Tiredness Is No Excuse For Arsenal's Capitulation

Match Review: Southampton 4 Arsenal 0 - Premier League 26.12.15

I’ll keep this short and sweet because I’m sure we’d all rather try and enjoy the holidays rather than dwelling on the abomination that occurred on Boxing Day. The only thing you can trust Arsenal to do at the moment is let you down and all the positivity and optimism brought about by the City result has been immediately soured by this horror show.

Wenger named an unchanged side from the team that beat City five days previously, but tiredness is absolutely no excuse. It’s a longer break than you get before a Champions League game and these players should be used to it. The annoying thing is that we were playing pretty well before their wonder goal, but once Martina’s strike whistled into the bottom corner, the players looked disheartened and almost disinterested. We can moan about the marginal offside in the build up and the lack of closing down all we want, but sometimes a player just thumps in an absolute screamer and you have to accept it and move on. It’s part of football, we got ours on Monday with Walcott’s exceptional strike. For the players to lose their heads after that was so disappointing and makes me wonder if they can stomach a title fight.

Obviously the second goal was a travesty from the ref and the one thing I can say in defence of the players is that they were effectively playing against twelve for a lot of the game. A marginal offside call I can let go no problem, a blatant and deliberate trip that is the difference between 1-0 and 2-0? Jon Moss should be refereeing in the Conference next week. Unfortunately we can also rightly say that if we hadn’t been defending like a bunch of amateurs, particularly Koscielny, then it’s likely the goal would have never come about.

The most disappointing thing for me was not that we conceded the third and fourth goals, although I would happily fine every one of them for conceding four to this Southampton team, it’s that we didn’t even slightly look threatening once they went ahead. Their Goalkeeper had nothing to do for almost the entire ninety minutes. The team looked slow, the passing was sloppy and all in all we capitulated meekly and without a fight. For a team that’s supposed to be fighting for the title it’s simply not acceptable. You have to question whether the will and the determination is there from the players. Last night when the chips were down, the Arsenal side that so impressed against City disappeared and was replaced by a load of bottle jobs.

I’d be more willing to pull my punches if this didn’t happen ten or more times per season, but it does, it’s a regular occurrence with Arsenal and as much as the players have seriously let him down, Arsene Wenger has to take some blame for this. We have a consistent problem with being motivated for these types of games, there is an arrogance and complacency about the team in these fixtures and none of the drive and fight that gives us results like we achieved against City. We can’t afford this any longer and Wenger really needs to find a solution if we want to be genuine contenders. The short turn around has one benefit; we have an immediate chance for redemption against Bournemouth and Wenger should be giving the players a serious talking to. Thousands of Arsenal fans gave up Boxing Day and travelled a long way to support the players and the players let them down big time. They owe a response on Monday and nothing other than three points and a convincing three points will do.

Teams

Southampton (4-5-1)
Stekelenburg, Martina, Fonte, van Dijk, Bertrand, Wanyama, Clasie (Romeu 67’), Ward-Prowse (Tadic 71’), Mané (Juanmi 81’), Davis, Long (Y)
Subs
Yoshida, Tadic, Romeu, Juanmi, Ramirez, Caulker, Gazzaniga

Arsenal (4-2-3-1)
Cech, Bellerín, Mertesacker, Koscielny, Monreal, Ramsey, Flamini (Chambers 73’), Campbell (Chamberlain 64’), Özil, Walcott (Iwobi 78’), Giroud
Subs
Ospina, Gibbs, Gabriel, Chamberlain, Chambers, Iwobi, Reine-Adelaide

Player Ratings

Cech - 6/10 - Can’t blame him for anything
Bellerin 2/10 - Terrible
Mertesacker - 2/10 - Terrible
Koscielny - 1/10 - Worse
Monreal - 2/10 - Terrible
Flamini - 2/10 - Terrible
Ramsey - 2/10 - Terrible
Walcott - 2/10 - Terrible
Özil - 2/10 - Terrible
Campbell - 2/10 - Terrible
Giroud - 2/10 - Terrible
Subs
Chamberlain - 2/10 - Terrible
Chambers - 2/10 - Terrible
Iwobi - N/A

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