match report – player ratings – arteta reaction
Walking out of the stadium yesterday and chatting with people on the way to the pub (where the real post-game analysis takes place), there was palpable frustration with the result, our performance and more. He was also present on the field during the 90 minutes, a somewhat conflictive end of the game saw high tensions on the field and between the benches.
Arsenal dropped points again, that’s reason enough, but we had to deal with a lot of wasted time and play from Brentford, and we conceded a careless goal from a set piece that I certainly didn’t think was a free kick. The battle between William Saliba and Ivan Toney was one in which the Brentford man prevailed. It will be a learning experience for the young Frenchman who struggled to win aerial duels, but in this case, Toney had his arms around Saliba’s back as much as the other way around. It could easily have happened differently.
Still, we should have defended him better, Aaron Ramsdale had to receive the ball if he made that move, and Toney headed in from close range. Annoying given how hard we had worked to shape the opening that had put us ahead just minutes before. Then, on the pitch, we saw that there was a VAR review, but we couldn’t see any of the work, so we just sat there. It seemed to take years and years, and then the goal was given.
The thing about offside and VAR is that it’s pretty black and white. Either it is or it isn’t. Sometimes it’s a little ridiculous when you talk about missing half an arm or something, but it is what it is.
Except, as it turns out, when it isn’t. In my Twitter mentions, people sent me an image that appeared to show a Brentford player offside and subsequently it surfaced that Lee Mason on VAR was allegedly unable to draw the lines that would have shown it. The same Lee Mason who was in the VAR when Gabriel Martinelli’s goal was disallowed at Old Trafford for a ‘foul’ in the preview.
Obviously everything will come in detail on Monday, but these two are the worst VAR decisions:
Brentford goalBrighton goal
We’ll never know if they were actually in/out of play because the lines weren’t drawn (correctly).
At least Soucek’s hand was subjective…
— Dale Johnson (@DaleJohnsonESPN) February 12, 2023
If that’s the case, if the man who has a job to do when it comes to calling offside just didn’t do it, he should be fired. That’s just not acceptable at this level of the game. At best he’s incompetent, at worst something far more sinister.
Subsequently, a clearly exercised Mikel Arteta said:
Yeah, I just looked back and it’s offside, yeah. It’s frustrating, but they’ll probably give an explanation later in the week, but we don’t have one today, looking at the pictures, you have to apply certain principles on defense and you do it by the rules and suddenly you apply different ones. rules you have to change your principles. Tell us beforehand because that way you don’t hide the line so high because you have an advantage that they block you.
And look, maybe Brentford could have scored a goal in another way, but losing points at home due to a refereeing error is really hard to take. It had been extremely hard work moving on in the first place. There’s a good reason their recent run has been so good: they’re a big, strong, well-organized team that made life really difficult for us. Not to mention, they themselves had some good opportunities. The overall stats might make you think this was pretty one-sided, and it was in terms of possession, but they hit the bar, shot one wide, and caused us problems.
The manager’s decision to keep faith with his ‘first’ team was understandable to a degree, but we didn’t really click in the first half. The pass was not sharp enough, the movement was not sharp enough. I think we were better in the second half, and the one time we broke behind their defensive line, we scored the goal. Bukayo Saka did brilliantly, and substitute Leandro Trossard was there at the far post to score his first Arsenal goal. He could have played himself in the squad for the Man City game with that, because again Gabriel Martinelli was not at his best.
I thought Arteta bringing in Fabio Vieira for Granit Xhaka was interesting as we tried to add a bit more skill to find a winner. It didn’t quite work that way, but it was more likely to help us than anything else available to us. In those final minutes, the Brentford players went down a lot ‘injured’, it took them over 60 seconds to take a corner at one point, David Raya took the age over every goal kick and kick from his hands (where is the 6 second rule gone?), and that’s completely understandable.
We all understand that, and have done it ourselves at times, but I honestly thought that with all the shenanigans, plus the long VAR stoppage, we would have significant stoppage time, not a meager five minutes. It was not a good day for the referees, and I realize that part of my desire for more was out of desperation, but if this had been a World Cup game we would have had ten. No doubt.
The last free kick summed us up. ‘Whatever you do, don’t hit the first one,’ I thought. Vieira didn’t do that, but handing it straight to the goalkeeper denied us the moment Danny Welbeck v Leicester was waiting for. From where he was sitting, I could see angry exchanges between Arsenal and Brentford staff members at the final whistle. At one point Gabriel Jesus was in the middle, but he quickly calmed down.
Brentford came to thwart us, they did, but ultimately it’s up to us to deal with it. This is literally a consequence of being at the top of the table and the way we’ve shown to get there. If the opposition feels that you are vulnerable, they will come out and play; if you sit in a deep block, it is an admission that you understand your own vulnerability to some degree.
Arteta was then asked about this, because Newcastle and Everton did more or less the same thing, and he said:
Yes, but it was the same with Brentford, Fulham, Southampton and with many teams we’ve beaten here, it’s nothing new for us. We know that each team has its way of playing. That’s what they’re trying to do.
However, this feels like a bit of a hiccup in the form to us. To be fair, we’ve had smaller issues than this in the past, but now we have a big game on Wednesday and we’re going to have to be close to our best to do what we need to do. The sooner Jesus and Emile Smith Rowe return, the better. We just lack the ability to change things up in the final third as much as necessary on days like this, so fingers crossed for that.
Although this was frustrating, and it really was, I wonder if in the context of this season and what Brentford have done to other teams, four points from six could turn into a decent return overall. It’s never easy to take a step back and think that way immediately afterwards, but they are a very good team and you have to do your best to beat them. We definitely weren’t yesterday, and there’s work to be done before Wednesday.
Well, that’s all for this morning. I’m going back to Dublin this afternoon, we’ll have an Arsecast Extra for you tomorrow.
Have a good Sunday, people.
