There isn’t a team in Europe at the moment that can live with Bayern Munich with eleven men, so Alaba’s penalty miss on Wednesday night was only ever going to be a temporary reprieve. At eleven versus eleven, Arsenal had Bayern rattled with a coruscating start. Two of Arsenal’s most significant issues of late were tantalisingly put to the sword. First of all, our tendency to start games slowly was anything but apparent.
As I’ve said before on these pages, the Gunners’ tendency to begin cautiously is partially designed. However, Liverpool seized mercilessly on a docile start at Anfield to put the game beyond Arsenal’s reach in the opening minutes recently. On this occasion, Arsenal asserted themselves early on in the game and forced Bayern uncomfortably onto the back foot. In the bigger games this season, the team have been guilty of sterile possession and that also didn’t seem to be an issue leading up to Özil’s penalty miss.
As this article points out, Arsenal have averaged 57% possession in the defeats to Liverpool, Manchester City, Borussia Dortmund and the draws with Manchester United and Chelsea, which is comfortably above our season average. Bayern looked anything but comfortable with our possession in the opening stages, but Özil’s penalty miss felt like a key moment. Guardiola said before kick-off that it was impossible to dominate Arsenal for 90 minutes, but you simply have to punish Bayern in their extremely sporadic spells of discomfort.
There were some key turning points that went against us. Most notably the red card for Wojciech Szczesny. Not only did the sending off handicap us by a man, it also denied us a substitution, a misfortune compounded by the early injury to Kieran Gibbs. It meant that Arsenal were unable to really freshen the team up when Bayern’s dizzying possession was beginning to run Arsenal ragged in the second half.
Bayern were already targeting Arsenal’s left side quite visibly when Kieran Gibbs was on and they caught Nacho Monreal – who hadn’t even been able to warm up such was the immediacy of Gibbs’ injury – cold when Robben burst into the box for the penalty. Arsene elected to take Cazorla off because we were already having a tough time on that side but it meant the entirely unfamiliar axis of Monreal and Özil was left to man the onslaught.
Laurent Koscielny might regard his decision to commit to attack for Arsenal’s 86th minute set piece as a mistake in hindsight. I have some sympathy for him. The only time Arsenal threatened the visitors whilst down to ten men came when Koscielny exposed Munich’s inviting high line from an earlier free kick. I can see why he might have been tempted and though 0-1 wasn’t a bad result for us in the context of the game, 1-1 would have been something of a minor miracle and the only way we were realistically going to be able to achieve it would be from a set piece.
A good yardstick for judging the quality of a decision made by a manager or a player is to ask whether you complained at the time that the incident was unfolding or whether your criticism surfaced only in hindsight. Personally, I didn’t raise any private objection when Koscielny went forward so I would feel churlish to criticise him too harshly. But such is life when playing a team of Bayern’s quality. They punish the slightest error of judgement.
The four games that have just passed were billed as a stern examination of Arsenal’s credentials and having won 1, drawn 1, lost 2, scored 3 and conceded 8 (admittedly a number skewed by the Anfield aberration) it’s difficult to argue that we reinforced our credentials. However, we are still very well placed in domestic competitions and there have been some green shoots to provide optimism for the assignments ahead.
The first is that Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain has provided some evidence that he can at least partially replace the thrust missing from our attack since Ramsey and Walcott were injured. Chamberlain has a lot of the attributes that Walcott and Ramsey demonstrate. He has good pace, a bullish physique (indeed, his physique was powerful enough to send Suarez writhing into tailspin on Sunday) and the technique to underpin it. The worry has been that he doesn’t pose the same threat that Walcott or Ramsey do in the final 15 yards of the pitch.
Yet in a man of the match display against Liverpool, it was his end product that diminished Liverpool’s resolve. He was decisive in the final third with a goal and an assist in a game that Arsenal largely spent on the back foot. There was plenty of speculation that Wenger might opt for the experience of the tried and trusted Rosicky against Bayern. That Chamberlain was not only selected ahead of the Czech, but that Cazorla was sacrificed ahead of him following Szczesny’s red card, speaks volumes of his growing influence and how highly Wenger regards it.
Arsenal have only been able to control games without the ball so well this season because they have players (Ramsey and Walcott) that handle transitions so well. Chamberlain has shown a knack for this since his return and his willingness to get in behind defences also makes Özil a more dangerous player too. The Ox has shown the attributes to compliment Arsenal’s preferred ‘rope a dope’ tactic of sitting off of teams before hitting them with a sucker punch.
The second positive of the last week has been the emergence of Yaya Sanogo as a serious back up striker. Footballing lingua franca obliges me to refer to him as ‘raw’, yet he has produced two promising performances against very good opponents. The fearlessness with which he has gone toe to toe with the likes of Skrtel, Dante and Boateng suggests that nerves or reputational anxiety aren’t an issue for him. It’s probably a lesson for all of us that the training ground furnishes the manager with information that is not available to Joe Public as we decorate our assumptions of ability.
Yaya Sanogo probably isn’t going to single-handedly propel us to the domestic Double. But neither did Christopher Wreh. However, the Liberian proved to be a bit bloody handy in the 1998 run in. I’m not sure whether suggesting that Yaya Sanogo ‘could be the next Christopher Wreh’ is a compliment or not! However, at the very least, this period has suggested that we have a backup striker that we can trust to bring off of the bench and in big games too. Giroud’s alleged hotel room dalliance is an unfortunate circumstance that might just give birth to an unlikely hero. LD.
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