Kevin Whitcher
Ed’s note – Due to a work commitment, I was unable to watch the Manchester United v Arsenal match yesterday afternoon. My thanks for regular Gooner contributor Charlie Ashmore for agreeing to cover for me. Here’s his take on the 3-2 defeat…
With Leicester winning on Saturday and Tottenham expected to win at home while we played at Old Trafford, the game against United was crucial, especially with a trip to White Hart Lane next week to come. Was it a must win game? Coming on the back of a disappointing run of results, it certainly felt like one if we were to maintain a credible belief in our ability to win the League.
And let’s be honest this felt like a United team that was there for the taking (a bit like the League itself this season). Which is why I have no doubt that everybody reading this will be sharing the same sense of bewildered disappointment, frustration and (no doubt in many cases) anger after witnessing yesterday’s “efforts”, a term I use in the loosest sense you understand.
That we deserved nothing from the game is indisputable and that is saying something considering how poor United looked. What they appeared to have, unforgivably, is more commitment. The number of times they forced us back from the halfway line to the goalkeeper was incredible and I am sure the stats will show that our centre halves had as many touches as anybody else on the pitch if not more. We were simply unable to generate anything like the same momentum as we did when we played them at the Emirates.
Indeed we look like a very pale imitation of the team that won that game so splendidly and yet if you look at the respective line-ups, there were only two differences – Gabriel for Mertesacker (which was a wholly expected and sensible move given that Per is increasingly being caught out both with his inability to defend from a high line due to his lack of pace and perhaps more worryingly his deteriorating touch in the penalty area) and Welbeck for Cazorla.
This for me is the crux of our season. We have simply never recovered from Cazorla’s injury and although confidence took us through the initial period of his absence it feels like the performances have been on a downward spiral since then. I keep reading stats telling me how effective Ramsey continues to be but I prefer the evidence of my own eyes to what statisticians tell me and it looks to me like Ramsey is wholly ineffectual in that central midfield role even though it is his preferred position. I thought it was playing with Flamini that was the problem but it’s not. He simply does not have the craft to play the role we need him to play in that position vacated by Cazorla. Where he should score well over Cazorla is his energy and runs into the box but his energy seems to have disappeared. He looks leggy as hell and he doesn’t begin to look like scoring at the moment. He is a shadow of the player we know he can be.
For all my frustrations at our dysfunctional midfield, our problems in recent games have been our inability to score. Given his scoreless run, it probably was time to rest Giroud, but I cannot have been alone in being dismayed to see Walcott given the nod up front. I keep hearing the expression that the jury is still out on Walcott. I don’t get that. Ten years on if the jury hasn’t delivered a resounding thumbs up, it is never going to. In fairness there was a period earlier this season when things seemed to have clicked for him but I am afraid that period appears to have been the exception that proved the rule.
His positional sense is non-existent and it is infuriating to watch him repeatedly stand there calling for the ball while placing himself in a position where even Bergkamp would struggle to place a pass. To the extent that when he runs around, he does so to no effect whatsoever and I would pick Sanchez or Welbeck ahead of him up front and would certainly pick either of them or Campbell ahead of him on the flanks.
Mind you, Sanchez is also a worry – he works as hard as anyone I have seen but he is simply out of sorts and his end product is just not there at the moment. But he is at least always trying to make things happen and his efforts put Theo to shame.
Ozil was harangued from around me today and his languid style remains an easy target when the team’s commitment is questioned. But he is in the team to create. I am told he set up six chances yesterday (only one of which was taken) and he of course scored. I find it difficult to criticise the one person in the team who is manifestly doing what he is in the team to do.
Much of the anger after a performance like today is directed at the manager. As a defender of his over the years, I find myself incredibly frustrated that as we enter the crucial phase of a season in which we are as well placed to win the League as we have been since 2004, we find ourselves experiencing that Groundhog Day feeling of watching a team failing to fulfil its potential. Yes the players have to take responsibility for their attitude and performance on the pitch but so too does the manager. These are his players, his team and his responsibility.
All is not lost though it is getting dangerously close to being so. In my humble opinion we can afford to drop no more than three points hereon in (and even that would require Leicester to lose three games when they have lost that many only all season so far and Spurs to lose to us and drop four more points elsewhere). A week ago I would have taken a draw at White Hart Lane next week. That is no longer good enough. Only three points will do. Fail there and the game will be up for another season and Wenger will be a defeat at Hull away from being asked by many to fall on his sword, and even another Cup win might not save him from the anger of those who feel that this should have been our season and that he must pay the price for his team’s failure to seize the moment.
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