Arsenal Blow It Again – But This Time They Have Valid Excuses

We’ve seen it many times before, Arsenal are in a position where they could top the league table by winning a match but then bottle it. But to say that happened yesterday would be unfair.

Hey look, I’m as disappointed and infuriated as you are that we didn’t beat West Brom yesterday but it was always going to be a tough day for Arsenal. And let’s look at Manchester City and Real Madrid this weekend – they could have had worse days at the office.

Arsenal took the lead after another Mesut Özil assist, with an emotional Olivier Giroud heading in from close range. The early signs looked good.

But after that it went pear shaped.

And you could consider all the factors as bad luck:

  • Our main enforcer Francis Coquelin got injured and his replacement Mikel Arteta was well off the pace and scored an own goal.
  • Laurent Koscielny gave Rondon far too much space to burst into the box and deliver that decisive cross, which you could possibly excuse him for considering the tragic events of last week.
  • The goal that West Brom did score was a bit of a fluke, lets be honest. Morrison would whack that over the bar 99 times out of 100.
  • The Santi Cazorla penalty – two points here. The first was that there were 2 West Brom players about 4/5 yards into the box before Santi even hit the ball. And the second is obviously the condition of the penalty spot – you can’t blame Cazorla for the penalty spot collapsing.

I would be the first person to condemn Arsenal if they were poor and threw away the 3 points, but considering all those factors that went against us, you can excuse them this time.

Added to that the horrendous injury list we have, it was always going to be an uphill battle yesterday.

 

4 thoughts on “Arsenal Blow It Again – But This Time They Have Valid Excuses

  1. Also take into account the the decision to give the free kick which lead to the first goal was incorrect as ‘man of the match’ Arteta, clearly got the ball first.

     
  2. This WBA loss was an accident waiting to happen
    Firstly why on earth did Arteta get a new contract when he cannot hack it anymore.
    Agreed the free kick was debatable, but it is Arteta’s slowing up that creates these situations. The own goal just underlined his liability along with yet another injury – he should never play another game for us
    The same could said for Campbell. I always thought that he would make it eventually, but he has blown his current opportunity to show that with a run in the team. The open goal he missed against WBA was the sealer for me and he should be moved on in January
    The sad injury to Coquelin is showing the folly of not signing another defensive midfielder close season and we will pay for that now. As in the past 10 seasons or so, we look like blowing our chance of success by keeping the purse strings tight again – when will the Board & Wenger learn ?

     

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