He’s the manager, so it’s all his fault, right? Well, for some this appears to be the case with Arsenal suffering their first league defeat since November 2 when Newcastle United won by the same scoreline as West Ham managed last weekend.
The result has all but ended hopes of the title with Liverpool beating Manchester City to open the gap to 11 points despite Arsenal having a game in hand against Chelsea. Naturally, there has been a growing apathy since the closure of the January transfer window and it has only worsened with further injuries and then additional poor results.
The Champions League draw has thrown up a daunting scenario of, if the Gunners get past a tricky PSV side who have plenty of attacking flair, they face a guaranteed trip to Madrid where Carlo Ancelotti and Kylian Mbappe will most likely be waiting for them. The season is in danger of either petering out or worse, falling away to a point where Champions League qualification for next season becomes a concern.
Arteta is at the forefront of things and is under a considerable amount of fire. He came out after the loss to West Ham and took responsibility for his side’s performance on the day.
“Very disappointed, obviously very angry as well,” he said. “I think we have to congratulate West Ham for the victory and the game that they played but I think a lot on our side we never got right.
“It didn’t allow us to get enough momentum, enough sequence of play with positive action that could deliver into situations of threat for there and even though all the ball we had, then 20 shots, I never felt that we were at the standards or the levels we needed to have more threat and then don’t allow them to run. We lost a lot of balls and we allowed West Ham to run into very dangerous positions.”
Strong words but none that will temper the frustrations of supporters who could see this eventuality emerging before it ever did. To end the January window without having signed a striker despite the injuries to both Bukayo Saka and Gabriel Jesus was a colossal failure.
It reflected badly on the club’s ability to support Arteta and also their intuition in the window to find solutions when it looks bleak. Made worse by the fact that there were players who did move on loan who have since scored for their new clubs: Randal Kolo Muani at Juventus, Marco Asensio at Aston Villa and Alvaro Morata at Galatasaray.
To be fair to Arteta, he and some members of his playing staff were incredibly vocal about the shortness of the side and the desire to see reinforcement. That never came, and then both Kai Havertz and Gabriel Martinelli suffered hamstring injuries – the former seeing him miss the rest of the season.
That has been the story of the season for Arsenal, injuries. The latest scrutiny is that Arteta has “run his players into the ground” which might be easy to say but to justify not playing his best stars as much as possible when chasing a title having not been delivered attacking options he has clearly wanted is much trickier.
Had you been told that Arsenal would lose Saka for five to six months, Havertz for half the season, Ben White for four months, Martin Odegaard for two months, Gabriel Martinelli for two months, new signings Mikel Merino and Riccardo Calafiori missing two months across multiple issues, Gabriel Jesus for half the season, Takehiro Tomiyasu would play less than ten minutes in one game before re-injuring again and then needing surgery which will see half of the next season missed too… then told they would still be second, nine points above Manchester City, and into the last-16 of the Champions League having finished third in the league phase behind only Liverpool and Barcelona then that might, or rather should, be held in some appreciation. Yet the standard line from the loudest voices remains, ‘But what does that win you?’
I get it, the clamour for trophies is and should be loud. You want your team to succeed and lift silverware but the reality is that it is no easy feat, and when so much goes against you, whinging that a strikerless, Sakaless, Martinelliless Arsenal are struggling to find the net is a bit… well, much.
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