Arsenal lost 1-0 to Southampton in the FA Cup, narrowing their chances to get European Football next season to just two routes: win the Europa League or flip their form in the Premier League and go on an amazing run.
Aubameyang was scratched from the starting lineup due to a personal reason. We don’t know what lineup he would have started with but after Auba was released, Arteta started Nketiah up top, Martinelli wide left, Pepe on the right and Willian in the middle.
It didn’t work.
Pepe wasn’t atrocious, he couldn’t beat a man (but neither can Willian) and he did play a nice free kick to Martinelli who fluffed the shot. It was the kind of shot that maybe he scores if he’s match fit and sharp.
Arsenal started Soares at left back and once again this did nothing but prove that Arsenal need a deputy left back. Soares and Maitland-Niles have both played there under orders from Arteta and let’s face it, it’s not good: both players have to stop just short of the 18 yard box and pump in a deep, right-footed cross that is never going to score because not only is it telegraphed (more like Pony Express) but we also don’t have anyone capable of scoring headers, especially not Eddie Nketiah.
Arteta tried to get Arsenal back in the game but bringing Thomas on but he wasn’t as good as he had been before. Credit there to Soton’s midfield: they are excellent at gumming the works up and getting teams to play wide, where they win possession back.
Arteta also brought on Saka for Martinelli and pushed Saka right with Pepe left. That produced one of the best moments of the match, when Pepe played in a neat little throughball for Nketiah but the Englishman’s shot was just off.
The next change was most perplexing: Mikel brought on Lacazette but took off the Captain, Hector Bellerin. He then pushed Soares into a more natural RB, dropped Saka to LB, and moved Willian to LW, with Pepe RW, Lacazette in the 10, and Nketiah up top. Whoo boy howdy that didn’t work, at all!
Some folks have suggested that Arteta big-upping Soares all the time is meant to be a kick up the backside to Bellerin. And given the bizarre lineup change, I have to wonder if there’s a kernel of truth there and if that didn’t play a small part. Surely it wasn’t just done as a criticism of Bellerin but even if there is just a small portion of that in there, it would be pretty poor man management: not just of Bellerin but of Saka and even Soares.
Whatever the reason I feel bad for Saka in that switch. He’s been playing so well and we looked pretty good up to the point that Arteta changed everything up.
Frustrating evening for Arsenal but credit to Southampton. They are a well drilled team who seem to know exactly how to frustrate Arsenal. I love their organization and they are a much better team than their component parts. That said, it’s not a genius plan to stop Arsenal. It’s the same plan they used before and that Crystal Palace deploy every match.
This loss cuts off another possible route to the Europa League, meaning that if Arsenal want to play in Europe next season, they need to either finish 6th or win the Europa League. Sixth place seems the most achievable because in theory the Gunners are only five points off 6th. But looking at points per game, Arsenal on current form are set to finish with 54. In order to get 6th, they will likely need to get between 36-41 points from their remaining 19 matches. That’s a ppg pace of 1.9-2.2 per game.
Of course that’s not impossible but current odds at 538 give Arsenal just an 8% chance. That’s because we essentially need a reversal of form, or more accurately, we’d need to maintain the form of the last 6 matches: W4 D1 L1.
And if you look at the next six League fixtures, you can see how that doesn’t feel realistic:
Southampton
Man U
Wolves
Villa
Leeds
Man City
We took 5 points from those same fixtures earlier this season, 3 of those points from Man U.
Europa League won’t be much easier: next match is against Benfica who have only lost 5 matches all season, have a good defense, and decent attack.
It’s the pointy end of the season. You can see why Arsenal are looking for creative recruitments, though it may be a case of too little, too late.
Getting a CAM this window won’t make us more difficult to beat. What is our style of play? Southampton pressed and we couldn’t cope. Yes it wasn’t our strongest side but most of that eleven have plenty of first team football this season. Hassenhutl said they had “more punch and power”. That should be a wake up call to our coaching team.
You know, this will probably be unpopular, but I simply don’t care if we’re not playing in the Europa League next season. Others will point out that it troubles our recruitment not to have European football on offer. I’m not so sure. Even if we had it, is the ugly sibling of the Champions League really much of a draw? We’re going to have a trimmer squad next season, and the focus or priority must be on improving our dour league form, not laboring in a taxing competition that we’re not likely to win.
As good as this little run has been, our upcoming fixtures are going to serve up a healthy dose of reality, I’m afraid. There’s a lot of work to do with this team, and this summer will be hugely important for us.
I don’t think Europa league is as much of a draw for possible players recruitment as it is a much needed source of revenue.
I did some research on this last year, and I seem to remember that it didn’t turn out to be all that much £ to be in it. I think if you win the whole thing, it’s ok.
According to Swiss ramble Arsenal pocketed €36m for the 2018-19 season when they reached the final.
Winning it would’ve brought in another 4m.
Now I know we got dumped out of it last year yearly on, but going deep into the competition this season shouldn’t be considered beyond the realm of possibility.
Money aspect aside, as cliche as this sounds, an extra competition gives extra minutes to fringe players to showcase their abilities.
So yea, I kinda disagree with you on this Bun, a rare occasion no doubt, but still.
Fair point, but Im sure there are other fans like me who really love the FA Cup. Getting dumped out of it now sucks.
I think this is an even handed and logical argument.
There’s a lot in what you say but we’ve been sliding a lot and at some point we’ve got to hold onto what we’ve got for fear of falling further. If we don’t qualify for the Europa League, that’s one more thing we’ve failed to keep hold of and the slide continues. Who knows where we’ll end up?
I said this at the end of the prior post but we have only scored 5 goals in the last 4 games against teams near the bottom of the table. Without extra time in one of those games we would have been shut out in 3 of those 4 games and 60% of the goals we did score in those 4 games came from Auba. When we lost Auba it was a good bet that we would really struggle to score a goal against a team as organized as Southampton. Fortunately the defense keeps us competitive in most games and we still might have won without the own goal. Hopefully we can make a deep run in the Europa league
Arsenal needs to be playing in Europe in my opinion. This is along the lines of why we extended Ozil and Auba when we did; it’s about maintaining respectability and the draw of the club for outside players, sponsors and fans more than simply football and football related economics.
I don’t disagree about the footballing rationale, not really. The competition can feel like an albatross and throws off the PL fixture times. The revenue from it is small potatoes compared to the UCL and PL treasure troves. But from an optics and money perspective it’s a can’t miss target. Even if we just make 20 odd million off if it, that’s still the difference between offering a big contract to a star player or not. Not to mention the sponsorship deals and contract clauses that often involve participation in European competitions. Not to mention our attractiveness to new sponsors and the merchandise and TV revenues from growing our fan base in far flung places. I’m not sure we could’ve signed Aubameyang and Partey without qualifying last year. Perhaps one but not the other, or if we sign both it means selling another asset like Bellerin. I don’t know for sure. I do feel sure that participation in Europe is a difference maker for this club.
Leicester have zero problems recruiting, keeping players, and occasionally challenging for the title and they miss out on Europe most years.
The draw of the Premier League isn’t that players can play in Europe it’s the money. Come on.
I agree with Dr Gooner and Matt. No matter how you rationalize it, missing out on the Europa league is one more step down the ladder of mid table mediocrity. I think we were all very happy last year when we pulled the rabbit out of the hat and won the FA cup and qualified. The other thing to remember is we still have a chance to qualify for the CL if we win the Europa league. I know its a pipe dream but so was last years FA cup. Over the course of 38 games water tends to seek its proper level but cup competitions are different and we have a chance to win any individual game when we keep a clean sheet and we are pretty good at doing that.
I just saw that Pepe had 5 “key passes” in the game yesterday. I suspect he probably lead the team in “chances created”. Based on the stats you would suggest he played a really good game however, how many of us actually thought he did a lot of positive things that actually helped us? I suspect there is probably a huge dose of subjectivity when the official scorer decides which passes are actually “key passes” and which passes represent a legitimate chance created. Same thing with defensive stats such as pressures or tackles. What constitutes a pressure? Does the defender have to get within 1 meter of the player with the ball or does he have to get closer? What constitutes a tackle? We saw this subjectivity in the post about Saliba. One site had him down with 3 successful tackles and in the same game another site had him with 1 tackle attempt which wasn’t successful.
I thought Pepe had a pretty good game, so for me the eye test matches the stats on this occasion. I remember two clear opportunities that he set up for Eddie with some nifty quick touches. It’s encouraging to see him develop that aspect of his game instead of doing the same 1-2 moves every time against double teams.
Dude, I wrote about it in the piece. Not sure what you’re getting at here: he created a huge chance for Martinelli and another big chance for Nketiah.
I remember watching a game where I thought Mesut Ozil was completely invisible and did nothing positive but after the game the stats said he created 4 chances which was the most of anyone in the game. However I rewatched the game with an eye to figuring out where he could have possibly created any legitimate chances to score a goal and the only I could see were a 10 yard uncontested pass to Torriera about 25 yards from goal and Torriera took a long shot that had no chance of scoring an actual goal. Another was 15 yard uncontested was a pass off a set piece to David Luiz that was more then 35 yards out and he tried a shot. I have no idea where the other 2 chance created came from unless they were corner kicks that cleared the first defender.
Well, according to Ornstein over on the Athletic(and he’s usually reliable), Odegaard is on his way for a medical.
Hard to say how much difference he makes. Maybe in a match like yesterday’s where we’re resting ESR, he can be the difference, since Willian apparently can’t be.
Hopefully the personal issue that Auba is dealing with isn’t a major one. Him missing through the period of matches we have coming would be a bad thing.
When Arteta chose the 11 for the match, he made a decision about priorities. He wanted to win Tuesday more than Saturday. I like the ambition. He believes we can get something from the PL this season. Is he wrong? Probably. But he is sending a message to players and fans that he wants to play bigger. We don’t have the depth of squad to do 3 competitions going forward. Not happy we lost but I applaud a Manager who makes hard decisions. Let’s smash em on Tuesday with the full team.
I hope he didn’t do this. Choosing to lose a trophy is absolutely stupid.
“Choosing to lose a trophy is absolutely stupid.”
Well, put like that it’s hard to disagree, but I wouldn’t characterize Arteta’s team selection quite so bluntly. We’ve talked endlessly about the need to improve the depth of talent in the squad through transfers, but in the meantime Mikel still needs to manage minutes, particularly for the younger players. I think the decision to weight the talent towards Tuesday’s match is a fair choice; Southampton don’t have the added obligations of Europa League to juggle so they could put out a stronger team and still have something left in the tank for Tuesday. And they only beat us by a single goal.
Now stupid is giving a three-year contract to a washed-up wanker from the West London Divers Club…
Love that last line!
No need to pull punches Tim. What do you really thjnk?
Wholeheartedly agree.
Odeg
Sorry about the previous comment. Accidentally hit send
Odegaard has been around for a few years and he is 22 but not really been able to make much of any impact at Real Madrid. Sort of reminds one of Dani Ceballos who was supposedly a potential world class top prospect at one time. I am happy to take him on loan if our front office thinks he can help but I am skeptical. Another creative player can’t hurt but the thing we really need is someone who can score. Unfortunately, we have been trying for 15 years and we have not been able to develop players who score goals from the academy and its hard to buy them because no one wants to sell them.
One day Tim will bless us with an edit comment button 🙂
Did anyone think we were going to win the FA Cup again this year? We had a bit of a miracle run last year. I never expected us to repeat it.
Listen, we’re fried. Probably will finish 8th or 9th. That might work in our favour – does anyone expect Willian, Pepe, Laca and Auba even to want to play longer for a team mired in a mid-table rebuild? I expect all of them to leave this summer.
I wonder if the deal for Odegaard might include some thought to smoothing over a sale of Aubameyang. Word was that they’d been gearing up to buy Mbappe, but now Mbappe is saying he’s happy at PSG with Pocchetino.
If I could sell Auba and Pepe to Real Madrid for Odegaard and Vinicius Jr., I’d take that.
I wonder if the deal for Odegaard might include some thought to smoothing over a sale of Aubameyang.
Unlikely that Odegaard would want to be part of Arsenal’s mid-table rebuild any more than the guys you named would. His priority would likely be to wow the heck out of his employers with a stellar showing in London. There’s good reason why there’s no buy-back clause. Madrid value the player, but spots on the team are crowded. Besides, after Madrid, he’d likely want to be in the Champions League shop window. The odds on the player staying with us don’t seem that high.
Bill mentioned Ceballos. Clubs don’t loan out players they really want to keep for 2 straight years. From a Madrid perspective, Ceballos needed to dominate at the smaller club, us. To stand out. He hasn’t. Im not saying that he’s been a bad player… I like his game. But he isn’t even an automatic selection, let alone a standout at Arsenal. Im betting that he doesn’t go back to Madrid, and is offered to us as a permanent signing.
I guess the flip side of that is if we’re likely only going to finish 8th or 9th then why not go all out for the trophies we still have a chance of winning?