seville 3-1 arsenal (euro)
m'borough 2-1 arsenal (prem)
tottenham 5-1 arsenal (carling cup)
man u 4-0 arsenal (fa cup)
chelsea 2-1 arsenal (prem)
liverpool 4-2 arsenal (euro)
man u 2-1 arsenal (prem)
what conclusions can we draw from these defeats?
some simple observations are:
1) all of our defeats have been away from home at tough places.
2) all of our defeats (except middlesbrough) have been to big opponents.
3) most have occurred since the turn of the year.
some interesting appearance statistics:
1) phillipe senderos only started 2 of these games, yet he is taking much of the blame for arsenal's defensive frailties. wiliam gallas and kolo toure each played in 6 of these games, though toure played a couple games out of position. dare i say that gallas is our weak link and not senderos?
2) flamini started only 2 of these games, and went off injured in one of these. gilberto started 5 of these games and came on for the second half of another. it is obvious that flamini's presence brings wins and gilberto's presence brings losses. surely the old timer will be on his way in the summer.
what happened in these matches:
seville 3-1 arsenal
we had already qualified for the knockout stages of the champions league when we went to seville, and we had previously thrashed them 3-0, so while they had a point to prove we had no special motivation to match their fight. we also played a few of our second string players, while they were at full strength.
middlesbrough 2-1 arsenal
we were going through a bit of a poor patch at the time, and had lost some players to injury. fabregas, flamini and hleb were all too unfit to start. it was no coincidence that we were poor and uncoordinated that day, with an untried midfield of eboue, diarra, gilberto and rosicky failing to provide any impetus to the team.
tottenham 5-1 arsenal
there was an inevitability in the air that we were going to lose to tottenham in the carling cup as they were well up for it after our kids beat them last year. wenger was forced into playing unmotivated first-teamers for the game due to some carling cup regulars being unavailable. the awkward mix of not-so-bothered seniors who had bigger concerns and unconvincing youngsters missing important teammates was no match for a full strength tottenham team going all out.
man u 4-0 arsenal
our defeat to man u in the fa cup came shortly after we went 5 points clear in the league following man u's humiliating defeat at home to man city. like at white hart lane, perhaps understandably our players were nowhere near as pumped up as the opposition. our first team squad was quite injury hit at the time, and we had a big game against milan to think about. a lot of fans were upset with the performance, but wenger was probably wise to sacrifice the fa cup tie to a super aggressive united when we were so weak with injuries and had bigger games to plan for in the league and europe.
chelsea 2-1 arsenal
rather disappointingly this was a game that we really wanted and tried to win. we outplayed them in the first half and carved out a number of half chances. when we scored with an unlikely header, chelsea turned on the power, boxed us in to our own half and started to pile non-stop pressue on our defence. toure and gallas looked inept against drogba's power, and after we lost sagna to injury we eventually caved to a drogba brace. we had been on a poor run of games prior to this one, but we fielded a strong team for it and were surely capable of beating them.
liverpool 4-2 arsenal
this was another game we really wanted to win. after stunning liverpool and their fans for the opening 15 minutes with some galactico football the likes of which anfield has never seen, and after deservedly going 0-1 up, we then went down 2-1 after hyppia and torres both capitalised expertly on minor senderos errors. theo walcott's stunning run got us back to 2-2, which would have gotten us through on away goals, except that just after scoring we lost concentration, let liverpool pile forward and naively allowed babel to sithe through our defense twice to put the game beyond us. match of the season, but a devastating finish.
man u 2-1 arsenal
once again we started strong, passing the ball around and through man u with ease and pressing them well all over the pitch for the first half hour. the quality of our game had man u visibly nervous, and forced them back into their own half. after adebayor scored in the scrappy aftermath of a set piece, they threw players forward and started to apply direct pressure to our defence. once again, this simple pressure resulted in them scoring, first from a penalty conceded by gallas and then from a free kick conceded outside the box by gilberto.
what general conclusions can we draw from these games then?
our motivation was obviously poor in the games against sevilla, spurs and man u in the fa cup...but our motivation was not an issue against middlesbrough, chelsea, liverpool in europe or man u in the league. against middlesbrough our dependence on the fabregas-hleb-flamini axis was exposed. without these players we are not the same team. against chelsea, liverpool and man u defensively we were just not strong enough to withstand their heavy pressure. senderos, toure and especially gallas have all failed to assert their authority over the big powerful opposition forwards they have come up against in these important games. we outplayed chelsea, liverpool and man u but they are intelligent teams and they have clearly found a weakness to exploit.
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