Arsenal had quite a few players missing for this FA Cup game at Nottingham Forest, but as I recorded before the game, Mikel Arteta still had a very strong team to put out, with the only real weakness being in our midfield area. In fact half of our outfield players had started in our excellent game against Man City.
But even with Saka, Odegaard and Martinelli (all supposedly worth well over 50 million each) supporting Nketiah, we didn’t even manage one shot on target against a mid-table Championship side. And don’t get me started on Nketiah’s striking skills. To be honest, there was little surprise when Forest finally made the breakthrough near the end.
We could clearly see how frustrated Arteta was getting on the sidelines, but he just couldn’t seem to persuade his team to up their game, which is something that we haven’t seen for a while.
So how do you think Arteta felt after the game? He told Arsenal.com: “I’m really disappointed with the performance, first of all – not with the attitude, but how much purpose we had and what determination we showed to change the game when it’s difficult to play against [them] and the way they play. [We needed] more drive, more hunger to win at any cost in every single action. We were not there at our level today.”
“It’s frustrating, but it’s happened – and we have to analyse why it’s happened. We can talk about all the players that we didn’t have – nine or 10 – or the players that we had. Today we should have done something different.”
“I know – because I’ve been playing games like that for the last 18 years – how complicated it is to come here and the difficulties you’re going to face is no surprise. But when we do that, we have to face it in a different way.
“It’s really hurting. It’s a competition that is related to our history and to go out of it today is a big bump.”
This is a real downer for Arsenal fans as we are so used to going a long way in this competition, and there is little excuse to be given. Even if Arteta had a full squad he still would have played a lot of the ones that were on the pitch, so the absentees shouldn’t have made much difference.
“Disappointed” is probably the understatement of the year!
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