By Tony Attwood
Is there anything more one can say? A game in which Arsenal had 67% possession and Newcastle (obviously) 33% against their norms of 55.1% and Newcastle 50.7% saw Arsenal get 21 attempts on goal but only two on target. Bizarrely the official figures give Newcastle three attempts with four on target, and I suppose those latter figures sums it up. Everything went wrong, even the maths.
Given the sillyness of that stat I am not sure any can be believed, although Newcastle committing over twice as many fouls as Arsenal feels about right (11 to 5 is the official total).
None of the subsequent reports seem to suggest that Newcastle fouled their way to victory, although if the figures are correct (as ever I wasn’t counting) it is not a particualrly good advert for anything.
As usual the media picked up on a point in a conversation suggesting Arteta blamed the ball for the defeat. Can you imagine what the media would make of it if the manager blamed an individual player? Sadly the Premier League rules say that managers have to give interviews so they have to find something to say rather than lash into the performances of individual players, which can only lead to a further decline in their playing, and ultimately transfers.
“Based on that performance they need to be transferred,” said one of my pals, but then if anything in football was just based on the last performance everything would be reduced to nothing, with teams seeing half a dozen changes from week to week except when they go on one of those exceptional runs.
Arteta of course knows he can never win a debate in the media. When asked prior to the game if he thought the League Cup was important, Arteta he said he did. So now he is lambasted in the Guardian who chime in with “Arteta may come to regret having placed so much importance on this competition given their aspirations to win bigger trophies in the future.”
It was a bad night playing against a team that had just won their last six games, and so, utterly full of confidence having scored 20 goals in those games. Arsenal had won four and drawn two of the last six, and that meagre win against Ipswich, and draw with Brighton, suggested that the level of injuries was now reaching more than the club could cope with.
And so finally Arsenal got to the point where there was just not enough left in the tank and thus given those who coment, are often lacking in imagination, we are back to the old “they need to buy a centre forward,” routine (journalists always liking to repeat old stories since it saves them thinking of something new).
The fact that Arsenal ended last season just a single goal short of the total scored in the Unbeaten Season, suggets that endlessly repeated tale is not only not a solution, but that journalists are now utterly convinced they can claim anything no matter how bizarre, without some supporters bothering to think, “is this right?” For what we actually need is a way to stop this continuing surge of injures.
On another night both Jurriën Timber and Gabriel Martinelli and Kai Havertz could all have scored. But last night there was even a suggestion that Arsenal were wrong to let Joe Willock go, just because he played well for two thirds of one game. It was ever thus.
Arsenal, according to the Guardian “are desperate to shed their tag as nearly men” but that is simply a newspaper calling a club something pejorative and then saying the club doesn’t like being called that. And when a newspaper is reduced to something as pathetic as that, you know they haven’t got much to say.
It was a bad result in the fourth most important of the four competitions in which Arsenal play. I would have loved the score to have been reversed, but if we do have to have a bad night I’d sooner it be in the league cup than in the FA Cup, the Champions League or the Premier League.
The Telegraph says, in its headline, “Five misses that prove why Arsenal must sign striker this transfer window” to which I would reply “88 and 91 goals which prove why Arsenal don’t.” I would reply that if I hadn’t written it 20 times before. Now make that 21.
And in case anyone does get that, that was the number of goals scored in each of the last two seasons, before the injuries struck Our expected total number of goals this season based on the campaign so far is only 74, which is quite a drop from the last two campaigns, but still above the five seasons before the last two.
The campaign for Arsenal to tear up the current approach and buy a new striker is basically one aiming to take Arsenal back down to lower levels of scoring. The tragedy is that many supporters feel its a good idea and the tragedy is, with such endless pressure there is just a chance Arsenal might give in and do it.
I can ignore the expected media reactions to a defeat, which unfortunate in many respects (ie Martinelli hitting the post), was still the result of a generally below-par performance. So what? players are humans not robots and cannot be perfect every game.
I am disappointed, however, at the knee-jerk reaction of some Arsenal fans, judging by social media headlines, falling for the media nonsense, demanding multiple new signings and a change of manager. We do know from life in general just how extensive a malign media influence can be (eg as per the Musk publicity).
I still believe that the second leg can be a very different experience and that on a good day Arsenal are well capable of beating Newcastle by more than 2 goals.
Heartily agree with John L. There are two other things that upset me. Firstly, that the ground was half empty after the second goal. You wouldn’t catch Newcastle supporters showing such disrespect and lack of support, especially as there was still the chance of getting something out ofvthe game. Secondly, as well as the “we have to buy a number 9” brigade, there is also a strong vocal element that keep using the phrase ‘If we don’t win anything this season, Arteta has got a lot of thinking to do’. I am sure Mikel Arteta thinks an awful lot more than they do, as is obvious from thier comments and there is also the slightly sinister undertone of he needs to think about resigning. And who else is out there that could get us into the position we are in.? Do they think about that when they make such comments.