Where Did It All Go Wrong For Arsenal?

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.