Arsenal Mistakes Gift Lucky Chelsea Victory

Where do you start with that game?

Gervinho, the enigma, shows why he frustrates and pleases in equal measure. His goal was absolutely fantastic, and really was a top class finish. But again, as we’ve seen many times before, he was unable to go the basic things like stay onside or find a teammate with a pass.

Theo Walcott came on and did nothing, he wasn’t interested and it’s clear his future isn’t at Arsenal. He may have scored twice in the Capital One Cup against a League One side, but today he didn’t care. Arshavin would have been a better option if he was even selected in today’s match squad.

And Olivier Giroud, just as he did against Sunderland in our opening home game of the season, had a guilt-edged chance at the death to score a vital goal. He did well to get around Cech but just didn’t have the composure to finish off an impressive move. I like Giroud and I think he offers something different, and holds the ball up well. He just needs to get some confidence and start banging in the goals.

There was no doubt that on the balance of play, Arsenal were the superior side, making the defeat even more frustrating. Chelsea may have started with Oscar, Hazard, Mata and Torres, but they never looked like scoring from open play. Which funnily enough, didn’t matter as they scored two goals from set-pieces, with a massive helping hand from Arsenal.

The games opening goal came from a freekick and not even Torres could miss from 3 yards out. Koscielny was marking the Spaniard but Arsenal let the ball drop to knee height and Torres had a tap in.

The second goal, was a simple Mata freekick and his cross went past everyone and into the far corner.

The defending was atrocious which is particularly annoying as our defence is something that has been praised recently. Looking at our performances this season, our defending in open play has been excellent, really top drawer. Our positioning and defensive movement as a unit is much better than in previous seasons and we were known to concede stupid goals from open play. Unfortunately, our defending from set-pieces has gone to pot.

Against Manchester City, our defending was poor for their goal which was from a corner, and today we were undone by two freekicks.

And that is something we need to improve on if we want to progress in that area and pick up more points.

The talk before the game was about who would start in defence and upfront, and starting Vermaelen and Koscielny today made sense. But unfortunately Koscielny and Vermaelen were both culpable for the goals, Koscielny on the set-pieces and Vermaelen who gave away a needless freekick for the second goal.

A team like Chelsea will always play negatively and deep against Arsenal and will always look to score from a set-piece or on the break. As I’ve already said, in open play our defensive game has improved greatly, it’s just on set-pieces we struggle badly.

Our play today was okay but Chelsea know how to kill a game and once they scored their second ten minutes into the second half, we never really looked like scoring. Cazorla had two decent chances to score but generally seemed unable to make an impact, Podolski was played in a deeper role which never exploited his attacking prowess and Gervinho was erratic as ever. Diaby’s early injury meant Ramsey had to play in central midfield which was a shame as he’s been playing well on the right.

Mikel Arteta was excellent again, and one of the main reasons why our back four have had more protection this season – making the departure of Song pretty insignificant. Jenkinson and Gibbs look good in the fullback positions and Oxlade-Chamberlain tried to influence the game and did well in patches.

But the bottom line was we gifted Chelsea all 3 points.

 

10 thoughts on “Arsenal Mistakes Gift Lucky Chelsea Victory

  1. P6 W2 D3 L1

    Two wins from the opening 6 matches is actually pretty mediocre isn’t it, not the ‘great’ start some think we’ve had. We’ve been dreadful at set piece defending for years and that hasn’t changed this season. It’s more of the same really.

     
  2. Dropping/resting Mertesacker was a mistake and, despite their indiviidual qualities, I just don’t trust the Vermaelen-Koscienly partnership.

    Hugely disappointing result in a game we shouldn’t have lost.

     
  3. this article es BS!! both teams were great! and there is no luck, Torres great movement and Mata cross/shot were meant that way! plus there was equal dominance in the match! Chelsea missed some great chances for example torres and hazard at the end. Arsenal fans shouldn´t feel bad since they played great! but really this articles is bs!!

     
  4. pathetic take on a game where Chelsea was the better team and had the qualitiies Arsenal lacked. Still I liked the pressplay Arsenal produced on the midfield.

     
  5. As a gooner I saw a different game; I thought Chelsea controlled it well and Arsenal didn’t have enough energy to break them down or get through them often enough. For the first goal I thought Torres did well to get his leg in front of Kos but far too much looking at the man instead of being to attack the ball. For the 2nd – we’ve all seen those types of goals and it’s tough on the keeper – but still poor defending by Arsenal to have allowed it through to the danger area. I think that Gibbs may have been pushed a little – enough to stop him getting a clearance in and that took Kos by surprise.
    Giroud’s miss is now the 3rd in last minutes of the game where his movement created a chance but his finishing was not clinical enough. The margins are thin…. those three goals would have provided 2 wins instead of 2 draws and one draw instead of a defeat. +5 points.

    Right now I’m not sure if the glass is half full or half empty, but it’s certainly missing something…..

     
  6. Yes, and the first mistake was yet again the selection of an unbalanced side. Wenger was ecstatic against citeh with a draw, but it should have been a win with the correct balance. Likewise today. Last week the bad selection cost us 2 points. This week it cost us 3.

     
  7. After watching the highlights package again, I was actually shocked at how many very good opportunities we created – it certainly didn’t feel that way during the game. In terms of chances, we were actually the better team.

    Clearly it was an off-day for us, including Cazorla, although once again Chelsea proved that the way to defend against us is by playing deep defense, which is part of the reason we struggled.

    Not a disaster, but it leaves us with work to do.

     
  8. The first goal wasn’t entirely the fault of Koscienly, if you look properly before the ball was delivered the OX gave Luiz alot of space and kozzer was kinda guiding him through before the ball went in and thats where he lost focus and had his back facing the ball…. so the first goal wasn’t the kozzers fault and Mannone has to come out and deal with those balls but he didn’t

    The 2nd goal could be blamed on the Kozzer but than again even without his touch the ball was gonna end up at the back of the net!!
    The first goal was the crucial one and our keeper and our rising start let us down, we learn from it, cech was amazingly good in the 2nd half with some unbelievable saves and we also hit the bar and also the Giroud miss…. the least we deserved was a point but we didn’t get n e thing… a lesson well learnt with Wilshere, Rosicky and Sagna coming back we just can get better!!

    lastly i dont have much trust on Gibbs he is caught out of positing so many times!!!

     
  9. I keep hearing from the media we have made a good start to the season.2 wins in 6 games.9 points dropped out of 18(50%) and 4 pts out of 9 at how.This is not a good start
    We need a back up keeper to Szczesny.A DM and two strikers.Podolski is not prolific and Giroud is Chamakh MK 2
    For a home team you expect to create more chances than the away side but for long periods Chelsea controlled the game

     

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