We just froze! by Dan Smith
When we last faced Brighton in the League at the Emirates, our players were finding the pressure of a top 4 race too much.
Mikel Arteta’s brain wave to motivate them?
Bring a lightbulb to work with him! How that didn’t become a meme I don’t know!
We might never know how our manager prepared for this Sunday, a fixture we had to win to have an outside chance of being Champions.
Whatever it was it didn’t work!
The great deliver in May, the good disappear.
For too many of our players, the occasion proved too big, talent crippled by the fear of failure.
The irony being, a week on from showing such maturity on Tyneside, we produced a performance comparable with Newcastle and Spurs from last season.
The weight of a title challenge was too big a step for one of the youngest squads in the division.
Just like Gary Neville said it was going to be.
Not criticism, just an honest reflection, when it’s ‘squeaky bum time’ we go missing.
The club is at a crossroads this summer.
Trust ‘the process’ and hope youngsters learn from these moments and are better for the experience, or help your youth out by surrounding them with experience?
Arsenal have been unlucky that the TV companies have dictated that we always seem to play after Man City, always playing catch up.
Psychologically, it’s different this weekend if we kick off first.
Instead, we again watched City go 4 points clear, chalking off another game, Gunners had hopes high of a slip up at Goodison, only to be disappointed.
That perhaps explains a performance in the first half that felt like a preseason game.
An atmosphere, a tempo of a club going through the motions, not believing Pep Guardiola’s going to drop 4 points with 3 games left.
Gooners can think that in the stands, but professional sportsmen shouldn’t.
Surely during training, in the canteen, on the bus, conversations were had about scenarios, and surely Man City winning was one of them.
Because in reality we were the ones who had the tougher match, the Seagulls excellent on an afternoon they showed all the reasons why they are so well run.
At no point did we play with the urgency of a team who understood the jeopardy at stake.
When we got to the dugout there was just as little composure.
If ever we needed leadership, it was in that last 20 mins, yet our manager seemed to take off the few leaders we had.
At 1-0 down, we needed 2 goals to stay in a race we waited two decades to participate in, and we take Jesus and Odegaard off!
With the Prem on the line, we are relying on Reiss Nelson for creativity and Eddie Nketiah for goals, two players who still years on haven’t proved they are good enough for this level.
Yet there’s readers who have the arrogance to say they wouldn’t take a Neymar!
Just like in the World Cup readers said they wouldn’t take Mbappe!
Whisper it quietly, Neymar wouldn’t take us!
Yes, those players come with ego. Guess what else they do?
They don’t freeze at home to Brighton!
At the Etihad!
At the London Stadium!
At home to Southampton!
I hope now some of my peers respect the standards Man City have set for the last 5 years.
You don’t see them outplayed on their own pitch by Brighton.
They do not just cope with playing every few days under must win conditions, they do it with a smile on their face.
Brighton gave us every incentive; Man City still have to face them at the Amex.
Now that game will count for nothing as our season fades out.
There’s no disgrace to finish 2nd to this City team.
To be a big club though you think and act like a big club – and big clubs can’t find losing like that acceptable.
Dan
Video – Mikel Arteta explains what went wrong against Brighton “Individually we were below par”
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