Match report – By the numbers – Player ratings – Video

What is there to say after another game in which all our shortcomings were exposed? Another day when the lack of defenders in their right positions cost us points? Another day when we let a lead slip? Another day when the team failed to perform at a level commensurate with the talent of the players?

It was only our second league defeat of the season but after poor draws with the likes of Sp*rs, Hull and Leicester it feels a lot worse. As I mentioned on the Arsecast on Friday, the Anderlecht game was irritating but ultimately didn’t bother me the same way a similar outcome in a league game would. So thanks, Arsenal, for ensuring I was a lot more irritated than on Tuesday.

Yesterday we went ahead with one of the best team goals we’ve scored all season, a whizzing counter-attack finished by Alexis, only to chuck it away and let Swansea take three points. For their equaliser we got caught in possession high up the pitch again – doing so left us with 6 men out of the game. Flamini, charging in, is bypassed a simple pass allowing Barrow to break.

Kieran Gibbs chased back and made a foul that he had little choice to make. However, a genuinely cynical player would have made the foul in the centre-circle. Maybe it’s distasteful to be that way but a free kick on halfway is far less dangerous than where we eventually gave it away. Haul him back, pull his shirt, don’t allow him to get anywhere near our goal. There are no points in this league for purity. The yellow card wouldn’t have been any more yellow.

Sigurdsson’s free kick was outstanding, in fairness. Over the wall, top corner, just under the bar – in this blame culture there are always going to be people who’ll point the finger at the keeper, but if one of our players had done that we’d be rightly lauding them for a fantastic set-piece technique.

These things happen though. It’s how you deal with them that shows what you’re made of. The response was to do nothing but allow Swansea to exploit a weakness which had been going on all game. Calum Chambers found it difficult to cope with the pace and trickery of Montero, and not for the first time the winger got beyond him, put in a cross which Gomis met above Monreal and nodded home to win the game.

I felt for Monreal a bit because he’d had a very solid game against Bony, but he’s 5’9, Gomis is 6’+ and this is the consequence of that. As for Chambers, he’s still young and hugely inexperienced. In time he’ll know better how to deal with players like Montero, how to show them inside rather than let him get done down the line, but it was obvious from early on he was having difficulty coping. I don’t suppose we can know 100% if there was anybody given the instruction to help him out, but it really didn’t look like it as he was left one on one with him over and over again.

Putting on Walcott and Wilshere did little to get us back into the game, although one excellent run by Theo was found by a great Alexis pass. A player who hadn’t been out since January might have had a better touch and had an attempt at goal, but it even feels a bit desperate saying that.

As for the manager’s last hurrah, he chose to leave on the bench a player (Podolski) who has a superb scoring record at club and international level – and a player who got us a crucial injury time goal just a few games ago – for a young man who has never scored for us and whose first contribution was to give away a daft free kick. It’s little wonder people get so frustrated.

In the end I don’t think we can have any complaints about the result. As a team we didn’t perform anywhere as well as we should have, the inherent weaknesses we have were exploited by Swansea who took full advantage, and even in the last 10 minutes when you’d expect us to pile on the pressure we didn’t force Fabianski into making a save.

Afterwards, the manager said:

It was a game where we were in control and at 1-0 up I felt we allowed them back into the game by losing some challenges in the middle of the park that you cannot afford to lose and on that front we were a little bit on the back foot. It’s unfortunate to lose a game like that but we were not rigorous until the end. We produced quite a decent performance for 75 minutes but you have to last 90 minutes.

Sounds a bit familiar that. If only we’d had some recent experience of such a situation from which we might learn some kind of lesson. The kind of lesson that players speak about learning after such an experience. I thought a better view came from Per Mertesacker, who said:

The game was completely in our hands. But then we have to play serious football and not make mistakes. We have potential, but unless we play serious football any team can punish us.

It’s interesting that in recent weeks some of the players have been strongly critical of our performances. Mikel Arteta sitting alongside a stony-faced Arsene Wenger at the pre-Anderlecht press conference talking about how the team had to be stronger springs to mind. Yet in the wake of the Anderlecht game there was no concession from the manager that we had to be more defensively astute, he merely talked about attacking well and defending well. Pretty vague really. I mean, I get it, by defending well he probably doesn’t want his players to leave the team exposed but the fact is we keep doing it time and time again. Actions, not words, are required.

What frustrates me most is that to my mind we’re a team that is currently performing way below the sum of its parts. Sometimes a manager can bring together a group of decent players and achieve things with them that belie their individual talents. Right now, we’re the opposite. I think we’ve got good players who the manager just cannot fashion into a cohesive unit, nor get to perform for 90 minutes – the very basic requirement for any team.

Some of that is down to individual issues and injuries. We’re without our best right back and one crucial part of our centre-half pairing. We’re without a £42.5m playmaker who I think we miss more than people care to admit. Injury and form have also negatively affected Aaron Ramsey, Santi Cazorla, Mikel Arteta, and Jack Wilshere. Inexperience, both in terms of age and position, have impacted Chambers and Monreal.

You can really only point to Alexis, Welbeck and Oxlade-Chamberlain (very recently) as players whose performances and end-product have been anywhere near the required level on a consistent basis. The keeper, usually so assured, looks like he’s seen a white-haired Spanish ghost, such is the jittery nature of his game right now. That’s not hard to understand playing behind the most make-shift defence in years, but it’s cumulative.

Now, those are reasons, not excuses, and it’s the job of Arsene Wenger to manage his squad in such a way that these problems don’t become chronic. Yet here we are, having shot ourselves in the foot again after not learning from what we did in midweek. If we can’t take on board such an important lesson in a short space of time, what hope is there that these things can be fixed over the course of the season?

The idea that once we get Debuchy, Koscielny and Ozil back things will turn around is nice, but very optimistic. January looks like a promised-land, when we can get the chequebook out and bolster defence and maybe midfield, but I think it’s pretty obvious that just signing players isn’t going to solve all our problems if the team’s brittle nature and inability to learn from its mistakes continues.

Judging the reaction to a defeat online isn’t always the best barometer of opinion, but you’d have to have your head stuck in the sand right now not to realise that faith in Arsene Wenger is probably at an all-time low. He looks like a man struggling to find the answers and I find it sad to see. Regardless of how things go, he’ll never, ever be a target for abuse from me. Not just because of the good things he’s done for this club, but because there are better and more constructive ways to express your disenchantment and despondency.

If you were to come to me tomorrow and say there’s a better man ready and available to do the manager’s job, I’d say go for it. Who that might be is a very good question. Yet ultimately, I think a lot of the frustration comes not just from the issues we have right now, but because people realise there’s a fundamental futility in hoping for a change at managerial level.

The manager just signed a three year contract, he’s got the full and unwavering support of a board who are happy to let him make all the footballing decisions and who, between them, just don’t have the knowledge of the game to challenge in him in any meaningful way. The only addition to that group in recent years has been Josh Kroenke who might know about ticket pricing and stadium management, but what he knows about football is, I would posit, the sum total of fuck all.

But beyond all that, they don’t want to change. Stan loves Arsene as long as he keeps those Champions League bucks rolling in, and given the way the rest of the teams are playing this season, I still don’t think it’s impossible that we’ll finish in the top four. Bare minimum achieved yet again.

I have no doubt Arsene Wenger works as hard as he ever has, that he’s as committed as he ever was, and his desire to win things and do well for Arsenal Football Club is as strong as always. But this team is a mess, it’s a mess of his own making and right now he doesn’t look like he knows how to make it right. It’s a sad situation but all any of us can do is hope he figures it out, because no amount of hashtags or anything else is going to change it.

As evidenced at other clubs, winning some games goes a long, long way to dampen disquiet – we’re not winning though, and we don’t much look like we can. Next up Man Utd and Dortmund. Nothing like a couple of easy ones to get you back on track, eh?

Till tomorrow.

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We’ll be recording the Arsecast Extra this morning, so any questions fire them to @gunnerblog and @arseblog with the hashtag #arsecastextra