Familiar failings cause familiar frustrations

Before the season started I thought it was not beyond the realms of possibility that Arsenal went in to the international break with 0 points from their opening 3 games. The fixture at Brentford always had banana skin written all over it, and then to follow that up with games against the European champions and Premier League champions was always a tall ask. As it turns out, that prediction looks more likely to come to fruition than not and I am somewhat at peace with that.

What I can't make peace with however is the manner of the defeats we have endured so far. On neither occasion have we seen any sense of progression from what we saw last season. If anything, we have reverted back to the Arsenal of pre-Christmas last year, where the lack of creativity is what nobbled us in a series of narrow defeats. Only on top of that we seem to have gone away from the solid defensive foundation that led to us having the third best defence in the league, although that is very much an elephant in the tree type of stat. You can see it's true, but you can't make head nor tails of how it came to be.

And so it was yesterday that for the second week in a row we got pushed about and bullied by an opponent who was better drilled, more up for the fight and actually had a plan for how to hurt us. To give the slightest bit of credit, I thought we actually started both halves well. I'd say that we edged the first 15 minutes, right up to the point where Romelu Lukaku toyed with Pablo Mari, who seems more out of his depth by the week, sent him sprawling and knocked in an excellent ball across the face of the 6 yard box by Reece James. James himself then got the second, capitalising on the acres of space he was left by Tierney, who had tucked in too much to help Mari deal with Lukaku, and finished with a powerful finish past Leno. Not much was offered up in response. There was a brief moment where Saka broke clear, and with Martinelli and Smith Rowe square proceeded to gift the ball to Azpilicueta, and a flurry of corners to end the half but not a lot else. Although we kept things shut at the back in the second half, I can't recall Mendy in the Chelsea's goal having much of anything to do other than tip a deflected Saka effort over the bar, and the game petered out for the second 2-0 loss in a week.

After the game Arteta rightly bemoaned the fitness issues that affect the squad and in particular the first XI. Gabriel and Partey were both out through injury. Ben White and Alex Lacazette missed out entirely due to Covid 19 with Aubameyang only fit enough for the bench, and new old signing Martin Odegaard was unable to start due to visa issues. However, at some point the excuses have to stop. Almost every team has to deal with sub-optimal squad conditions. The trick to good management is how you overcome that adversity. So you have 6 players missing who would most likely be in your starting 11? You adapt. You devise a game plan to overcome the deficiencies. You get your team to give that bit more in the fight, rather than lay down and have their tummy tickled.

As an Arsenal supporter I want the team to do well and that means I want Arteta to do well. But I am not tied to the manager. If he is not able to get the best out of the players at his disposal then someone should be bought in who can. Antonio Conte was a name that was put about in media circles last week and I would not be averse to that should it come to pass. Either way, the support for the team does not waver.

With that in mind and, as previously mentioned, the likelihood of going to 0 points from 9 going in to the international break, I think where we are at the end of November will be a good point to take stock and reassess where we are and where Arteta is and can take us. After the international break all missing players should be back (although Tierney went off injured yesterday). There are then fixtures against Norwich, Burnley, Spurs, Brighton, Palace, Villa, Leicester and Watford, before games against Liverpool and Manchester United sandwich a game against Newcastle. Plenty of winnable games in theory and I think 27 points is a possibility out of those fixtures. Less than 15 and no discernible improvement in playing style and  I think time may well be up.  

Before anything else though, we move on to our first second round league cup tie for the first time in over 20 years on Wednesday away at West Brom. It will be interesting to see what sort of team Mikel goes with with this one, as it can't be argued that the first teamers need to get some fluency and confidence in them. We'll see what happens. Until then..