‘The response continues at Sunderland’ screamed the headline on the official site as they plugged an interview with Arsene Wenger.
Well, oooops is all I have to say. If that’s what passes for a response these days then it’s very worrying indeed. Only a late, late goal from Cesc saved us from slumping to our third defeat of the season and this stage of the campaign that would have been really a real kick in the bollocks.
As expected Alex Song came in to midfield and we played the same kind of formation as we used to in away Champions League games. Oddly though, Song and Denilson were the two holding midfielders, Robin van Persie was played out on the left and Cesc was given a floating role behind the lone striker, Adebayor.
This didn’t work for a number of reasons. Firstly van Persie drifts infield too much. As a natural striker being out wide left doesn’t suit him and I think it’s madness to play him out there. Secondly, when you play this system your midfield is hugely important and when you take the best midfielder and play him where he’s not going to get enough of the ball to influence the game you put yourself at a huge disadvantage.
In seasons past we’ve played this way with a midfield trio of Cesc – Flamini – Gilberto – with Hleb behind the striker. Now, to me there is a huge gulf in quality there. Hleb’s natural position was that number 10 behind the striker and whatever you want to say about his lack of end product he was technically a very good footballer who had Cesc and Flamini/Gilberto pulling the strings behind him. When you ask Denilson and Alex Song to do that same work it just doesn’t happen. They don’t have the ability to dictate the game and feed the more creative players.
Then you have Cesc, the only midfielder at the club who can do that, in an unfamiliar role which doesn’t suit him or the team. The manager was expecting Sunderland to be more attacking and bemoaned their defensive approach to the game. The question I’d be asking is if it was so obvious they were going to get men behind the ball why did we persist with a defensive formation ourselves? Make no mistake, that was Wenger at his most conservative – he knew we could not lose there so our approach was to first make sure we didn’t lose. We didn’t go there to win the game.
With the greatest respect to Sunderland, who worked very hard, if we had had the belief to go for the win I think we would have taken three points yesterday. Bring Song in by all means if you want to add a more defensive player to the midfield but leave Denilson on the bench. Play Nasri and Walcott who would have caused Sunderland more problems. Nasri in particular has great movement which would have been crucial against a tight defence. For all the talk of his faith in the squad and young players it seems to be like yesterday he didn’t trust his players enough to go for a win.
That said we did have a goal disallowed when Theo’s cut back was put in by Robin van Persie but the linesman, wrongly, said the ball had crossed the line. I don’t necessarily agree with the manager when he said that everything has gone against us in the last two league games (Adebayor’s legitimate goal against Hull being marked off as well) but to be on the receiving end of two poor decisions like that isn’t much fun.
Nevertheless these happens in football, sort of like United’s goal against Blackburn being allowed stand despite an obvious foul on the keeper, and you have to cope with them. We’ve had goals disallowed before but made those decisions irrelevant by scoring more. Bendtner came on for a very unhappy Walcott, Nasri came on for Denilson but despite bossing the second half I don’t remember Craig Gordon having to work too hard. A couple of tame shots and one good save from van Persie after nice interplay between Adebayor and Bendtner. That was about it.
And there was an air of inevitability about their goal. A really fantastic strike from Grant Leadbitter but Alex Song was caught in possession just outside our box. Schoolboy stuff really. You can’t legislate for a wonder goal like that but you can make sure you don’t get caught with the ball in dangerous areas. Wenger threw on Vela for Song and it looked like another defeat against a team that, as so-called title contenders, you would expect us to beat.
There was late drama though. We won a corner on our right, van Persie whipped it in and Cesc Fabregas came bombing in to bury a header in the top corner. A most unCesclike goal but one that may prove to be hugely important. It also says a lot about the young man, he had the desire and spirit to get us something from that game. He is our leader on the pitch. He didn’t have a good game by his standards but his quality shone through at the end.
Afterwards the manager talked about us being ‘a bit flat’ and lacking sharpeness but I think that only serves to fudge the issue. In my opinion we didn’t win because we do not have the players to play that 4-5-1 formation, we weren’t brave enough to play our normal game against Sunderland and our midfield lacks quality.
Apart from Cesc we just don’t have players good enough in the middle. Song and Denilson are promising young players but not ready just yet. We lack experience and that little bit of cleverness that a more senior player brings. We’ve seen Cesc struggle this season and some of it is surely down to his late start after Euro 2008 but as the games go on we might find that it’s the lack of a suitable partner that’s having the most impact. I think we miss Flamini in a big way and you’re quite entitled to think what you want about Flamini as a person but I’m talking about Flamini the player.
I think the manager really has to look very hard at the decisions he made this summer and while it’s great to bring young players through it’s not always the best way. Is throwing Denilson and Song in when they’re clearly not ready the best thing for them or for the team? They struggle, the team struggles and it’s a downward spiral from there.
Now, I know there’s nothing we can do about this issue until January at least and I’m not really complaining. I just think that this issue exists and it’d be wrong to bury our heads in the sand and ignore it. Of course I hope we get our shit together and improve as a team over the coming weeks but I really think that come January the manager needs to spend some money because otherwise I think we’re going to have these kinds of struggles all season.
Fulham, Hull and nearly Sunderland. For a team that wants to win the title that is massively disappointing and very worrying when you consider we have still to play the other top three clubs, plus the likes of Villa and Man City who look to be improving this season. It looks like these big games will be crucial if we want to stay in the race. We’ve made life difficult for ourselves and we’re going to have to beat Chelsea and Liverpool and United if we want to the title.
There’s an international break now and the manager won’t see the players for a couple of weeks or so. Perhaps it will give him time to think about what we’re lacking in terms of quality in various positions and in terms of leadership which was non-existent again yesterday. The one man who showed it is not captain because, according to Arsene, ‘because he is a bit young and because we have a captain’. Hmmm.
The one positive I can take at the moment is that if there’s a good time in the season to lose a couple of games and go through a bad spell it’s now. You have time to recover, to claw back the points and league positions, whereas we all saw what losing at the business end of the season does to you. Bottom line though is that we can’t afford to keep dropping points at this rate, otherwise the season will be over much, much sooner than we would like.
Have a good Sunday.
