Arsenal’s unexpected defeat: what does the Brighton match indicate?

 

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By Tony Attwood

Most of us have had the experience of the “bad day at the office” – whether we work in an office or anywhere else, or don’t have a job at all.   And the reason we can have good and bad days is simple: it is part of survival.   Our psychological conditioning goes up and down, and with it our ability to cope with difficult situations.  Something that might upset us one day, does have much effect the next.

Now there is a reason for this, for if we got through each day in the same way then we would become ever easier for others to take advantage of us.  Indeed this is something that even children in school learn – they don’t play the same tricks on their friends each day, and those that taunt their teachers or misbehave in class do so in different ways each day.   

This is part of growing up and part of human nature – we can vary our behaviour and from that get advantages in terms of survival.   

Now you might think that newspaper journalists would realise this, since each day’s newspaper tends to have different headlines, even if it pumps out the same political, economic and sporting message day after day.

And yet the journalists these newspapers employ still express surprise if a football club can have the on pitch equivalent of a bad day at the office.   Even even the media that did looke a a little beyond the result of the last Arsenal game admitted that there were games last season where Arsenal were outplayed, they still reacted with shock that it could happen this season with the Brighton game.   

Yet this sort of thing can happen to most clobs – the only ones that can really avoid it are those that have the resources to change their line ups even after a solid win.   

In fact, the issue for clubs that are looking to win trophies is never one about not having bad matches, but ensuring that it happens rarely and then recovering from the disappointment of defeat by the next match.  Indeed this was the type of approach  that Arsenal managed to achieve last season.

So if we have a look at 2022/23 from this point of view we can see what went wrong in that season.   There was a blip in February where we lost to a very aggressive Everton side away 1-0 (they had four players yellow carded to Arsenal’s one in that match) which was followed by a 1-1 draw with Brenford and then a similar result with Manchester City at home.   Two points from three games between 4 and 15 February – and that was a major knock bakc to our season.

I think there was quite a serious psychological effect from these two games, and that showed even more strongly in the next game, at home to Southampton – hardly the best team in the league at the time!

Southampton in fact went two goals up, showing just how bad a reaction Arsenal was having to previous results, and although Arsenal recovered, the final result was 3-3 whereas we should have won that game.   

But what was also noticeable was that five yellow cards that Southamton picked up in that match on 21 April (Arsenal got one).   It looked as if Arsenal were simply unsure how to cope with Southampton’s fouling-dominated approach, whereas the “Saints” (what an utterly inappropriate nickname) knew exactly how to unbalance Arsenal.

My view is that those two games unsettled Arsenal and led to the disastrous match on 26 April in which ManC beat Arsenal 4-1.  I think it is clear that Manchester City had studied the videos of the previous game in great depth, as they not only went into a 2-0 lead, but they then defended that lead picking up three yellow cards, and came our winners 4-1.

Although on 2 May 2023 Arsenal did recovver, by coming from behind to beat Chelsea 3-1the damage by then was one.    Clearly the management worked on Arsenal’s pshychological issues and that showed in the next match against Newcastle on 7 May as Arsenal beat Newcastle 0-2 away, but there was still some psychoogical fragility in the team as we saw through a 0-3 home defeat to Brighton and Hove Albion on 14 May and then a 1-0 away loss  to Nottingham Forest on 20 May.   By the time of the final game – a 5-0 victory, when the players adopted a more free and easy approach the league was long since lost.