Were Arsenal guilty of playing it safe on Thursday night?
The Gunners have started their new UCL campaign with an underwhelming draw versus Atalanta, in a game where both sides basically cancelled each other out, until just after the restart when a penalty was awarded to host for a foul by Thomas Partey on Ederson. A long VAR check followed the challenge, but it was clearly a foul and meant that Arsenal would likely go behind.
However the simply mesmerizing double save from David Raya from the spot kept us in the game. We didn’t use it to our advantage even though we brought on Leandro Trossard and Jorginho just after the penalty save. The game was characterized by the monotonous sideways passing we thought was dead and buried a long time ago.
We know the importance of taking the sting out of away games from the start, however when it becomes playing it safe and without taking risks then it will become counter productive. What gooners witnessed on Thursday night was the worst performance Arsenal have served up in a while. We had only 2 shots on target, yes 2, in the entirety of the game, with only a first half freekick from Bukayo Saka representing our best chance of the game. You could argue for Martinelli’s chance late in the game being better but he was always off balance anyways before taking the shot.
This performance was lacking of any will to win from us, which is very disappointing considering there’ll be more difficult games coming ahead in the champions league. Fair play to our opponents on the day, they showed that they were up for it from the way they defended from the front and back. They are a proper solid team and you can clearly see why they smashed Bayer Leverkusen and Liverpool last season. With that said though, I think we had everything to get a win from the game if we only played with more risks.
I understand the difficulty that Ødegaard’s absence has caused but we should be doing a better job playing well in his absence, injuries happen – it’s fine, it’s part of the game – but what’s not acceptable is the inability for us to step up in his absence.
I really want us to go far in this competition, but to do that we need to come to grounds like this (there’ll be far more tougher ones) and put in performances worthy of a win, if not then we can just consider our champions league aspirations for this season to be in the balance.
PSG coming up next, what are thoughts on our next UCL game gooners?
KENNETH BENJAMIN.
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