What a terrible game.
Arsenal traveled to Goodison Park to play Everton for a Monday evening kickoff, in hopes of overcoming Thursday’s “shoot-self-in-foot” loss to Manchester United. Would we play with the alacrity and verve we showed during our recently-collapsed undefeated streak? Or with the ponderous lack of energy we saw far too often in the last couple of seasons? Would our Mikel make progressive choices to start, or at least in substitutions, or would his conservative, “let’s not lose” ethos win his day? And, finally, would our senior players play as though they believed in themselves, or would we see a display rife with indecision and caution?
Sadly, the answers were all too plain as Arsenal were beaten with a last-minute goal by a slightly better team on the day in Everton, 2-1. Not only did our manager choose a team with a glacially-slow midfield, but one that was largely bypassed for most of the game. The sharpness and wit we can show seemed to evaporate with the absence of Emile Smith Rowe (out due to a groin injury), and even Ødegaard’s energy wasn’t enough to compensate for the weight dragging us backward provided by Partey and Xhaka.
Our starters were mostly good on paper, but in reality starting Xhaka and Partey made this game a bridge too far. The front three (Gabi, Laca, and Saka) should have worked well with Mø, and often did, but the lack of positivity and overabundance of caution from our other two midfielders led us back to the Horseshoe Trail. And, as we all know, the Horseshoe Trail is a dangerous trail, on which one far too easily can be bushwhacked. To be fair to Partey, he did try, on a number of occasions, the throughball to release our runners. The hard part is that his execution was poor, and in at least a couple of occasions led to an Everton break.
A minute-by-minute account of this game would be galling. Suffice to say there were some notable moments, mostly on their side:
• In the 21st minute Godfrey went through Saka, crunching his foot with his boot, getting no ball. Referee Mike “See you next Tuesday” Dean demurred from calling aught but a foul.
• In the 28th minute Godfrey (not Grey) and Tomi collided coming up field, and Godfrey (not Grey) ended up landing his boot on Tomi’s face. He took a quick little look at where Tomi was, then turned his head away and put his foot down. VAR didn’t even look at it, and Tuesday Mike again left it unpunished.
• In the 43d minute Richarlison fell over and was given a freekick (kidding, he was thrown bodily by three Arsenal players; sorry, kidding again, he fell over), and then scored a header from the freekick. Sadly for the announcers on the American broadcast, he was just slightly offside, and the goal was rightly disallowed on VAR.
• In the second of two minutes of first-half stoppage time Arsenal worked the ball to KT3 down the left. He sent in a peach of a cross to an oncoming Mø, who sidefooted it just inside Pickford’s post. Lovely goal, lovely buildup, lovely lead going into halftime papering over the cracks of what was, by and large, a dire half of football (from both squads, in all honesty).
• Finally, in the 49th minute Godfrey got his yellow, for taking out Saka very late. He could have broken his foot, and it was clear Rafa had shown his team the Stoke Submanual of Thuggery before the game.
• In the 57th minute Arsenal defended an Everton break well, and while bringing the ball upfield Xhaka put it into touch. Everton came right back, and Doucare went straight through our central defenders; White just kept backing up, rather than playing the man with the ball. Richarlison broke into the box, Doucare hit him with a pass, and Richarlison scored. Again, the goal was struck for offsides on VAR, and again Arsenal were thanking their lucky stars that playing with fire had yet to burn their fingies.
• In minute 63 Xhaka earned his now-standard stupid yellow card.
• Pat Rice was shown, in minute 69, sitting in the stands as cold and rigid as Arsenal’s offense.
• Gordon should have been at least yellow-carded for a heavy slash through Nuno’s shin in the 76th minute. No, nothing was given, not even a foul.
• A terrible return pass from Partey to Nuno on a throw-in led to Everton bringing the ball across the field to Ramsdale’s right, where Gomez had a shot blocked that dropped to Gray. Gray hit his shot off Ramsdale’s fingertips onto the bar, and Richarlison made no mistake with his header off the rebound, beating a prone Ramsdale for Everton’s goal.
• In the 82nd Mø had a snapshot blocked from the top of the box after some nice work, then after maybe our best movement of the night down the right Saka’s cross to Eddie ended up off Eddie’s head onto the post, with the rebound ricocheting off Eddie’s elbow behind the goal, just on the wrong side of the post. Our best chance of the second half.
• We did have one more chance, in the first of 6 minutes of stoppage time, where Mø had another snap shot blocked.
• Everton’s recovery after that block led to the shot of the game, with Gray collecting the ball to the left of goal, stepping inside and lashing a worldie in off the post with his right peg. A magnificent goal in the 92nd minute, a worthy game winner, and cause for me to use language I won’t repeat here.
• With the last kick of the game we saw a dispirited Auba place the ball weakly wide of Pickford’s goal. I’d forgotten he was on the pitch, coming on for Laca as he did in the 85th minute.
It is a terrible, deserved result, to lose 2-1 after a really poor game from Arsenal. Except for the length of his toes, Richarlison could have had a hat trick and we could have lost this game 4-1. It wouldn’t have been an unfair result. It really was water torture to watch, drip by drip. Even hiding behind the couch wouldn’t have helped.
I struggled while writing this to not pin the blame on, and slag only, Xhaka and Partey. Very few of Arsenal’s players covered themselves in glory. I have to give credit to Tomi (who played through Gray’s stamp on his face as though nothing had happened), Mø (beautiful goal, and he did work hard), Saka (suffered GBH at the hands of Everton’s players, encouraged by the inattention of Tuesday Mike), and Ramsdale were effective. KT3 played a variable game, his cross for Mø’s goal was perfect, but he lacked power and penetration down the right, and tired early. The rest of the squad didn’t cover themselves in glory, and at times seemed to be passing the time with their play rather than trying to achieve anything.
Mikel has to sort out his priorities. To paraphrase the great Coach Beard, “if Mikel is willing to let the team (and its fans) suffer because of one player’s feelings, then I don’t know Arsenal should be entrusted to someone that selfish.” If Sambi deserves the bench (for the Liverpool game? Nuno didn’t…) and Xhaka doesn’t, what is that telling our other players? Will Xhaka be Mikel’s Achilles heel? And I like Mikel, and still have great hopes he can lead Arsenal to higher and higher heights. But he has to sort out the midfield, and his priorities.
We return to the comfort of the Emirates to play Southampton on the 11th. Let’s hope ESR is fit and ready to go after a ten-day layoff. But let’s also hope Mikel finds a way to rely on other players (remember who was there and who wasn’t in that 10-game unbeaten streak!) so that Emile’s absence and our lack of midfield quality aren’t fatal to our vibrant, creative, often incisive play…having been bushwhacked by Everton on the Horseshoe Trail, we should be loathe to return there any time soon.
Abject performance. From the players? Yes but more so Mike dean and the stick men at Stockley Park. How Godfrey stayed on the pitch for its entirety is beyond me. Actually it’s not, I know why, because Mike Dean is an odious little man, bitter that the players get all the attention and not him. I’m sure at some point in the not too distant future we will see an Arsenal player getting sent off for something far less and we will once again be asking ourselves where is the consistency in these refereeing decisions? Answers on a postcard. Because if planting your foot on someone’s skull does not merit a red, then what does? Don’t get me wrong, we were hopeless for 95% of the game but you expect the officials to do their job competently. Remember the palace game a few weeks ago when James MacArthur volleyed saka’s thigh instead of the ball and wasn’t sent off for violent assault? The referee that day? Mike dean. Was he punished? Oh he got a week off. I’m sure he will meet the same torturous “punishment” this time while Arsenal lose a valuable three points which could be costly come may. Like I said we can’t put all the blame on Dean’s crapness but it’s hard to feel that had Godfrey been sent off as he deserved, we would have gone on to at the very least gain a point. Yes we were rubbish and Arteta probably shouldn’t have taken off Tierney after 60 mins and so forth, but for how much longer will Arsenal be forced to endure this sheer incompetence and borderline corruption from the officials? Season in season out we continue to get shafted by referees. If you can’t even do the job with the assistance of video replays maybe you shouldn’t be in the job. VAR isn’t ruining football, the guys operating it are. Anyway, Ødegaard’s goal was nice. We should try scoring goals more often
Not an easy game to write up, Scruz, so fair play for an excellent report.
What counts as ‘reckless play’ is so inconsistent. How can a tackle that ends up with one player putting his studs in the head of another not qualify? I will accept that there was no intent to hurt, but that is true for 99% of tackles that do get deemed reckless, and the laws of the game don’t evaluate intent but the outcome.
Playing Xhaka is a step backwards for ‘the project’. If we are building a team for the future, let us put our faith in that and accept learning mistakes along the way. Partey and Lokonga are the most promising midfield partnership, so let’s play them. Xhaka did not play badly against Everton and provided the defensive cover for KT3 to do forward, but he seems to throw a pall of ponderousness over the whole team that costs us dearly.
cheers, ned. not as hard to write up as to watch!
yeah, i don’t see how that’s not red. but i am in the steve t. camp tonight, not a chance tuesday and his crew beat us today…
i’m fine if partey stays home with sambi shuttling to esr/mø, so long as that’s really what happens. i’d really like to see a double pivot of sambi and amn tried. if they can get their positional discipline and co-movement down, that might be the right pair until something better comes along: young, athletic, and pace from the midfield, yes please. and we successfully eradicated the horseshoe of dread from our game when *boom* along comes xhaka and here comes the horseshoe.
but i’ve given up trying to convince ttg that xhaka shouldn’t be near the first 11. he’s so intractable he’ll look at your statement of “xhaka did not play badly” as reason to plump him for the ballon d’or.
Thanks scruz, not a good report to have to write as it wasn’t a good game to have to watch. As many said when we were winning, there will be setbacks along the way this season and we have just had a couple of bad ones.
Football being the joy and pain that it is we don’t know what will happen next but I hope we can regroup over the next few games in December and finish the month with a series of wins.
scruz@3
Hadn’t read your post with its first line when I wrote mine😉
great minds, and all that, matt!
I think it was Godfrey who planted the studs into Tommy’s face. Dreadful shithouse of a player.
Godfrey, not Tommy.
Tommy is probably pushing Ramsdale close as our player of the season.
Good write up Scruz on another disappointing result.
Thanks Scruz, a measured write up. A difficult job well done.
Sadly I think exactly this is the point:
“if Mikel is willing to let the team (and its fans) suffer because of one player’s feelings, then I don’t know Arsenal should be entrusted to someone that selfish.”
Maybe it is not that simple but I think Arteta us not hood enough with man-management. He can’t see the players as they are, he has his own view which is not always objective.
AMN was excellent all the games he get a chance and still Toblerone and Partey started. What started. What measure support this?
Ohhh it hurts….
COYG
…Arteta is not good enough….
Superlative report of an execrable Arsenal performance. I love the image. It sums up the experience of being an Arsenal supporter.
It hurts the eyes to watch repeated self-destructive attempts to hold on to a 1-0 lead. It hurts to watch slow, laborious and utterly ineffective ball movement through midfield. It hurts to hear the coach talk about that performance as if he was simply a fan, as powerless to influence proceedings as we are (cf the link in TTG’s late post in the last Drinks). If Arteta doesn’t know how to stop his team sitting back on a 1-0 lead and performing like rabbits in headlights then he shouldn’t be in the job.
I am firmly in the TTG camp on the potential of a Partey – Xhaka midfield. The former is surely vying with Pépé for the most disappointing signing in our recent history. The latter’s limitations are well known not only to us but to every player in the PL.
I am also in GSD’s camp with regard to the bottom feeding piece of slime that is known as Mike Dean but firmly in Steve T’s camp regarding the referee’s influence on last night’s outcome. We deserved nothing from that match. Absolutely nothing.
I didn’t listen to Return to Forever pre-match as I had planned but I’m listening to BB King as I type this:
Cheers Scruz. You’ve done a good job to make a good report out of a shocking performance.
I’m with 21CG on officials.
Cynic is right that it was Godfrey, not Gray, with the stamp on the face. I’m not sure that he hasn’t left his foot in there. He is a well co-ordinated professional athlete. That is an exceptionally clumsy move if it isn’t deliberate.
I am not with Ned on Xhaka. I thought he did play badly. His lack of challenges for their first goal was a clear example of him not doing the job a player in his position needs to. In my opinion, being sufficiently immobile to get up the pitch and back, and instead wandering over to left back is not good defensive cover, and not something worthy of praise.
That midfield was hapless. It has been for years. Arteta will lose his job if he sticks with Xhaka. It’s a huge mistake.
Scruz,
You’ve done a remarkable job in encapsulating all the various emotions a game like that creates . This blog has always maintained a sense of proportion in reacting to setbacks and poor performances in the tradition of its founder who was masterly in striking a sensible note after setbacks . A number of us here can remember very poor Arsenal sides but comparison with previous hardships doesn’t alleviate the pain of a ghastly performance like this . What really depresses me is that the ‘axis ‘ of our midfield last night was not a last minute emergency selection but what Arteta clearly considers the engine room of our team going forward – as Bath points out Arteta claimed comfort in knowing we had Xhaka back. Xhaka has played almost seven games this season and we have lost four of them conceding eleven goals .
Last night showed me how vital ESR is to the forward movement and creativity of the team. I thought MO and Tomayisu were the only good performers last night .Tierney, Saka and Ramsdale were ok but The Chuckle Brothers in midfield , Lacazette and Tavares had forgettable games and the central defenders weren’t at their best but as GSD rightly pointed out elsewhere they had little protection.
I think White is a holding midfielder rather than a conventional centre back and in an attempt to give Partey one last chance I’d pair them. We cant keep paying out mega fees on underperforming so-called superstars. Pepe has fallen off the twig and Partey has never been on it . Auba doesn’t want to be there anymore and I’m not sure the feeling isn’t mutual . The process is proving a tortuous one and it may be that the leadership of Arteta may not be good enough . Certainly our direct rivals now have Conte, Rangnick and Moyes in charge and all may be significantly better coaches than MA8 . We must hope he learns quickly .
Finally CER has said it all about Dean. That was the reddest of red cards last night .
21CG, actually, TTG, but I heartily echo his sentiments above.
Mike Dean is just the new Mike Riley. Expect him to head the PGMOL when Riley retires from that role.
Yet, it doesn’t excuse our performance. I’m afraid the evidence is accumulating pointing to Arteta not being the right man at the right time. Some selection decisions are just baffling.
It’s all getting frustrating again after some apparent progress.
Is top 4 still achievable? I will always want to dream and believe, but the realist in me says ‘not this season’.
To be clear, Xhaka would not be in my starting XI. Arteta’s positional game needs to be played at pace, including recycling the ball. Xhaka slows down everything. He has become like the William H Macey character in The Cooler, whose mere presence at the tables in the casino where he works usually results in a streak of bad luck for the other players.
TTG@13: Spot on about ESR. Your comment earlier in the season regarding concerns about ESR’s durability now seems worrying. I also worry about how much battering Saka can take. As last night showed, he is not getting much protection from referees.
Watching our club decline from true competitor into hapless wannabe is very painful. It’s like watching a much loved elderly relative stumbling inexorably into physical and mental decrepitude.
The saddest thing of all (and here the analogy stands also) is that nobody who is nominally in a position to reverse the decline has the slightest clue how to do so.
Southampton (H) 2 – 0 “Bravo, Mikel, bravo”
West Ham (H) 1 – 1 or 1 – 2 “Well, give him some time FFS”
Leeds (A) 1 – 2 “Arteta is the man!!!”
Sunderland (H) 4 – 0 “Tactical genius!”
Norwich City (A) 2 – 3 “Arteta the God!”
Wolves (H) 2 – 1 “He’s the answer”
Man City (H) 1 – 5 “Time, you know IMO”
Heh SSY, you may be on to something there…
Nice write up of a difficult night Scruz.
There’s not much really to add that hadn’t already been said. It wasn’t an awful night. A really poor performance all ends up. We were second best all over the pitch for the vast majority of the match.
As most seem to agree, there is a massive problem with the central midfield pairing. Partey has been a huge disappointment. I’m sure we all hoped for a massively different impact from the mainly inept displays that have been served up. Xhaka is Xhaka. Personally, I would rather play with 10 they see Xhaka start. Added to that the fact that we have strikers that can’t buy a goal, and it creates more than one problem.
Last night wasn’t just the result, it was the performance. It was lacklustre, turgid, devoid of any enterprise and lacking in any real attacking ideas. SSY, I get your point above, but as I said, it’s the performance rather than the results that is the issue. Arteta moaned about poor basic levels and said he wanted more out of the team. He’s not the only one. With e exception of ESR, that was effectively our strongest side. He trains the players, he picks the side, he decides on the tactics and he is meant to send them out fully motivated. He clearly failed last night. That, is a genuine worry.
On to the hideous Mike Dean. It’s a little known fact within the bar that I have backed and supportive the odd official over the years. That may be a surprise to many in here, but yes, it’s true. In my opinion, Mike Dean is the worst, and most obnoxious of all premier league referees. His shocking acts in the Palace game that resulted in a one game ban should at least meant that we did not have to tolerate his buffoonery again this season. Now, the incident with Tommy and Godfrey. I’m amazed that today, some have even questioned it. The studio last night had it spot on. It wasn’t a cowardly, deliberate act. I don’t guess one second believes that was an accident. Godfrey should be ashamed of what he did, and should be incredibly grateful of the fact that serious injury was not caused.
That then takes us to VAR. Again, as mentioned above, I’m also a fan of VAR. But not a massive fan of the way it is always used. Stuart Attwell apparently alerted Dean to a possible check. He then reviewed it. The incident was shown again on TV, and I don’t know anyone who then thought that was anything other than a straight red. Then, it’s check complete, nothing to see citizens, go back to your lives. For me, that makes a total mockery of the whole system. If that’s deemed as acceptable then that’s just appalling.
All of that said, we did not lose last night because of Dean on the pitch, or Attwell on the sofa in his slippers. We lost because we were poor, both on and off the pitch. The substitutions were also bizarre for me. The goals we conceded were dreadful and we were lucky it only ended 2-1.
I want Arteta to succeed massively, but the jury is still massively out. We have two must win home games on the horizon. Any performance even remotely similar to the one last night will no doubt attract the opinions of many inside the stadium. Let’s hope for a marked improvement.
Steve T
A terrific post and I think I agree with you on everything including the odious Dean . Several posters have identified the fact that his refereeing approach is ego-based . He doesn’t review properly because that would acknowledge huge errors of his own making. As you say both Saka and Tommy ( esp the latter ) could have been seriously injured.
We all want Arteta to succeed but my sense is that most of us have serious doubts that he will
Thanks Steve T,
Was a great post as TTG said, spot on regarding Dean, VAR and the motivation of the team
being a fundamental of MA’s job.
cheers, steve. i kept thinking of you during Tuesday Mike’s shit show, and kept coming to the same conclusion: it wasn’t his fault we lost. while he’s an odious little egotist, and made repeatedly wrong decisions about our boys under the lash, we were terrible on the pitch. yes, godfrey going off might have led to us squeaking a win vs. 10 men, but VAR saved us from being one down at that point. the large print giveth, the small man taketh away…
SteveT@23: Well said. All on point.
The more I look at replays of the Godfrey/Tomi incident, the more unconscionable it is that Dean didn’t get out the red card.
We are not creating enough chances and not putting away those we do. Three shots on target against the team with the 16th worst defensive record in the league? Really?
We won’t address that unless Arteta gets the right pairing in the midfield engine room sorted out ASAP. Control of a game is not holding onto possession at any price; it is forcing the opposition to let you play the way you want to play. You can’t play the way Arteta wants to play without playing with pace and intensity. That is not Partey and Xhaka. Partey and Lokonga? Maybe. Partey shows he has it in patches, but not for long enough to dominate games. Lokonga and AN Other? Very likely, as long as AN Other isn’t The Cooler.
I’m still baffled by Arteta’s game plan. I think he wants to keep possession and prevent goals, neither of which we are good at. And as a result, he ends up playing the slow and ponderous one. And Partey isn’t much better. I would rather go back to the Wenger days when he didn’t care about defending and just wanted to score a bunch of goals, which I enjoy a lot more than hours of side to side passing.
“Partey and Lokonga? Maybe. Partey shows he has it in patches, but not for long enough to dominate games. Lokonga and AN Other?”
Exactly what Arteta is thinking all the time
who? when? why? where? what?
Maybe!!!
A fantastic review Scruz! And completely agree with everything.
And all the esteemed regulars have covered everything else. 🙂
Looking forward to a semblance of of exciting, creative football from us in the coming days. Hopefully some time this season… 🙂
This article better not be accurate because if it is it makes the Pepe transfer even more dubious. It explains perhaps why Mr,Sanllehi isn’t with us anymore but does suggest a lack of scrutiny of the original deal
https://www.fourfourtwo.com/news/arsenal-nicolas-pepe-contract-clause-mikel-arteta-transfers-afc-rumours-gossip
In more gloomy new Gabriel Martinelli appears to have tweaked his hamstring
And England’s batting has been eviscerated in Brisbane
And I’ve now got to run a conference and dinner for the next eighteen hours.
But I’m not miserable 😫😫
Amy Lawrence has an interesting article in The Athletic (behind the pay wall) about Thomas Partey’s frustrations at Arsenal, looking at his situation more from his angle than most articles I’ve seen.
https://theathletic.com/3003350/2021/12/07/partey-not-first-to-struggle-away-from-atletico-but-arsenal-adaptation-worrying-with-all-action-midfielder-needed/?redirected=1
Superb job, scruz !
Horrible game to have to write up but a great, controlled analysis that doesn’t miss a stroke. 👏🏻👏🏻
TTG@31: Blogs today sums up in a succinct paragraph the incoherent waffle in that 442 article about Pepe:
I’ve seen some chat about how Pepe is now on 98 first team appearances for Arsenal, and perhaps there might be a payment triggered at 100. I have no idea if that’s the case or not. It sounds like a nice theory, the kind that does the rounds a bit from time to time, but how true it is, I can’t say. I suspect not very.
SSY@29: Scruz has suggested trying an AMN-Lokonga pairing. There is no one else in the first-team squad left to try. It seems a step too far at this point for anyone to come up from the Academy and cement a place in the team (Patino, Akinola, Salah Eddine, or loanees Azeez, Matt Smith). That only leaves buying or borrowing.
Maitland-Niles is just not good enough
well, maybe he is for THIS Arsenal but not
for MY Arsenal
SSY@36: Looks like you and Arteta are of a similar mind.
I’m staying in the Landmark Hotel by Marylebone Station .
It is not a select place. Antonio Conte has appeared there twice today
I kept my distance given the Covid situation at Tottnumb
No Anderson
No Broad
Bat first when should have bowled
The fix is in
Don’t mention the cricket.
UTA
Best to keep your distance under any circumstances, TTG.
I’m going to be a lone voice on this, I expect, but Mike Dean was not at fault on the Godfrey incident.
If he didn’t see it, and most if not all of us didn’t until the replays, because he was following the ball after it got humped up the pitch then he cannot do anything on guesswork. VAR looked at it and did nothing. The VAR didn’t ask Dean to have a look at his monitor and to be honest, Dean didn’t need to. The VAR should have made the decision, told Dean it was a red card and off you go son.
The VAR is to blame.
Fair enough, Cynic. But who cares?
VAR is used incredibly badly. And the refs are extremely poor. Mike Dean being the worst of them.
Does it matter which one is responsible for which particular fuck up in the endless litany?
It changes nothing.
Conte update. My daughter thinks he is a very nice man because he opened the hotel door for her and smiled sweetly .
I put her through university and paid for her wedding and she’s still not convinced about me.
Life’s not fair .
TTG, I suggest your daughter be tested for Covid and all sorts of infections tout de suite. 😉
Marylebone Station had the most sumptuous bar once upon a time, all plush red if somewhat timeworn velvet furnishings. A long-gone victim of modernisation.
Ned,
That’s interesting thanks
Purely in the interests of historical research I went into the bar that exists there now and it isn’t that grand and beer selection is limited. I go by way of tradition to the Sports Bar in Marylebone when we play at Wembley and apart from the last Carabao Cup Final it has proved a lucky omen and a good way to get to the stadium
Congrats to Marcelo Flores on making his international debut for Mexico. The forward is our fourth Academy player to win a full cap for his country, following Danny Ballard (Northern Ireland), Karl Hein (Estonia) and Omar Rekik (Tunisia).
British Rail used to be quite good at running bars and tea rooms. It was the railways it had trouble with.
Apparently we are interested in taking Giorgio Wijnaldum on loan in January . Now you’re talking .
shanks it in off the post, just for fun.
Well in sg😄
Wijnaldum would be handy if that particular story is true but I fear we’re stuck with Xhaka for the rest of the season.
Well in for the half-ton, Scruz.
Everton and, inevitably, Newcastle are reportedly also in for Wijnaldum. However, other reports say that PSG isn’t prepared to let him go out on loan in January
I think GSD went last night so he will add more detail but I started watching Arsenal Ladies last night and was embarrassed about how they were outclassed by Barca . So huge was the gap that one can discount any possibility of us figuring in the latter stages of the Champions League.
Barca are a superb team and significantly superior to Chelsea who schooled Arsenal Ladies on Sunday in the Cup Final . That showed in last year’s CL Final. Leah Williamson is a huge loss in central defence where our alternatives are nowhere near her class. Interesting that Miedema didn’t enter the fray until an hour had passed .
It’s a pity that people going to their first Ladies match ( and there would have been many ) saw such a one-sided match .
Miedema is out of contract next summer and there is talk of her going to Barca or Lyon in search of CL success.
Maybe one for the preview but Auba is reportedly ‘ unwell ‘ and doubtful for tomorrow.
He had Covid in August and Malaria earlier this year .
Cheers for the intro TTG!
I had a good Turkish meal and a couple of bevvies before the match and was feeling in good spirits as I made my way (fairly smoothly) into the stadium.
I had the pleasure of watching the game with a mate of mine (Leyton Orient fan) who plays for a women’s non-league team and has an excellent knowledge of the game. She was as impressed by Barca as I was, but, as with the FA Cup final on Sunday, we made it easy for the opposition.
TTG is right that we miss Leah Williamson massively. Jen Beattie went full Skrodran Luiz to gift the first goal after we had kept them at bay quite nicely. We never got back in it.
We made them look good, and we conceded poor goals. We didn’t look four goals worse than them, but we contrived to let them score from situations we should not have, and we made nothing of the few promising moments we had.
Central defense and central midfield were not good. And that’s all I have to say about that.
There was a lady with a thick West Country accent two seats up from me who I was pleases to share many a round of Red Army with.
I did not join her in ‘Jonas Eideval’s Red and White Army’. Neither did anyone else. That is a cumbersome chant, and the burr on the ‘r’ in Army didn’t do it any favours. Still, she got top marks for her enthusiastic support, and it was great to hear some young female Gooners find their voices in the last ten minutes and begin joining in some of the chants she led. I liked that a lot.
It wasn’t a cold night, the ground is far less busy for women’s matches and as we sat in a pub having had no trouble getting to the bar for a debrief pint (it was only 9.30 after the 7pm kickoff) I considered that it had been a really great night at the football, apart from, you know, the actual football.
I should add that the ref wasn’t great. She let a nasty two footer from behind go for a yellow, when it looked red all day. And anyone who leaves Beth Mead in a heap can fuck off our pitch quick smart as far as I’m concerned.
This did, however, cause my friend to lament the refereeing standards in both the men’s and womens game in this country. She sees some shambolic performances at the level she plays at.
And at Orient last week apparently the ref forgot to play injury time at the end of the first half. So he brought them out and played it at the start off the second half, before swapping ends and starting the second half.
Refs in this country are shit.
Great observations GSD
Jen Beattie is a female reincarnation of Igors Stepanovs but without his pace and composure 😀. Blimey is she useless . I used to play centre back years ( aeons) ago and you play so much better with a good partner and a goalkeeper you trust . Our goalkeeper is very good but only Leah reads the game well, has decent pace and has passing quality . We’ve a big hole in the centre of our defence Prepare to see us struggle until Leah returns But having said that we once knocked Chelsea out of the Cup with a centre back partnership of Luzhny and Stepanovs .
Thanks for the pitchside report, GSD. I’ve watched highlights, and Barca’s first goal was indeed ‘full Skrodran Luiz’. Horrible mistake. The three other goals were all preventable, even Frido’s long-range goal, which was beautifully struck, but the ball should have been cleared long before it got to her. Barca looks to be an excellent team, as expected for one that had five Ballon d’Or nominees. As TTG notes, we looked frail defensively.
A strong U18s side has been knocked out of the FA Youth Cup in the third round 3-0 by Colchester. Bit of a shock defeat for a team containing the likes of such rising stars as Patino, Hutchinson, Henry-Francis, Norton-Cuffy and Edwards.
I’ve made the mistake of engaging with the first Ashes Test for the first time ergo the collapse is my fault. The hope that stirred last night has died almost immediately.With that FA Youth Cup news which is an immense blow it seems that all around things are turning to custard .
Still Lewis Hamilton will possibly bring some joy for Gooners this weekend .
Another interesting piece by Tim Stillman, asking the pertinent questions.
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