We were again powerless to stop Southampton getting down the left flank, but when a low cross was fizzed across the box, Debuchy was on hand to cut it out. Unfortunately Szczesny seemed to panic and hastily tried to clear the ball. The ball went straight to Dusan Tadic, who poked in at the near post. It really was the type of goal that you’d see at a Sunday league game. It’s simply not acceptable for that to happen, but the sad thing is that it’s nothing new for us. We’re still conceding stupid goals, shooting ourselves in the foot and with the amount of experience between those five players, it shouldn’t be happening. Szczesny is not a young keeper anymore, he’s been number one for a long time now and Debuchy, Koscielny and Mertesacker are all very experienced Premier League players. These are unacceptable mistakes and we must sea an end to them.

Chances were limited after that, although we did test Forster a few times. Theo Walcott’s return to the team was a major disappointment as he went missing and barely touched the ball in thirty odd minutes. Chasing a two goal deficit with a team on its last legs wasn’t what we needed, although we would have had a much better chance had the referee not bottled sending off Gardos. The Southampton defender took Alexis out as he was running through on goal and despite it being a clear goalscoring opportunity, the referee only showed a yellow card. There’s no guarantee that we would have taken advantage of it, but the referee got it seriously wrong, like so many other officials on New Year’s Day.

Despite the defeat, I don’t think there is any reason for panic or losing our heads. Southampton are a good team and playing them away at the end of a really tough run was a difficult ask. Throw in our unprecedented injury situation and it was a nigh on impossible task. It’s not a huge disaster, we have a lot of players to come soon and I think once we have some of our key individual’s back, we’ll find some form. Just imagine taking Matic, Mikel, Fabregas, Öscar, Ramires and Remy out of the Chelsea squad. Have Willian only just coming back from injury and Diego Costa suspended and they would be in a right old state. A Chelsea team with those absentees would struggle to win many games at all and the same sort of thing can be applied to City, if you remove Touré, Silva etc.

No other team has had to deal with the ridiculous injury situations like that and there’s not a lot you can do to prepare for it. No one can force every central midfield option bar one being out and you can’t just buy tons of players to account for it. We need to find out why we’re affected so badly every season, because it can’t be just bad luck. Some of the injuries have been unpreventable, but we need to find a way to make our squad more robust and resistant to injury.

The biggest worry was the performance of what was supposedly our first choice back five. Maybe the midfield situation affected them, but I was expecting a lot better and certainly not such amateurish mistakes. That’s an area of real concern, particularly with games away at City and Sp*rs on the horizon. We cannot afford many more set backs and while I’m confident that we will make the top four, it will be hard work and it will be tight.

Teams

Southampton (4-5-1)
Forster, Alderweireld, Font, Gardos (Y) (Yoshida 71’), Bertrand, Wanyama (Y), Ward-Prowse, Davis, Tadic (Long 85’), Mané (Reed 42’), Pellé
Subs
Davis, Yoshida, Long, Isgrove, Reed, McCarthy, Targett

Arsenal (4-2-3-1)
Szczesny, Debuchy (Akpom 84’), Mertesacker, Koscielny, Gibbs, Chambers (Walcott 60’), Coquelin (Y), Rosicky, Cazorla, Chamberlain, Alexis
Subs
Walcott, Monreal, Martinez, Campbell, Akpom, Bellerin, Maitland-Niles

Player Ratings

Szczesny - 3/10 - Culpable for both goals, costing us the game
Debuchy - 5/10 - Struggled with the movement of Tadic and Bertrand
Mertesacker - 5/10 - Could have done better for the first
Koscielny - 5/10 - Big mistake for the first, but the rest of his game was good
Gibbs - 6/10 - Had a decent game, but not effective going forward
Chambers - 4/10 - Had no idea what to do and was a passenger in midfield
Coquelin - 6/10 - Did a good job in the makeshift midfield
Chamberlain - 5/10 - Wasn’t very effective on his return to Southampton
Cazorla - 5/10 - Also wasn’t very effective
Rosicky - 5/10 - Ineffective Part III
Alexis - 6/10 - Gave his best, but looks absolutely exhausted
Subs
Walcott - 4/10 - Was on for thirty minutes and hardly touched the ball
Akpom - N/A

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