In what seemed to be a promising season for us Gunners, all we've been left with is good football and no trophies. Where has it all gone wrong for Arsenal? Here's my take on all of it.
Firstly, I completely disagree with the thoughts of the "pundits" who seem to believe that Arsenal blew it when we lost 4-0 at Old Trafford in the FA Cup. We actually blew it in the now-infamous Birmingham game.
After having lost Eduardo to injury and gone a goal behind, Walcott got us back into the game and took us ahead at 2-1. We wasted almost three chances to make it 3-1 and conceded a late, late penalty to draw 2-2. That was the start of the slump.
What happened to Eduardo must have surely affected the team. We did, though, get our rhythm back in the second half of that game.
So, to think that Dudu was the reason for our season's demise overall, is not a sufficient reason. After that game, Hleb went missing, Adebayor literally stopped scoring for a while, Fabregas become anonymous on the pitch and Arsenal as a whole stopped playing as a team.
Then, came jubilation at Milan, which really was a great night at the San Siro. The next weekend we went away to Wigan—that pathetic surface which was, for some reason beautiful even yesterday when they played Man Utd, was blamed for a 0-0 draw.
Again, it was profligacy in front of goal which cost us the game there.
After that followed a couple of draws at home to Boro and Villa—which were two games where we were expected to get six points, hands down.
We then went to Stamford Bridge, where Chelsea had been unbeaten for two-and-a-half seasons. We played pretty decent football and went ahead through Sagna and then, capitulated.
People talk about squad depth and all of that but, we lost the Chelsea game due to the poor defending of Toure and Gallas. First they allowed Drogba to get in behind them to score, and then Gallas allowed Anelka to flick on for Drogba to score again.
We then faced Liverpool at home and Wenger decided to give five players a rest in a must-win game. We clawed back to draw 1-1 in yet another home game.
Then against Man Utd—we went ahead and again conceded a stupid penalty and a really unnecessary free kick where the wall stood still as Hargreaves scored.
Again, that was not down to squad depth, it was down to really naive defending from Gilberto and Gallas.
It would have definitely been better had we bought a couple of players in January. But hindsight is always 20-20—it was impossible to predict Rosicky and Dudu getting injured at the same time for long spells.
What really did cost us the season, though, was very, very poor defending against the top teams. We went ahead at Chelsea and Man Utd away, and then blew the lead. That was a prospective six points off the top two and, doing the math, we know where we could have ended up at the end of the season.
That is probably why Wenger is keen to bring in a centre back for Arsenal in the summer, and I won't be surprised if he seals that deal first. We couldn't handle the aerial challenges posed by many teams and had some sort of a "persecution complex" towards the end from the poor refereeing, which really didn't help our cause.
I'm pretty sure that the "Invincible" team wouldn't have blamed the refereeing for their failures, would they?
Having lost Flamini, we have lost a good, mobile midfielder. He did leave for the money after one good season, and is going to play in the UEFA cup, so I'm not all that worried about his loss.
If we plug that gap and develop some mental toughness and the nous to defend well at the death of the season, we really should be able to push on next season.
As Arsene Wenger said yesterday:
"My message to United manager Sir Alex Ferguson is congratulations for the achievement—and get ready for the fight next year."
I couldn't have put it better myself.
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5 months ago
Great first article Shyam. Hope to see many more. I'll leave it for the Arsenal fans to respond.
from 5 months ago
Thank You very much!
5 months ago
ha ha ha
*nothing more to say*
from 5 months ago
Can we try and be a bit more grown up Kiran. The guy has just wrote his first piece for Bleacher Report and it was very well written. Respect where respect is due.
5 months ago
the 3 most crucial games were the EPL games against manure and chelski and the away UCL fixture at scousers ... we lead all 3 games and then lost ... forget the dodgy referring decisions(mcfadden penalty,scouser penalties on both legs,goal disallowed against boro at home now) we could have still won it if we had kept a clean sheet ... even derby scored against us .... how many clean sheets did we have this season ... the prof got some horrible decisions throughout the season : eboue as RW,toure as RB, and wtf was sanderos doing in the full 90mins of the UCL match@anfield??
inspite of the referring inconsistencies(other than manure every team gets referring howlers) we could have made it if we had strength in depth ... hoping against hope that arsenal gets a scoring winger and a decent central defender.
from 5 months ago
Well Kohinoor.. we get Carlos Vela in the summer and Arsene Wenger has already decided to get a centre back as well.. so I don't think you need to hope against hope! Eboue as RW was a decent experiment on paper but it didn't come off, the Toure RB thing was, in my opinion because he felt that Senderos was strong in the air but that failed too. There's a very fine line between winning and losing and I think we can understand it better than most after this season.
We can only hope for a better season next time round and I'm actually fairly confident of it, even if Hleb does leave!
from 5 months ago
@shyam:
eboue experiment went throughout the season ... thts an awfully long time;
the toure experiment was probably justified but in sagna's absence eboue shd have been the rb,not toure.
sanderos is our imported Titus Bramble; any big/crunch match and he makes mistakes without fail.
about hleb leaving:someone(carlos vela?) will replace him.
about the CB signing:lets hope it turns out to be a Sagna rather than Sanderos.
as an aside,i think AW should use the service of Keown or Tony Adams for the defence;keown had coached the team during the UCL run to the final(and 10? clean sheets).
also arsenal should use some PR etc to influence the newspaper hacks and also the refs
dont get me wrong:when was the last time arsenal got a favourable decision in any match with manu, chelsea or liverpool;legit goals disallowed because ref has new version of offside rule,penalties fiasco -- this just gets sicker with every passing year.we can sure use some favourable views from the papers.
5 months ago
Nice article Shyam and welcome to Bleacher Report.
I agree with what you said above, Gallas and Toure defended very badly at certain times in the season and Im sure thats the first area Wenger will strengthen this summer. A lot of my friends, actually couldnt watch an Arsenal game when Senderos was playing, he literally turned their stomachs. I would actually put a lot of blame on him. Take the Champions League against Liverpool, you could actually put two of the goals against Arsenal on him.
I think injuries also played a huge part, and im not saying strength in depth is the blame, but it definitly would have helped if he could rely on some quality players to bring off the bench, especially on the bad days.
Like I said here before, If i was an arseanl fan, I wouldnt be dissapointed this season. Coming from out from underneath Henrys shadow, with a very young team, they played excellent football and show all the signs of a great team who will be huge within the next 2 seasons. This season may have ended trophy-less, but they have gained great experience.
Wenger just has to make sure no more players leave, even if he has to break a wage structure.
Again Shyam, Great first article, hope to see more from you soon.
from 5 months ago
Hey Keith,
Thanks a lot! Senderos is a confidence player and the moment he lost Hyppia in that match - we should've been bracing ourselves for trouble. Then again, I think Torres turned him superbly in that match and what followed all that was there for everyone to see...
Injuries did play their part and I felt that especially during the draws against the "weaker" teams, but that said, we lost leads far too easily against Man Utd and Chelsea which basically cost us the title. So, in terms of a settled defence, a lot of work needs to be done.
from 5 months ago
Kohinoor - I get what you're saying about the Senderos thing. I'm pretty sure that you're going to see Eboue in the right midfield role again next season. Carlos Vela will play on the left side and won't replace Hleb. If anyone was to replace Hleb, I would throw in Walcott's name - he's improving and is having more of an impact on games than before.
About the defence coach - I couldn't agree with you more. Again, the PR thing is just the way it is.. It's upto AW to figure out how he goes about the mindgames when it comes to referees.
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