Painful, another draw. When’s the last time we drew 4 in a row in the league? I suspect it’s never happened before. The worst thing is that it’s happened, Villa aside, against teams we were expecting to beat. Not that I’m suggesting we have a divine right to win games but if you’re going to win the league you want to do more than draw against Boro, Birmingham and Wigan.
We might have had a goal after just 4 minutes but Adebayor was given offside. He was definitely offside when the pass from Hleb was made but it was Boateng’s studs which played it through so it’s hard to call. The ref looked across to his linesman, saw the flag up, gave it offside and that’s the end of it. The fact that the only time we troubled Schwarzer in the first half was with a deflected Eboue shot tells its own story and it’s too easy to start blaming the referee. We might have done more but for Eboue storming into the box and instead of squaring it he tried to win a penalty by falling over. It’s a measure of how poor we were that I thought Eboue was one of our best players yesterday.
Their goal, inevitably, came from Jeremie Aliadiere. He was offside from a Boro free kick but when the ball fell to Tuncay the Boro pair took advantage of William Gallas trying to claim offside with more decisiveness than he tried to defend. He ran waving his arms in air when if he’d concentrated on defending he might have been able to cut out the cross. Schoolboy defending and that’s being kind.
In the second half we made some chances. Robin van Persie, clearly rusty from his 5 year injury spell, fired a shot just wide. Cesc had a good chance to equalise but Schwarzer saved well and the Spaniard’s header hit the outside of the post later on. Theo and Bendtner came on for Sagna and RVP but still we struggled.
It wasn’t until Kolo Toure’s header from Cesc’s corner deflected in off the Boro defender that we drew level. There was a bit more pressure, some crosses but no real chances, and Boro found themselves rather unluckily down to the 10 men when Mido was sent off for a high boot which caught Gael Clichy in the face.
Afterwards Arsene Wenger said:
It’s a very disappointing result today for us because we dropped eight points in the last four games. When you’re in the race for the championship, especially when you have the opponents we have, that’s a big disappointment but we have to keep belief, spirit and focus for the next game.
I don’t think we got the result we deserved … but a draw when you chase the championship is not good enough.
I can’t really argue with the last part but I thought we got exactly what we deserved yesterday. You have to ask where was the spirit, the energy, the commitment of the Milan game? If we’d played with that kind of passion yesterday we’d have won. Now, I’ve been very careful this season not to get too personal about some players but I don’t think it’s wrong to suggest that some players aren’t quite doing it at the moment.
Hleb, so good against Milan, hasn’t really been producing in the league for some time now. He was back to the ineffectual, frustrating Hleb of last season. Lots of touches but no end product, no desire to shoot, always looking to move the responsibility elsewhere. He’s a fine footballer, technically, but he hasn’t scored a goal since Reading away and I can’t remember the last assist he made. I don’t think it’s unfair to expect more from him. Adebayor has been struggling in recent games, Eboue is not the quality of right midfielder a title winning side should be playing and with those ahead not in good form Cesc is finding it difficult to make the kind of impact he might like.
But, overall it’s a team thing. The team has drawn these games, the same way the team won us all those games previously so that’s where the focus should be. As it stands United are now top on goal difference with a game in hand, having beaten Derby with an offside goal yesterday. It makes the Old Trafford game a must-win and next Sunday we travel to Stamford Bridge where, realistically, nothing but three points will be good enough.
The title is far from over, I’m not going to get too downhearted, but we’re on the crest of a slump (as a wise man once said) and we need to start finding our form again. I know we talk about Arsenal never doing things the easy way but this is taking it a bit too far lads. I don’t think it can be put down to ‘bad luck’ as Kolo said. You make your own luck, blah blah blah, but to throw away as many points as we have in the league in the last 4 games is down to carelessness, sloppiness, poor performances and, perhaps, us underestimating our opposition. A touch of hubris. Time to put our feet back on the ground and go back to doing what we did at the start of the season. The manager has long spoken of the spirit and character of this side, we haven’t seen enough of it in recent games. Get that working again and we’ve still got a chance. If not…
Sunday round-up time now. Cesc has slammed the ban handed out to Martin Taylor after his leg-breaker on Eduardo. He says:
A very good player is injured for a year and the player who committed the tackle is suspended for three little games. It is very, very unfair.
No arguments from me on that one. But what’s the point in trying to make sense about things like this when the authorities are so unwilling to listen to common sense, be it from fans, players, managers, pundits or anyone else?
The Observer links us with Diogo, apparently the next big thing to come out of Brazil. He plays for Portuguesa and apparently we tried to get him with a £3m bid in December. They quote Portuguesa’s president who confirms that we’re interested in him and his agent says:
Diogo would love to play for Arsenal. But for now, he must wait for an offer that suits both the club and himself.
Interesting. Thoughts on transfers and such can wait though. There’s plenty of time for that. For now I think I’ll spend my Sunday away from football. Beer and food sounds good. We all need to recharge.
Till tomorrow.
