Why Arsenal Lost Against Liverpool

John Batty

Preparation (Part one)

In the past Arsenal have lost games from complacency against lower teams. This time they lost because they didn't prepare properly for Liverpool. They were over confident going into the game because they won easily against them at home, crucially without Coutinho. Reports of training ground bust-ups and stalled contract talks affecting half our back four suggest lack of focus on the job in hand.

We have been proven vulnerable to teams who press us hard, high up the pitch, several times previously. This is a tactical situation that clearly hasn’t been addressed.

Set pieces. Zonal marking is all very well, but a corner that practically lands on the penalty spot has to be headed out by someone.

If there was a gameplan for this match, it clearly didn’t work and the managers favoured approach of letting the players sort it out on the pitch came totally unstuck. They had no idea what to do to fix the problems.

The Performance (Part two)

There are many things that could be mentioned, but I’ll stick to a couple that haven’t been so widely debated elsewhere;

Ox has been ineffective wide previously, but was terrific in the middle last week. Putting him wide again to accommodate Wilshere was an obvious mistake by the manager. Wilshere did go to the end, so he’s clearly physically fit, but he’s back to trying too hard.

Was Sagna making some kind of point ? His dereliction of his RB post constantly exposed Mertesacker and dragged the whole back [3] across giving space on the other wing too. I can’t believe it was a tactic to play a back 3 with Sagna as a lazy winger. We were the away team. First and foremost we should have been rock solid at the back from the off.

They pressed us hard. We didn’t press them , even a little bit, when they had the ball.

Reasons to be cheerful (Part Three)

[apologies to Ian Dury]

Given that most of us would have taken a point from this game, it can be viewed as just one point dropped.

Liverpool get 3 points for winning. There are no bonus points for scoring five.

Man City arguably dropped two points at Norwich (lucky it wasn’t all three at the end) so they did worse than us.

We slipped today, as did MC. Chelsea slipped against WHU. Liverpool slipped against WBA. There will be more from all four before the season ends. Over the last year we have slipped less than the others. We are still well in this.

Previous heavy setbacks – Villa, MC – have preceded a renewed sense of purpose and determination to win, and the team has gone on a good run.

It’s all part of the bigger plan to lull BM into a false sense of confidence :p

Read more >

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