Arsenal Fail To Perform In 3-2 Home Defeat To West Brom

Yesterday's home game against West Brom was a great chance for Arsenal to put some pressure on Chelsea at the top of the table after their 100% record had been ended earlier in the day by Man City. A win would have put us one point behind Chelsea with a trip to Stamford Bridge to come next Sunday and anything less than that was unimaginable.

The boss left Wilshere and Rosicky out from the team that I predicted would start and brought Diaby and Eboue in for them. The team certainly looked good enough on paper to beat a West Brom side who had done very well to recover from their opening day drubbing at Chelsea and stand on seven points after five games.

Things might have gone differently if Arsenal scored early on, but Arshavin only managed to stab the ball against the post from an Eboue cross and he then hit the post again when the ball rebounded back to him. Gradually West Brom's confidence grew and grew, though, as it was obvious that Arsenal were not playing their usual high tempo and quick passing game.

It was obvious to me, and any other fans that I spoke to, that Diaby and Eboue were not playing anywhere near the way that both Wilshere and Rosicky would have been expected to play and our game was going nowhere.

West Brom looked the more likely to score, and when their striker was played through, he outpaced the Arsenal defence and Almunia advanced to meet him, but missed the ball and took the man down just inside the box. It was a definite penalty and Almunia only got a yellow card as the referee judged that the ball was going away from the goal.

Brunt took the penalty and hit it pretty poorly which enabled Almunia to make a good save. As half time approached his name rang out around the Emirates and there seemed to be a chance that he could win his way back into the hearts of the fans.

At half time, the scores stood at 0-0 and Arsenal could consider themselves very lucky to be still level. I felt that the manager would surely be able to choose the right words to get the players to the required level in the second half. It was evident almost immediately that no such thing had happened, though, as the same failings that we suffered from in the first half continued in the second half.

The inevitable happened in the 50th minute when West Brom took the lead through Odemwingie.

Thomas skinned Sagna in our right back position and squared the ball for him to tap home from less than six yards out, and now I felt that the Arsenal players surely had to wake up. However, the next goal came almost immediately and it was from West Brom again with Jara getting his name on the scoresheet this time.

He was played in on our left this time, and as a centre back tried to close him down, he hit the ball low and hard at Almunia who got behind the ball but only managed to deflect it into the goal. It was a shot he should have saved and the heroics of his earlier penalty save were forgotten as we again saw why the majority of fans were stunned that he wasn't replaced in the summer.

The boss brought both Eboue and Diaby off within a few minutes and replaced them with Rosicky and Wilshere and Arsenal eventually began to play a little better as West Brom dropped back to defend their lead. As the clock ticked down the boss got more desperate and brought Vela on for Koscielny as Arsenal pushed more and more players forward.

When you keep pushing forward you are always vulnerable on the counter attack and so it proved in the 73rd minute as West Brom broke down our right again. With Sagna nowhere to be seen Squillaci had to fill in for him and Thomas played the ball across the box to Brunt who got in behind Clichy.

Almunia advanced as Brunt went wide but he then backed off Brunt to leave him with all the time in the world to square the ball for ex Arsenal player Thomas to smash it into an empty net.

So we had just over 15 minutes to go and Arsenal were 3-0 down at home to newly promoted West Brom and it looked like being our most embarrassing defeat yet at our new ground.

Almost straight from the kick off Nasri burst forward and hit the bar with a shot as he looked to single handedly get Arsenal back into the game. He managed to do that within a minute as he jinked his way past a few West Brom players in the box and followed it with a very neat finish.

We had fourteen minutes plus injury time left and suddenly there seemed like there might be some hope for Arsenal.

As the minutes ticked by it seemed like Arsenal just wouldn't be able to muster up another goal to put some real pressure on West Brom, but just as the five minutes of time added were shown that man Nasri stepped up yet again. Arshavin picked him out with a pass 15 yards out in the middle of the box and he finished well to set up what we hoped would be a great escape.

Unfortunately in the next five minutes Arsenal's only real half chance was a volley over the bar from Rosicky and the game ended soon after that with West Brom getting a fully deserved 3-2 win.

For the second Saturday in a row Arsenal had failed to perform well after a great midweek performance and it looks like the critics who say we are inconsistent might well be right.

Yesterday was a great chance to retain our second spot in the table and put Chelsea under pressure as well as keeping some space between us and the teams chasing us but we completely and utterly blew it. I know we have an enormous list of injured players but the players that were available yesterday were good enough to get the win that we needed.

One of the problems seemed to be a lack of leadership on the pitch to me and added to what looked like a great deal of complacency—it was a recipe for disaster.

The boss refused to blame individual players afterwards as he said the whole team played poorly. He wouldn't be drawn on Almunia's mistakes but he did say that many players made mistakes throughout the game, which is absolutely true.

However, the fans were sarcastically cheering Almunia for just picking the ball up during the later stages of the game and his position in the team is becoming almost untenable at this stage. Unfortunately, the current second choice is even worse and the boss believes the two young pretenders are too young to get a chance, so it would seem that we are stuck with what we have unless he develops another mysterious "injury" akin to the ones he developed last season.

I'll go further into the negatives of yesterday's result tomorrow as it's time to get on with my Sunday evening now, but at least we have a game in two days, which should hopefully give the players a chance to gain a little bit of redemption.

See You Tomorrow.