Broken

Broken is a word we’ve been hearing far too often from an Arsenal point of view of late & last night only emphasised that point significantly. We went into the game yesterday in dire need of a result & for the first time during our poor run of form, I found myself not worrying about the performance necessarily, but just getting the 3 points. This team just needs to win a match, because over the last couple of months, we’ve completely forgotten how. It was Brighton who proved to be the latest team to inflict further pain upon us yesterday evening & at the full time whistle you just couldn’t help but feel utterly deflated about what you had, once again, just witnessed.

Trying to write anything meaningful about our games lately has become pretty tough, I mean, there’s only so many ways you can describe the same performance time after time. I don’t need to explain it in any great detail to you, because you’ve all seen it before, unfortunately it’s gotten to the stage where we aren’t even overly surprised by it & that’s a pretty frightening thought. To the starting line up then, I was again a little surprised by Freddie’s choices, with Sokratis pairing Luiz at the centre of our defence. This pair is the sort that gives you utter nightmares & watching them defend lately has been quite frankly, just plain uncomfortable. One of the biggest frustrations I have when watching us defend is just how much we back off the opposition. As soon as they run with the ball at any kind of pace towards our goal we fail to engage, we stand off them, continuously retreat & therefore end up conceding plenty of chances. Because of this we’re giving away a lot of free kicks in & around our area, not to mention inside of it. With this lack of engagement higher up the pitch & letting teams into the box unchallenged, it’s no surprise we sit top of the table when it comes to penalties conceded this season (4). Back to the line up, I did agree with Freddie’s decision to take Guendouzi out of the starting eleven, with Torriera taking his spot. As much as we admire him, he’s still so young & we cannot be relying on him so much at his age. He has some fantastic attributes to his game, but it wouldn’t be unfair to say he’s been a little off it the last few games.

During the game there seemed to be a more evident sign of frustration with the players. Lacazette looked unhappy throughout, something that’s been apparent during his last few appearances. There was also the uncomfortable outburst from Aubameyang that was aimed at Joe Willock during the first half. It’s hard to watch, I like players who are demanding, but this just left a sour taste in the mouth. Freddie has a massive task on his hands at the moment & I genuinely feel for him a little bit really. What he’s taken over is a real mess. It’s clear for us all to see that this is going to take some serious time, or a real resurgence of form that doesn’t appear to be surfacing anytime soon. We haven’t seen the “manager bounce” either, since Emery’s sacking there’s been no real sign of improvement, anywhere. The defence is terrible, midfield non-existent, the attack lacklustre & ball movement is slow. We’ve seen the occasional 15-20 minute spell in the last couple of games, but that just isn’t good enough.

It’s crazy to think that relegation talk has been spoken of so widely lately. I’ve said it in the last couple of weeks that we are showing relegation form & that isn’t just based on this season. When you look at how we’ve played throughout 2019, it’s been severely below average & if it doesn’t change anytime soon, that talk will only intensify. It’s a baffling thought to even comprehend Arsenal getting relegated & surely we will not see it happen. This is our worst run of form since 1977 however & so the club really needs to rally together to try & turn things around.

We face West Ham away on Monday night then. We also have some tricky fixtures coming up afterwards, mind you all them look that way lately. We face City, Utd & Chelsea by the time new year hits us. Come 2020, our vision for the rest of the season will be a little clearer & like the rest of you I’m eagerly awaiting the upturn in our fortunes.

Fuck me, let’s hope this gets better soon.