match report – player ratings – arteta reaction
After yesterday’s game, I was in the kitchen preparing some food for later.
‘What’s wrong?’ I thought to myself. There was a discomfort about me.
I know what it is, the other part of my brain thought. “It’s that feeling you get when Arsenal lose an important football game.”
‘That’s right,’ I replied to myself in my own head. And I don’t care at all.
Yesterday was, in simple terms, a bad day at the office. I mentioned in the preview that the ingredients were there for a stunning result. New manager’s rebound + early kickoff + our record at Goodison Park + the fact that Everton hadn’t won a game in a long time, meaning the law of averages was on their side too. But we’ve been so good this season that I was confident that we could top that.
The team was more or less what I expected, and Everton was exactly what I expected. Well prepared, well organized because whatever they say about Sean Dyche, he’s not Frank Lampard, and they made life difficult for us. They’re not the first team to do that though, and most of the time we’ve been able to cope. We also made life difficult for ourselves.
The rhythm and precision of our step were not there. The moment we got the ball to our wide players, Everton doubled down on them in an instant, and that seemed to be the pattern. We tried, it didn’t work, we tried again and so on, waiting for a spark of inspiration from Saka or Martinelli who were well managed by the Everton defenders.
We had a couple of chances in the first half. Eddie Nketiah did well to make room for a shot, but the attempt on goal itself was really poor, shooting high and wide at the near post rather than across the keeper. Saka had a very well controlled volley that cleared the line, but by then we were a bit lucky that it was still 0-0. Amadou Onana, with a brilliant flurry down the left, launched a dangerous low cross that Dominic Calvert-Lewin came within millimeters of nailing at point-blank range, and soon after Abdoulaye Doucoure had a free header that missed. Right at the break, Calvert-Lewin headed wide.
If we had gone behind, we could not have had any complaints. With the 0-0 you are thinking that it is an opportunity for the coach to resolve it, regroup and play again. However, Ramsdale had to make a brilliant save straight away despite the offside flag being raised. The game was fairly even to be fair, and there was a sliding door moment in the game when Eddie did very well to create a chance for Martin Odegaard, but the captain shot himself when he should have hit his mark.
Arteta made a couple of changes at the time, bringing in Jorginho for Partey, who hadn’t seen himself, so I guess there was some caution regarding his injury in that decision. Leandro Trossard came on for Martinelli and Everton took a corner. James Tarkowski was too strong for Odegaard, and his header back at the goalkeeper put Everton 1-0 up.
I would like to see more replays of the incident when Gabriel (I think) was hit in the box but VAR said there was no penalty. After that, the game became quite rudimentary, which was just what Everton wanted. You could see it when Onana fouled White and there was a bit of aggression, that’s what they wanted us to get into. Xhaka calmed him down, a sentence I haven’t written many times on this blog.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t one of those games where we came out on top completely and put up enough pressure to wear them down. There were random shots, but nothing clear. In the end, there could have been six minutes off in the six minutes off. Mainly because of Neal Maupay, the human equivalent of a whimpering rash on your mickey, who probably should have been thrown out for what he did to Zinchenko. However, the Ukrainian should not have been involved and in the end Everton held on for their first win since [insert year here].
Subsequently, Mikel Arteta said about the performance:
We’re disappointed because we obviously didn’t get the result we wanted, but the performance doesn’t reflect what we’ve been doing. Especially in two phases: one where they were really direct and we struggled to control that kind of game and get back on track and the game we wanted to play. Then with the number of open situations that we generated in the last third that has to end with goals and clear chances much more than today.
But, after our second loss of the season and first since September, a positive note was struck for his players:
I want the team to know how much I love them. I love you so much more now than I did three hours ago, a week ago, a month ago, three months ago. It is very easy to be next to the players when they are winning and performing. This is the time when I love my players the most, the staff the most and now we stick together.
This journey will be difficult and challenging, and there will be bigger stones in the middle that we will have to overcome. And now we are going to prepare very well during the week to arrive at Saturday with the right emotional level and spirit to be perfect.
Which I think is absolutely correct. There were always going to be some bumps in the road, even unexpected ones. What will tell us a lot about this team is how it responds and how quickly it responds. It’s never fun to lose, but when it’s only the second loss of a season, you have to put it in the right context. If there are moments in a campaign that wake you up a bit, a reminder that you can’t take anything for granted, you should make the most of them.
Which is not to say that I thought we were complacent, but to win games like this you have to be close to your best. Collectively we were far from that, and individually there were too many performances that were below par based on what we’ve already seen from these guys. That’s football though, that can happen and hopefully we can patch things up next weekend against Brentford, providing a confidence boost ahead of the big midweek game that comes after.
Ok, let’s leave it there for now. Enjoy your Sunday, we’ll have an Arsecast Extra for you tomorrow as usual.
Until then.
