The City reaction: defensive analysis, Lawro and his pie and an Arsenal infiltrator

By Phil Gregory

A 1-0 defeat was certainly difficult to take from a valiant performance away at City. We went there with a multitude of defensive injuries but in fairness, a defensive unit that appeared fairly solid until changes were forced upon us. Indeed it is no coincidence that an injury to Djourou early in the second half led to us conceding the first goal. That forced Arsène to shuffle the back four, with Koscielny moving to right back, Vermaelen replacing him in the centre and youngster Miquel coming on for the injured Djourou and playing at left back. The footballing gods are indeed fickle, and that now makes it all four fullbacks out injured, plus one of the centrebacks somewhat capable of playing there.

I was lucky enough to be taking up my seat in the ground for this game, albeit in the City end so I had to be on my best behaviour. Sadly I couldn’t join in the away fans barracking Nasri with a colourful chant or two: getting myself ejected from the ground wouldn’t look very good if they traced the tickets back to City bigwig Brian Marwood! That said, the latter did secure us cracking seats, right on the halfway line and next to the media, which can’t be too shabby. Mark Lawrenson was certainly enjoying his half time pie and chips, I can confirm. I also saw the blonde haired lad from Arsenal TV, though I’m not sure of his name. He was looking a bit disconsolate at half time – to be fair, it was bloody freezing in Manchester – but I decided against saying hello as I didn’t want an overzealous steward to hear me saying I’m an Arsenal fan and giving me the boot.

Unfortunately I was sat two seats away from an absolute prat. His barracking of the referee was cringeworthy, with every minor foul “A fu*king booking that ref!” to quote. Every Arsenal player who dared go near a City player in possession was also in line for some lovely racial abuse, with Mertesacker not merely a centreback, but a “f’ing kraut twat” and Vermaelen’s solid defensive work went unrecognised for the heinous crime of, well, being Belgian, according to this idiot.

With that in mind, I can’t say enough how great our away fans are, and they must be some of the best in the league. The home atmosphere does come in for some admittedly justified stick, but really the away crowd are top drawer. If I wasn’t a daft sod who forgot to go online and grab my ticket for Villa away I’d be in there with them in a few days time. Credit to the away fans then, singing their hearts out all the way through the game, from start to finish.

The game itself was very cagey. At half time I said confidently there would only be one goal in it, as both teams were defending outstandingly well. City were very strong in midfield, and covered their fullbacks well whilst our biggest strength was the solidity of the defensive unit and the intelligent use of possession. I often refer to this as “recycling the ball” whereby instead of simply hoofing it clear, we play short passes and work it out, even from within our own box. That is anathema to the British “school” of football, and indeed if you don’t have the technical quality to do it, then it is an excessively risky technique. Fortunately for Arsenal we have technical quality in spades, and it really helps us take the pressure off the back four, and create some tidy chances too.

Dowd concerned me going into this game, and the early yellow for Song did nothing to dissuade those fears. From the stands however, there’s no replays of contentious issues so I couldn’t sensibly moan about it until reviewing the highlights this morning on Arsenal.com. It was a trifle late but doing by the rulebook of “careless = foul, reckless = yellow and dangerous = red”, it can only be a free kick in my view. I’ll wait for the ref review, who are vastly more experienced than me, but for me a final warning and a stern talking to for better timing is all that is required.

Szcznesy made some absolutely outstanding stops, not least the point blank save from Balotelli. Perhaps he could’ve held the one he pushed away only for Silva to finish, but I would say largely if you were going to assign blame for that goal you’d look at the defence. Even after Djourou’s injury, you had a back four made up of four centrebacks, so how Silva got free in the box to finish, and indeed how Song was unsupported when he went wide against Balotelli confuses me to be honest.

Watching it again, City get a good break and Balotelli is free out wide. Koscielny is fairly narrow when the ball is played wide to Balotelli, and the Frenchman just fails to make the interception to cut out the pass.  Song pursues Balotelli to cover for the lack of a right back, and Koscielny goes to cover in the centre, looking to cut the option of going to a City player lurking on the edge of the box. For my money, both Koscielny and Song should’ve gone for Balotelli, one pressing the City man and the other covering. Even with Koscielny covering Song, we’d have had four versus two in the box on City, so Koscielny could’ve cut out the ball to the City player on the edge of the box, AND someone else could’ve covered Song versus Balotelli, and we’d still have had an extra man on City’s two attackers in our goalmouth. Instead we had two on Aguero, which isn’t the worst of ideas to be fair, and nobody on Silva, with Miquel not tight enough. Watching carefully on the Arsenal.com highlights Ignasi Miquel is surely the man who should’ve marked Silva but instead stands a few yards off him, achieving relatively little. Too late, he darts back to mark Silva as he realises the danger with the ball flying toward the City man. A poor mistake from the youngster, and one that certainly wouldn’t have happened had Vermaelen been at leftback, so poor defending and a bit of bad luck with the injury forcing a defensive reshuffle can be equally blamed. Frankly, when you’re playing what is effectively a fourth choice left back (Santos, Gibbs, Vermaelen, Miquel), who is a kid who prefers to play at centreback, mistakes are going to happen, unfortunately. I wouldn’t be too harsh on Miquel myself, he put in a decent game overall all things considered, but in top level football you cannot switch off for a second.

From going one goal down, we did have some good chances. Van Persie’s goal was ruled offside and Arsenal’s Stewart Robson agreed with the decision, though he did so without the magical line being drawn from the second last defender as was done on Match of the Day. Had he seen that I think he’d have made a different decision, for me it was marginally onside. Theo also had a good chance, as did Vermaelen late on with a couple of crackers. Gervinho seems to coming in for some criticism, but from where I was he seemed to be beating men and creating chances. Certainly his game needs more goals, but with dribs and drabs of service from a tightly fought midfield, I though he did well and will kick on as he settles in. Certainly I can see him providing ten goals and ten assists next season, provided he remains fit.

The Richards handball wasn’t highlighted on Arsenal’s highlights, nor was Song’s yellow, which seems daft to me if you want to give your fans a fair overview of the circumstances. Ridiculous to think that an incident that Wenger felt strongly enough to raise in the press conference wasn’t even deemed worthy of making it into the highlights package, perhaps Arsenal need to have a bit of a think there. I’m unsure about the handball myself. Yes it hit his hand, but his arm wasn’t a million miles away from his body so I’m not convinced it was intentional. I look forward to the thoughts of the ref review team.

Some pinpointed Theo Walcott’s impact as lacking, and I would agree that the youngster wasn’t as involved in the game as he normally is. The eagle eyed Zonal Marking however pointed out today that Van Persie was playing up against Touré, so slightly to the left of centre (unsurprisingly, as the former Gunner was looking a little out of shape). That meant our Dutchman linked up more frequently with the left sided player, Gervinho, and also meant that City’s right back (Zabaleta) had the imperious Vincent Kompany free to cover him. City’s fullbacks played fairly defensively on the whole, likely wary of Arsenal’s pace on the break, and this fact combined with Kompany covering Zabaleta probably explains Walcott’s lack of impact on the game. With Van Persie up against Touré for most of the game you’d have expected that to reap dividends for us and indeed it would have, if it were not for the linesman’s flag which ruled Van Persie’s tidy finish offside incorrectly, though it was a tight call.

Overall, not a bad performance from the Arsenal, and much can be taken from a solid display with an injury-hit backline. As Wenger said however, there are no points for performances and With Spurs picking up the three points again we need to be matching them. Realistically, we should take fifteen points from our next five games to put real pressure on Chelsea and Spurs. Third place, let alone fourth, is not unreasonable, so let’s push on, get some serious points on the board and hopefully have a few more fit defenders for the visit of United to the Emirates.

Sixteen hundred words there. If that had been written on the topic of my essay due in on January 9th, I’d be over a third of the way there. Better get cracking, really….