Are Arsenal slowly losing their grip on the title race?
Yesterday Arsenal were pushed back in their early pursuit of the Premier League title.
After being vulnerable at the back and showing a display of lacklustre defending, Mikel Arteta’s Gunners were held to a 2-2 draw with Liverpool above them in second in the League.
However the game started brightly for the North Londoner’s, within the opening ten minutes Bukayo Saka gifted Arsenal the opener. Ben White sent a cracking ball down the right wing for his fellow Englishman (the relied upon goalscorer and assister at times), before he belted the ball into the top left corner of Kelleher’s net from an acute angle inside the area.
Within ten minutes Liverpool had found a way back into the game, Virgil Van Dijk flicked in a Luiz Diaz corner with his head beating the lost hands of David Raya.
Before halftime, the Gunners reinstated their hold on the game which would not last the remainder of the duel! Declan Rice delivered a fireball of a free-kick into the box before Mikel Merino scored his first goal in Arsenal colours sending a dominant header into the far side of the visitor’s goal, 2-1 it was with 60,383 fans reverberating around the stadium. Most with joy, some with sorrow!
Inside the 81st minute a frustrated Liverpool got the last laugh with a final say in one of the most anticipated games of the season. Mohamed Salah, the “Egyptian God” as called by those on the red side of Merseyside, beat Raya to his nearest post from the centre of the box.
A disheartened Arteta said to BBC Sport after the match:” Very disappointing not to win it because if you look at the big chances we generated and decisions and what we did in the game I think we should have won the game.”
Arsenals now find themselves third on 18 points, five adrift of Manchester City top of the Premier League table on 23 points.
The Gunners were already four points off Liverpool who were at the time in charge of the league last week after eight match days, they might be only one more point off City who have taken over from The Reds, but let’s not forget we lost the league last season by only two points. That was the difference between us having the chance to lift our first title in 20 years and not in which we fell to the latter late on.
If we hadn’t have drawn yesterday, lost to Bournemouth disgracefully last week by 2-0 at The Vitality Stadium and beaten Manchester City away without conceding another late equaliser (2-2) we could’ve been in first place with an already two point gap over The Citizens, but that’s not the case.
Things don’t look much more promising for Arsenal on the field either going forward following injuries from two of our crucial defenders.
Gabriel as well as Jurrien Timber came off the pitch in the second half making our defensive woes increasingly worse.
Towards the start of the second half Gabriel was made to come off with what looked like a knee injury, later on in the game Timber left the field after 70 minutes going down for the second and most concerning time with seemingly cramp.
On top of this our captain Martin Odegaard is still out of action since the first International break in September and is due to return not until December as currently speculated.
When quizzed about his two defenders being subbed off in the second half Arteta reflected:” I don’t know what the injury is but he can’t run. I don’t know if it was his knee or his ankle. He is being assessed right now.” (This was in relation to Gabriel).
Arteta was then asked about Timber, declaring: ”He was so willing. The team and the medical staff have done a great job. We have ourselves the chance to compete.
“I don’t know the extent of the injury if there is one. The same with big Gabi.”
Regardless of whether Timber has as severe of an injury as “big Gabi” it’s definitely not something that Arteta would like to have on his plate, knowing that it won’t be easy at Newcastle on Saturday who have only lost at home twice all year!
Liam Harding
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Arsenal never had a grip on the title in the first place.
Surely there is a wobble, but nothing the gaffer can’t address.
In a game that had an arguably justified results, there were a number of positive and negative for Arsenal to take from it.
Both Timber and Saka marked their return good performance, with the young Englishman standing out in particular, the Dutchman comeback was cut short as he was withdrawn in the second half after picking up a knack
But Arsenal biggest threat is turn against then , only Wolves and the Saints have concealed more goals from set peices than Arsenal, now this does not make for good reading, this has become somewhat of a weakness, something that opposition teams will look to target in future games.
But I seem to recall that you didn’t think there would be a “wobble” though. Wasn’t it Liverpool who “wobbled” after their Forest defeat (although it appears they didn’t really)? Things happen.
Well, it’s clear to me – from at least some of the JA articles and generally more of the posts now – that we’ve moved on somewhat from the tone of “the great defence will do it”, “world class players”, “Invincibles MkII” etc of only a relatively few weeks ago.
I think we have the fourth (equal) best defence in the EPL currently. We certainly have very good players in some positions, but whether any are truly “world class” … who knows for sure. As for an “Invincibles” repeat, as we know that hope went out of the window for Arsenal at least before ten EPL games were played.
Now, that’s football – injuries, suspensions, a moment of madness, the “unexpected” defeat – all of which didn’t seem to figure greatly before in some people’s thinking but were always at least possibilities or rather probabilities.
Does it mean Arsenal aren’t in contention for the title? No, I think they’re in with a chance and May is still a long way off yet. It does mean that it’s not going to be a question of almost only needing to turn up to be crowned champions anymore (based on what they’ve done in the past two seasons).
It’s going to be a war of attrition with, very probably, at least two other clubs. I’m not sure that’s really to Arsenal’s advantage compared to the previous “two-horse races”, but that’s the likely scenario. It will require Arteta to earn all of his huge, new, salary and all the players in the squad – not just the “best XI” – to earn theirs as well. It will also require a bit of luck here and there as always.
It is a war of attrition for everyone, but somehow we have been hurt the most. It is just 9 games into the season, nobody can rule us out. But what really worries me is our intensive schedule coming up with our massive injuries. It is just the beginning of the season, our medical team and physical team may really need to think about what they can do to help.
I really sense the need of variations for our play. Yes, I am alluding to the addition of a hold-up central forward. There were multiple, if not many, cases where a player who could hold the ball would really helped us yesterday against Liverpool. Our wingers were tired or ineffective (I honestly appreciate Martinelli’s never ending trying, but he needed some more out of the box thinking and really some help), someone to keep the ball for us at the front can be a good variation to surprise our opponent’s exhausted central defenders. Our style has been consistently predicable.
Won’t win title under this ownership
We have less than 7 months, so anything can happen. I know its unlikely but a big signing in January would really help our cause. But we do have the squad capable of winning it all.
We need to start getting lucky on the injury front. We just need to have our players uninjured or with minor injuries at worst.
At the moment we have lost our grip on the title.
Timber wasn’t injured, he was knackered and suffering from cramp. He had done minimal training was rushed back but did a great job at left back as was seen when he was sorely missed after he went off. By the way, how many reviews of the game do we need?