Match Report – Player Ratings – Arteta Reaction
If the points lost in the Premier League against Southampton on Sunday were mainly due to not taking advantage of the good opportunities we had to win the game, the defeat against PSV last night was something else entirely.
Sometimes you can just look at a team and think there is something ‘off’, something not quite right. On a difficult field, on which the Arsenal players constantly slipped in the early period of the game, something else was also missing. What has made this team so effective this season is a kind of precision that you don’t really take into account until it’s gone, and it was nowhere to be found last night.
Horrible first touches, misplaced passes, bad calls. It doesn’t take much drop to be ineffective, and that’s what we saw last night. It was also a different PSV to be fair. I was expecting more from them last week but at home they had the crowd and the energy behind them and when that was added to our lack of performance it was always going to be tough.
There were some brilliant moments in the first half, Fabio Vieira showing good range on his passes, but coming in 0-0 when opponents have two goals disallowed tells you something about which team was the biggest threat. They were both out on the sidelines, so it’s not like we were lucky per se, however the half-time break felt welcome as an opportunity for the manager to try and figure out what was going on.
The second part was worse. Terrible defense throughout the match led to PSV’s first goal. After a dangerous moment from Cody Gakpo led to an Arsenal shot into our own half, amateur Rob Holding got caught on the wrong side of his man, Albert Sambi Lokonga’s follow-up on Veerman was lukewarm at best. cases, slowing down as the midfielder fired his side forward. .
Arteta immediately made changes, replacing Bukayo Saka and Thomas Partey with Martin Odegaard and Lokonga, but PSV were up. Partey denied a pass to Cody Gakpo who was alone on the edge of our box, and from the resulting corner Aaron Ramsdale came out for a punch, missing the ball completely and Luke de Jong headed into an empty net. His first European appearance will not be one he remembers too fondly.
Immediately there was another substitution, Gabriel Jesús for Rob Holding, and PSV put the ball back in the net, but the third goal was disallowed for offside. Arsenal were patchy, and while I understand a manager’s desire to react to what was going on in a game, perhaps we needed a few minutes to regroup before switching to a back three. It felt a bit desperate and despite a couple of half chances in the last 20 minutes it didn’t work out either. Gabriel and Ben White came on for Tierney and Tomiyasu, we picked up a handful of yellow cards, one of which will see Granit Xhaka suspended for the FC Zurich game next week, and in the end there was no question that the best team in the night he came out with the victory he deserved.
Later, Arteta said:
It is the end of a long road. Today is the first loss after a long period. It is time to reset, to analyze what happened. Congratulations to PSV, they were the best team and deserved to win the match. No doubt about that. We weren’t anywhere near our level today, especially the way we raced.
And about what specifically went wrong:
I didn’t feel like we had the threat and aggression that we’ve been playing at. That was worrying. In the second half, the moment something went wrong, we just fell off and didn’t really find moments that gave us any hope of reacting and getting something out of the game.
I think the point about a reboot is interesting. As others have pointed out, this loss came after some performances that suggested he was in the post a bit. Some of the effervescence has gone from our game, we had a bit of luck against Leeds for example, and as I said before, it doesn’t take much to make you vulnerable to opposition.
I think it’s fair to shrug off that terrible performance by Arsenal in isolation.
However, this performance is part of a creeping malaise that began four games ago.
I hope we can shake it off on Sunday.
— Andrew Allen (@AAllenSport) October 27, 2022
Let’s be honest, it would have been quite a task to maintain our best level for 100% of the season. There was always going to be a crash at some point, and that’s it, in such a hectic month where we’ve worked very, very hard to achieve great results, it should come as a big surprise to anyone. But when it falls, you have to find a way to raise it again, and that is the coach’s challenge for next week.
We have Forest on Sunday at home which, after some rough riding in recent weeks, feels like the kind of thing we need. After that, the manager can think about what he does against FC Zurich next Thursday before a trip to Chelsea next weekend. PSV’s victory last night allows them to top the group if the results are favourable, but it’s in our hands and that’s positive.
Still, that’s about the only positive from last night. Rightly so, this team has received a lot of praise this season for performances that have been stellar, so when standards drop to the degree they did last night, there’s nothing unreasonable in some criticism. The key now is how quickly and how well we react, and I guess we’ll find out on Sunday.
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Finally for today, I have to mention Pablo Mari who was involved in a horrible incident yesterday. The Spanish defender was stabbed and hospitalized by a man who also attacked other people in a supermarket near Milan, one of whom sadly died. Luckily he’s fine, but being caught up in something so traumatic, with his wife and son by his side, is going to be very difficult to process.
Wishing him the best in his recovery from the physical injury he received, and any mental scars something like this leaves behind. I can’t even imagine. good luck paul
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Right, we’ll have a podcast for you a little later this morning. Until then.
