{"id":7374,"date":"2023-02-06T03:06:01","date_gmt":"2023-02-06T03:06:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/?p=7374"},"modified":"2023-02-10T17:46:43","modified_gmt":"2023-02-10T17:46:43","slug":"mid-season-meditations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/?p=7374","title":{"rendered":"Mid-season Meditations"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Saturday lunchtime match. Away at an old ground in the northwest. To a struggling team now well and truly in the thick of a relegation battle. Who recently fired their hapless young manager and brought in a grizzly manager who has a well-earned reputation of drilling his teams into a well-organized unit that makes life very unpleasant for the opposition no matter how high-flying they are.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Goodison has lately not been a happy hunting ground for Arsenal anyway. Add that into the mix of all these other factors and before the match started it was obvious to everyone except the na\u00efvest of Arsenal fans that anything less than their very best would see this young Arsenal squad punished.  However, whereas over-optimistic na\u00efvet\u00e9 might be the natural psychic habitat of the fanbase, one of the world\u2019s most promising young managers and his thoroughly professional staff have until now shown no signs of such complacency themselves, and equally reassuringly have made sure the players never prepare themselves with anything but the utmost seriousness whatever may the occasion or opposition be. That consistency of attitude alone for a squad so young, at least in my observation, has been one of the most pleasing aspects of Mikel\u2019s fledgling managerial career.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The starting eleven was unchanged from the last league victory at home against Manchester United. If that match was a spectacle of pulsating free-flowing football \u2013 however deep our historical enmity may run, I have no problem acknowledging that in Ten Haag they have finally found a manager who can turn them into a much more watchable team and eventually a threatening opposition at the top of the table \u2013 there could have been no illusion about what awaits us at Everton. Their recent run of terrible results masked the fact that there is a solid base of good players, in both technical and physical aspects, in that squad and properly trained and organized they would be a very difficult team to play through.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ramsdale<\/p>\n\n\n\n

White \u2013 Saliba \u2013 Gabriel \u2013 Zinchenko<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Partey \u2013 Xhaka<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Saka \u2013 \u00d8degaard \u2013 Martinelli<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nketiah<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That anticipated difficulty was painfully evident from the start. Everton set up in a compact and deep 4-5-1 formation, with the gap between the midfield and defense too narrow to present Arsenal any of those half-spaces where Partey, Xhaka, Zinchenko and \u00d8degaard thrive. Their well-organized defense and midfield did not give the Arsenal players any moment to look up, pressing and hurrying constantly and cutting off all the passing lanes in their final third, but to their credit also look to break in counterattacks whenever possible. Ben White, who has most likely been the best right back in the league in the first half of the season, was less than his flawless best against Rashford in the last outing and Everton targeted his side for their breaks. Onana used his physicality and close control to impressive effect and in combination with McNeil or the ex-Gunner Alex Iwobi posed a noticeable threat down their left. While we dominated the possession and passed around crisply through their well-organized press, we found it extremely difficult to make that count in the opposition’s final third.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This was neither the first opponent, nor will it be the last, who will pose us this particular challenge. We have until now in this season have found a way: sometimes through moments of individual inspiration or even genius, sometimes with a calm-headed patience and confidence that as long as we keep doing our basics right as the match progresses the opposition will tire and would make the inevitable mistakes, and sometimes by finding within ourselves an ability to speed up the passing through the lines to an electrifying rapidity while maintaining the necessarily unerring accuracy that carves open the most dogged defense. This was not one of those days. Saka and Martinelli were effectively doubled-up, Partey and Xhaka were moving the ball just a bit slower than the usual high-tempo passing that has been a key characteristic this season. Zinchenko was holding on to the ball a bit longer than usual. And \u00d8degaard, our otherwise mesmerizing conductor, was finding his baton just a bit awkwardly heavy in his hands.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But credit must go to Everton for they played with both discipline and energy. It is easy to dismiss a lower in the table opposition\u2019s spirited fight, especially when managed by someone like Sean Dyche who we in the Arsenal fanbase have well-founded reasons to disapprove. But I thought it was quite an impressive performance by them, resilient, energetic and purposeful. Despite our vastly superior possession and passing statistics, they had two of the better chances in the first half: Onana broke past \u00d8degaard and White to set up a fizzing cut-back across our goalmouth that Calvert-Lewin missed by an inch, and then McNeil swung in a perfectly weighted cross that Doucour\u00e9 \u2013 after turning away from Gabriel and finding himself with a lot of space and time \u2013 headed wide. In between Nketiah fashioned our only notable chance of the first half, latching on to a pass from Saka in the penalty box he turned and drove past the Everton central defense to make enough space for a shot at goal, and I am sure he would be very disappointed for then skying his attempt and not even forcing Pickford into a save, especially given the rich vein of form he has been in lately. Saka fashioned out a left-footed volley from the edge of the box that had Pickford stranded but was saved on the line.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the first half Everton also looked threatening from the corners, targeting Arsenal\u2019s back post with deep floated inswingers that troubled our backline all throughout. But we started the second half well and controlled both the tempo and possession. One of our brightest moments of the match came when Eddie showed his rapidly improving technical skills and creativity by getting into the box dancing past a congested block of defenders to set up a wonderful opportunity for his captain, and that is a chance \u00d8degaard should really have taken. We have been reading stories of how injured Gabriel Jesus, while he is not undergoing his recovery routines, still comes to the practice sessions to guide and help our youngsters and especially Eddie. That bit of dancing boots from Eddie is a patent Jesus move.      <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Partey was not at his best, and the suspicion that he may still be suffering from the rib injury he had sustained in the FA Cup loass away at city was confirmed when Mikel took him off for our new signing Jorginho the 59th<\/sup> minute. Another winter signing Trossard\u2013 who had an impressive debut in the home match against Mancherster United \u2013 also came on for Martinelli who had found it difficult against being double, or sometime even triple, marked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And immediately afterwards we conceded, there was another deep inswing corner, Tarkowski brushed off his marker \u00d8degaard to head past a stranded Ramsdale.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Everton 1 \u2013 Arsenal 0 (Tarkowski 60\u2019)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This season we almost always have come back from being a goal down, home or away, and given there was still at least half an hour of the match left there was hope that we will find the necessary inspiration to stage another comeback. Trossard was purposeful in his running with the ball and fashioned for himself a couple of attempts, but one flew over the goal while the other was blocked. Vieira was brought in for an uncharacteristically subdued \u00d8degaard, and Tomiyasu came in for White who I feel may need a bit of a breather in the league in the coming weeks. Everton brought in a particularly unpleasant little striker with likely the aim of disrupting any attempts by Arsenal to create an attacking rhythm. Unfortunately for us \u2013 and hopefully also educationally for this young team \u2013 we fell for the traps, lost our own discipline and allowed the match to become the kind of disjointed ill-tempered affair that the opposition hoped for, and instead of creating a well-controlled incessant goalmouth pressure we wasted valuable minutes and impetus. Even the six minutes of added time did us no favors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A loss like this, however hard to take immediately after the match, especially given how consistently impressive we have been until now, can in the long run be a perfect cautionary example, and hence a valuable lesson, for the squad as well as the coaching staff to keep in mind. We will definitely see more of these types of performances from lower-positioned opposition as the survival dogfight gets only more intense. We too would experience similarly less-than-perfect days from our own players both individually and collectively, when neither the automatisms nor the individual sparks would be quite of the very high level that we in the fanbase are getting accustomed to (and hopefully not taking for granted). How we learn to both prepare for such days, and then how we figure out in the course of a match solutions to such thorny challenges, will determine how we will look back at this season not only in the Summer break but also over the years to come.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Saturday lunchtime match. Away at an old ground in the northwest. To a struggling team now well and truly in the thick of a relegation battle. Who recently fired their hapless young manager and brought in a grizzly manager who has a well-earned reputation of drilling his teams into a well-organized unit that makes life […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7374"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7374"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7374\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7405,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7374\/revisions\/7405"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7374"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7374"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7374"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}