By Walter Broeckx
Lots of changed of course in the starting line up. In fact apart from the man with 3 lungs Elneny we have 10 other players compared to last weekend.
So here is the team that started: Martinez, Jenkinson, Holding, Gabriel, Gibbs, Coquelin, Elneny, Reine-Adelaide, Ramsey, Iwobi, Lucas
On the beach today: Macey, Bola, Bielik, Maitland-Niles, Xhaka, Oxlade-Chamberlain, Mavidid
Arsenal with most of the ball and Southampton leaning back and hoping for the break in the opening 5 minutes of the match. Then Southampton with a better spell and when a player is in too much room on our right flank his cross is put in the Arsenal goal after two attempts. 0-1 after 12 minutes. First real shot on goal goes in.
Arsenal almost have a shot but the effort from Iwobi is blocked. Southampton defending in numbers now of course. Peres with some good runs in to space but the pass after that is missing. Too many loose passes from Arsenal so far in this match. Elneny going in the book after a pull back to stop a counter. Arsenal still 0-1 behind after 30 minutes.
Too many Southampton defenders around their penalty area so the passing has to be top and it isn’t so far. Iwobi also in the book when he chased a Southampton player after losing the ball. Boufal was also holding the shirt of Iwobi so a bit soft this one. Adelaide then being chopped in two by Yoshida who also goes in the book. There was a bit of space now but Arsenal now only have a free kick that is cleared for a corner. Finally some real pressure from Arsenal with a few corners in a row but nothing at the end of it.
Arsenal lose the ball on the right flank and Southampton capitalises on the error and score their second goal. 0-2 after 38 minutes. I’m sorry to say but the right flank with Jenkinson and Adelaide is no match for Southampton. And then Elneny is down with an injury and goes off and Xhaka comes on. Meanwhile Iwobi on the right flank and Adelaide on the left.
A poor first half from Arsenal who shot themselves in the foot with sloppy defending on the right flank.
My stream then going down for a few minutes so missing the opening 5 minutes of the second half. Xhaka with a free kick but Forster can save the ball. Holding at the other end with a good interception to clear for a corner after a Southampton counter. From the corner a collision between Martinez who played the ball and Van Dijck results in an injury for the latter. Ref didn’t call a foul on the keeper so can count themselves lucky they didn’t score from the rebound. Martinez also looks shaky. Arsenal still 0-2 down after 60 minutes.
Coquelin with a left foot shot from distance but a comfortable save for the keeper. After 61 minutes Adelaide is taken off and Oxlade-Chamberlain comes on. Adelaide is a prospect but he is counting too much on his skills and wants to show them off too much and isn’t using the teamwork enough. Still a lot ot learn for the young Frenchman.
Perez with a nice move but his shot is deflected for a corner. After 63 minutes Maitland-Niles comes on for Jenkinson. Meanwhile Southampton using every trick in the time wasting book. A shot from Coquelin goes just wide. Yoshide already on a yellow taking the ball away to prevent a quick free restart from Arsenal, that could have been his second.
Arsenal trying to shoot from distance a few times but not really troubling the keeper. Southampton with the counter close to a third goal but missing the target twice. The Ox at the other end with a shot from around the penalty spot but he blasts it over. Gibbs with a header after a good action from Xhaka and Maitland-Niles on the right flank but a grea save from the keeper prevents an Arsenal goal. Ramsey being tripped in the penalty area is ignored and Lucas Peres gets a yellow card when he makes a small foul. The defender in the Ramsey case didn’t touch the ball that is for sure. Lucas Perez with a cut back but Southampton can clear for a corner. A shot from Gibbs is somehow cleared in front of the goal for another corner. This is more the Arsenal we like to see.
At the other end Martinez has to push a shot wide for a corner. Maitland Niles with a super clearance after a low cross from Southampton. Arsenal almost gifts Southampton a third goal after giving the ball away in front of their own penalty area but Martinez with a good stop.
A few corners in stoppage time but the shots are always blocked or blasted over in the final minute by Gibbs.
Some sloppy defending in the first half on our right flank gave Southampton too much freedom and they took full advantage and then could play the preferred counter game and Arsenal lacked ideas to break down the Southampton defence.
If there was one match I wouldn’t have minded us to lose in November it was this. Bring on December.
Can’t comment on the penalty incident because I didn’t see it. The commentator at Arena Sport did say Ramsey tripped himself.
I don’t care about the Mickey Mouse cup, it’s a good run out for the fringe players and youngsters but also additional chance for some of our players to pick injuries. Elneny’s example, sadly, proved it.
Bring on West Ham!
As I said on the previous thread no excuses, the ref wan’t great but we didn’t look like we could score if we had played till the weekend. We looked very disjointed especially in the first half and when we did manage to get an opening our shooting was worse than abysmal.
Saints youngster Sims looked a terrific prospect, I bet Arsene made a mental note to keep tabs on him, the best of our youngsters was Iwobi who looked refreshed compared to his last game whilst Adelaide looked out of his depth. Ramsey disappointed immensely, it was an opportunity for him make his mark in the midfield in the absence of Ozil and Santi but he came up short I am afraid. Perez got a run out returning from injury but was given no service whatsoever.
All in all a night to forget, now lets start another long unbeaten run.
Hey….we got to see what our youth players can do and we know they are a ways from being first team prospects. We also gave our big players a complete break and that is equally valuable. A win would have been nice but one less fairly mundane trophy not to have to worry about.
If anyone is remotely interested there is already a good selection of ‘5 things we learned’ articles to be found!!
Josif
Ramsey didn’t completely trip himself, but was unbalanced and couldn’t quite get himself upright and fell. Noticed that there was no complaints.
I think Walter was right about the Saints player Yoshide not getting a second yellow for holding up play though.
There wasn’t any penalty incident really. Martina clearly played the ball and Ramsey fell down after that. And I think Lucas might have got carded for dissent.
Maitland-Niles did promisingly well after coming on. Unfortunately can’t say the same about Reine-Adelaide although it was nice to see him as well.
Overall it probably isn’t a bad thing to be eliminated at this point. Come January I’m sure we can do without the two-legged semi-finals.
A poor performance from the team , perhaps due to unfamiliarity or players coming back from injury,and a ref who was clearly going to give us very little….what was it you said about refs swaying games a couple of articles ago Walter? I
Apparently Elneny was actually sick and not injured according to Wenger, so hopefully it is the type of sickness that means a recovery in faster time than the injuries our players tend to suffer.
This tournament is useful for players who do not play regularly and youngsters, but apart from that, will lose very little sleep over this result.
Hmmn! We are encouraging ourselves in the face of a cruel defeat at home to the better Saints team on the night by trying to reduce the League Cup to a Mickey Mouse trophy. Who gave that abominable name to the League Cup, a 3rd tier title? Jose Mourinho?
The truth is the truth and we should say it when we see it.
I’ve known if Le Prof made the wrong starts and bench for this match we won’t find the game easy. The problem why we lost the match started at our base. Elneny can’t play 2 difficult games on the run because he hasn’t that energy to do so. Let’s look at my starts for this our lost game to see if the Le Prof had started my starts if we wouldn’t have won the match.
Martinez
Jenko Holding Paulista Gibbs
LeCoq Xhaka
Oxchambo Ramsey Iwobi
Perez.
Le Prof made the right 2 subs of Xhaka for Elneny and Oxchambo for Adelaide but was late in doing the subs. For, emergency problem at hand requires emergency action be taken. We are 0-2 down in the game after 38 minutes. Thus the handwriting is on the wall for a quick action be taken if we are to save ourselves from embarrassment. if I were Le Prof, instead of substituting Niles for Jenko, I would have sub the lame duck legs Perez for Mavididi to take a gamble to see if it’ll payoff.
dieter, agree, although Jef was rather good i thought
Samuel, there might have been different considerations besides fielding the best team, as evidenced by omission of most of the team that played on Sunday
although i agree Xhaka should have started ahead of Mo
huh, so elneny has diarrhea, sanogo is struggling with something confidential, santi is stable but not expected
good news though, welbz is expected to be back in full training this month!
Today was water hauling day. I seen that we were 2-0 down at some point, killed the connection to Arsenal.com with commentary, and went back to work hauling water.
I gather a team is not supposed to just stay in the dressing room come the end of the half, but really that is probably what should have happened. Maybe if the players carried out lifesize “posters” of themselves, and placed them on the field and then left at the beginning of the second half, the system would get the message that we are tired of this BS officiating.
Oh well, maybe I can get the 38 game point sums at Dec 31 out tonight for Al (and others).
Unfortunately my stream died very early so I cannot really comment on the match. But I was disappointed in the result.
But, at least some senior players had a breather & some of those needing games got a run out.
Gord
Hadn’t seen your post on the other thread till I saw your 11:27pm post above. That’d be awesome, if you can do it.
On the bright side, we won’t have to face a full strength Man U in either a ridiculous two legged semis, or the final at Wembley.
Clearly this trophy has their name written all over it, seeing as Mourinho fielded the strongest posible squad against the hammers today.
Even if Arsenal had made it to Wembley , Wenger would have still played some of the reserves ,which is why he’s never won this silly trophy.
On a sour note though, our fringe players lost to Southampton’s bench warmers 0:2 at home, and that’s a bit embarrassing.
Trying to convince myself that it’s only the League Cup so it doesn’t matter. Still hate getting beat though. Hopefully the players will watch replays of the game and learn from it. We really need to be better at breaking defences down. A lack of ideas around the box is very frustrating for everyone.
A good run out for the youngsters and those who needed the game time . Not too disappointed with us going out in the fifth choice ‘trophy ‘.
Friends “game management” technique was obvious and simple.
Almost every barge or shoulder to shoulder by an AFC player = foul to Southampton.
Not the same code applied to the inverse.
If the Arsenal players were not fed up with this then:
you must have been watching a different channel because they were! Simples.
If you have trouble with that rewind to Perez’s yellow card. Even more simple!!
Not of the above detracts from our respect for Southampton football club.
Walter’s recent article on referee “game management” could not have been better timed: this match is a perfect case study.
Walter – I have to take issue with your comment “if there was one match I wouldn’t have minded us to lose in November it was this”
Really???
This was a cup quarter final at home, a cup that had we taken it more seriously we might actually have won?
Wouldn’t it be better to prioritise winning a cup like this over the CL, as our squad is clearly not good enough to compete in that.
Maybe this site should also actually have reviewers who watch the games instead of trying to watch on illegal streams.
I was in block 2 just behind Wenger last night and the lack of effort put in was a disgrace. The club basically conned 60,000 people into attending last night but there was no motivation to even try and win.
This does the club no favours at all. There were a LOT of very annoyed people last night
Top Guns have you ever thought of taking your expertise and knowledge to the England coaching set up after all they did so well against Iceland, Costa Rica and Ecuador, or even Tottenham considering the importance that you attach to the diddly cup, and that many of the England players who excelled for England against Iceland with their touch control and technique also play/dive/clog for Tottenham?
I was at the match and I agree with Walter.
When you’re not allowed to barge in a game of football it does affect the apparent “effort” and “pashun” visible.
One would’ve have hoped that the self declared Experts and sado masochists out there would have the footballs required to make such simple comment upon what all could see. If you choose to believe that it had no impact on a contest then of course you are entitled to a belief and an opinion even if it doesn’t match what was easily observed: videos of the match will be available however the card for Perez was easy to see, especially for those at the game and it is reasonable and fair to question the selective memory technique in action here.
None of the above detracts from our respect for Southampton football club. They finished better then the Gunners, simples.
We note that Bertrand who started the CL final for Gazprom can’t start for England ahead of a diving clogger who showed the world how poor he was at the recent Euros against the mighty Iceland. That’s not an opinion but an observation!
Finsbury – your response to my argument does not make any sense whatsoever.
The bottom line is this – Arsenal who make out that they are a “big” football club threw a major cup competition last night and that is disgraceful.
Yes of course Arsene Wenger gets a lot of things right but he got last night very wrong.
It does not make you any less of a supporter to criticise him on occasion.
We can rest players next week for the pointless game in Basel.
Top Guns, I agree with you completely.
I’ve never been a fan of this competition, but there are many who often can’t get to regular games who do support it by paying good money to go the ground in the expectation of witnessing something resembling a team putting in some effort to actually win a match.
If the other paying customer above is happy enough that we lost then his support is at best perverse.
I agree with this articles point of view.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/football/2016/12/01/arsenal-should-glad-efl-cup/
Top guns
If you are an expert in physiotherapy as well as football (& finance?) then you may well be right.
For myself I would defer to the fitness guru who helped Germany become world champions. He has quite a good record in helping with recovery times, not an opinion but a simple and easy observation.
eg: Perez who although rusty and not as good as previously seen following an unpunished hack and injury is at least available so others who need the rest can be rested.
Someone i know is a well known physio (not on Twitter!) but he didn’t have the footballing CV of the German chap, so never got the gig for AFC full time. If you think you can do better feel free to send in your CB
< CV!
Only a disingenuous toad would seek and fail to imply that anyone above or the author of the article would be happy with a defeat for AFC.
The only people on these pages who can be observed and recorded in their own words (not facile conjecture and innuendo) are the aaaa
And we know who they are!
Tickets for most matches are available on the exchange in the lower tier for prices that are similar to yesterday’s (for individuals)
A seriously lame and factually inaccurate effort at trolling. but them again we wouldn’t expect anything better from a football expert that rates Townsend over Chamberlian or Walcott. Yes that’s right the same Andy “goal kick” Townsend dropped by Palace. It’s too funny for school.
I think the problem is the bloated CL.
Personally I was more looking forward to a cup quarter final than Basel away next week but maybe I am in the minority these days.
In the past of course there were also not these ridiculous 2 week international breaks which seem to occur with ever increasing regularity. It would be far better to dispense with at least one of these each season, and this would benefit everyone from the spectators to the players.
It still amazes me that the old 1st Division used to have 42 matches each season and yet was still able to finish by the end of April!!!
Top Guns & Leon – do you have any idea of the financial reward of CL v EPL or whatever they call the League Cup?
Each CL game in terms of financial reward is worth more than the Final of the League Cup. The League Cup has is not worth anything in terms of qualification either. The team Wenger puts out is always capable of winning on an even playing field. Friend in deed showed how to manage a game to ensure biased victory.
The FIFA & FA bias toward money does not allow for teams to rest quality players, so Wenger does the right thing by his squad & boardroom.
Top Gun
If you ask any coherent physio who is not unemployed upon someone else’s blog or on Twitter to kindly and patiently explain to you what the difference (not better, not worse, just difference) between an athelete playing in the seventies and fourty years later is, including context:
You will no longer be amazed.
Simples.
Good luck.
Menace
I’m sure there’s a considerable difference. And, yes I’d rather this useless waste of time competition didn’t exist, but it does give people who rarely get the opportunity to see Arsenal at the Emirates and at a price they can afford.
As you know I don’t share your rather extreme opinions on refereeing.