The Arsenal Situation
Living in Canada is a problem for watching football. Yes early in the season timings have been good, but as the season wears on I will be in school or up early on the weekends to catch my favourite football team. This becomes harder and harder when I watch this Gunners team falling apart at the hands of manager of Arsene Wenger. Wenger hasn’t won the premier league since the invincibles of 2003-04. The last couple of years have been more of this futile hope that Wenger can lead us to a title.
Two years ago Arsenal fell to the storybook team of Leicester which yes was a great story, but Arsenal should’ve been at the top that was the year. Fair enough so we fell short, but we did finish above Tottenham, ManU, ManCity, Chelsea, Liverpool. Last year was a different story. Again being shafted in the champions league we were demolished 10-2 by Bayern Munich on aggregate. Following that you expected Arsenal to be able to turn things around with less football to play, but instead we struggled to finish 5th in the league. This was compounded by the fact Tottenham finished above us for the first time in 22 years. An impressive him over Chelsea to win the FACup seemed to be enough for the Arsenal board to decide Wenger is the man to continue to lead Arsenal for a minimum 2 more years.
This brings us to the 2017-18 season which was started by the free transfer signing of
Full back Sead Kolasinac from Schalke in the Bundesliga. Then the club transfer record signing of Olympique Lyon star striker Alexandre Lacazette. The two signings managed to have a good effort in the rough season opener against Leicester with Kolasinac getting an assist and Lacazette scoring on his first shot. The problem is not the game against Leicester or even the loss against Stoke which was very poor, but pales in comparison to the 4-0 thrashing at the hands of Liverpool.
The goals were as follows. Xhaka turn over is crossed into the box for Firmino to head in. Sadio Mane curls one around holding and inside the far post leaving Arsenal down 2-0 at half. The second half wasn’t any better as a cleared corner by Liverpool and a poor touch by Bellerin allowed Mo Salah to run half the pitch to score a breakaway goal allowing Liverpool to go up 3-0. Finally Danny sturridge would score one of the easiest headers of his career to officially put the final bullet in the head of the Old Yeller like Arsenal team.
This game showed how far Arsenal have fallen from last season. Everyone apart from Cech and Welbeck just looked disinterested. Xhaka and Ramsey were playing as “holding midfielder” but I wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t know that because they ran around like headless chickens. Ramsey had his back turned to the play on the first goal and Xhaka whose head only seems to be there for his perfectly gelled hair because a brain was lacking with a lazy chip pass that was easily stolen. Ozil and Sanchez looked like they would rather be anywhere but Arsenal. Oxlade was not playing like a wingback and struggled to help on defence. Monreal is not a centre back and barely a decent left back. Koscielny had no help on defence. Holding needs to learn and grow as a football player. Worse off was the bench which had over 100 million pounds worth of players sitting on the bench (Mustafi, Giroud, Lacazette and Kolasinac to name a few). The team is lacking a leader on pitch side and the pitch. Watching this game you could clearly see that the team was lacking heart with no one taking initiative to try turn things around.
Oxlade is now gone to Liverpool for 40 million pounds which can possibly open up a spot for Thomas Lemar which still doesn't fix the Arsenal problem. Lemar is a winger which Arsenal doesn't need. Arsenal need a strong holding midfielder like Matic or Cesc. Until Arsenal finds a holding mid and star defender we will unfortunately continue our reign of mediocrity through this and next season. It will be a long season ahead for all fans involved with this team and I am one of them.
If you would like to see my swear filled rant on youtube check out the link below and maybe give me a subscibe.
