There’s really no other place to start than the deciding two factors in yesterday’s 1-0 defeat to the Italian Champions Inter. At one end of the pitch Mikel Merino is punched in the head from Jan Sommer, at the other end of the pitch a ball flicks up on to his arm and the – frankly terrible – UEFA referee gives the penalty.
I want to be very clear: I don’t think Merino’s penalty for us should be a penalty. Sommer does get some of the ball, but he absolutely cleans out Merino and his ‘some part of the ball’ was quite minimal indeed. It was dangerous play but if you put your head there then you could be liable for a clattering.
But the real frustration comes from the ball which hit Merino’s arm and the referee decided that he wanted to be the deciding factor in the game by pointing to the spot. I have absolutely no idea what Merino is supposed to do with his hands when contesting the ball, because it seems there’s nothing you can do and I do wonder if given this stupid handball rule in Europe (Trossard got a pen the other week at home to Shaktar that was super soft and shouldn’t really have been given), managers and coaches don’t have a word with their players and say:
“If you’re in the box, see if you can flick it on to a defenders hand to win a penalty”
You can’t say these players aren’t good enough to do it. They certainly are.
And so the second half scene was set, because in that first half it’d been a pretty average game of football, apart from a few early Inter chances. They had rotated with a big game against Napoli in mind, but Arteta had gone strong, recalling White to the starting line up and restoring Partey in to the midfield. And it was a fairly even first half, maybe just edged by Inter because of the opening salvo’s. We didn’t really create too many chances though and for those two instances in the box to happen in the last 15 minutes of the half, it felt like the game plan had been chucked out into the bins along with last night’s Ruby Murray.
Arsenal needed to respond because we knew what Inter would do in the second half; they would sit deep, soak up, maybe hit us on the counter if they could. But when you’re in Italy, they love a bit of defending and that’s exactly what Inter proceeded to do for the entirety of the second half. The score line has a familiar feel about it to the weekend’s defeat to Newcastle, but there was nowhere near the same level of threat or physicality in the game; Inter players fell down at every opportunity and you really wanted a referee who was not having any of it on the night. There were a couple of instances in which he did tell players to get up, but all too often they fell down complaining and the referee bought it.
So it was incumbent on those Arsenal players to fashion chances in spite of this referee. Which ito be fair to them they did. Sommer made a particularly impressive save from a Havertz looping shot and there was also an amazing block from Bisseck that caused the ball to spin out wide for a corner. But as is the way with us at the moment, we just had no answer to that low/mid block team who were happy to sit in a back five with two holding midfielders in front of them. We reverted to what happened at Newcastle – the horsehoe of death – passing across their back five before somebody eventually whacked a ball into the box. And the Inter defenders mopped it up time and time again.
That’s three games in five that we’ve now not hit the back of the net and night’s like last night, as well as last weekend, leave you thinking “will we ever score again?”
Not against opponents like that. Maybe you can cite some mitigating factors: The penalty, the fact we’re playing the Italian champions on their own patch, the standard of refereeing, but at some stage even amongst all of this one finds oneself coming back to how our front line just isn’t functioning right now. When we go behind, teams shut up shop and we have no answer in the attacking third. Saka gets doubled up on, Martinelli runs down blind alleys, Havertz goes quiet, although last night I thought Kai had a better performance and was unlucky not to score.
Maybe the return of Odegaard solves a lot of this, but the over-reliance on one guy for a creative outlet in breaking through defensive lines is a worry in itself, because teams will look at how they can stifle him when he’s on the pitch as a tactic to nullify The Arsenal.
It was another tough day at the office for Arteta and his lads. There’s no doubt we’re in a bit of a funk right now. The sharp end of the pitch isn’t working and Odegaard’s return can’t come quickly enough; it was very nice to see him get on right at the end for a few minutes at the end, but he won’t be ready for Chelsea and so we’re going to come across the same problem again in the attacking third unless Arteta works out a new approach.
Perhaps it’s also a case of some players just being woefully out of form. I don’t think Merino was great last night, Martinelli I’ve already mentioned, but once again – Leandro Trossard – you have to be more impactful than this. He’s putting in stinker after stinker right now and if I was Arteta I’d be severely tempted to hook him for Chelsea this weekend.
It’s back to London Colney today for Arteta and his team and back to the drawing board for him and his coaching staff, because what we’re seeing right now ain’t working and the season is in serious danger of going in to freefall if the worst happens this weekend.
Catch you all tomorrow.
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