Let’s swallow the bitter pill « Untold Arsenal: Arsenal News, supporting the club, the players and the manager

By Walter Broeckx

Any defeat hurts. Some defeats hurt more.  Sometimes life sucks and so does football. All that seem to go wrong for the moment goes wrong for Arsenal.

I haven’t had the stomach to review the game and I am happy that one of the other ref reviewers is doing the game. But on the other hand it really is sometimes very enlightening to see a game again as it brings and shows you some things that went unnoticed the first time. As then you are looking full of tension and passion. But when you know the score you can focus more on other things. So I might be wrong but I had the impression we didn’t play badly. Always hard to say after a defeat but still we didn’t got played of the park as was predicted by some pundits…and by some fans.

I think we were in control most of the time with Tottenham mostly relying on swift counters and a lucky break. Most of our passing was good but I do remember a few times that some of our easy passing was not up to the usual standard. This could be down to the defensive work of Tottenham or maybe the fact that some players were not really 100% in the game.

My impression was that Arteta was trying to help Cocquelin more and didn’t go forward as much as in other games. This could have been down to an instruction from the manager in order to help Cocquelin and to make sure he wouldn’t be flooded by the Spurs players. And with the likes of Modric and Van Der Vaart this is always a possibility for a player and certainly a young player. But I think that Cocquelin did a good job most of the time. I think he looks ready to play his part. All though I still think that Song is the better option in defensive midfield. But of course one has to start somewhere with your career and even though White Hart Lane is not the best places to come to, he showed that he will not be over run that easily.

I have seen Cocquelin play this summer for the France U21 team at the world cup and he really looked not impressive at all in those games. But I have heard that the manager of the France team had almost forbidden him to go forward. So he just sat there in front of the back 4. But in the games I have seen him play for Arsenal he really looks a complete player to me.

But with Arteta hanging a bit deeper Ramsey didn’t get the support he needed at times. Which resulted in losing a few balls. I did see a few misunderstandings between our midfielders and against a team with fast forwards and a fast winger like Tottenham this is asking for troubles.  So our keeping of the ball by our midfielders was not as good as I have seen them this season. Let alone the seasons before.

The men who went missing was our forward players. I don’t know how fit Theo and Gervinho were to be honest. Maybe they were fit but I really doubt they were match fit. They didn’t have much of an impact in the game. And the old devil called missed chances came back to haunt us. We had a few scoring chances in both halves but we didn’t make the most of it. Not that Friedel had to make many great saves. No, we just shot wide or over…but didn’t managed to hit the target enough.

Certainly the miss by Gervinho when still 0-0 was a downer. He knew that he had to shoot it to the near post as Friedel was going the other way and there was no coming back from the keeper. And then he shot wide of the goal. That really should have been the 0-1 to Arsenal. A bad miss. And a costly miss as we found out later.

I’m not going to get in the path of the ref reviewers that much but a turning point did involve the ref. The whole goal and aftermath of the goal was a version of missed chances by the ref to do what he is paid for. Another good example on the fact that we really do need something like video refs to help sort things out.

I think the first 20 minutes of the second half we really should have won the game. We were all over Tottenham in the second half and they could hardly get a counter going. Okay they did on a seldom occasion but we really pressed them with their back against the wall. Our equaliser was fully deserved on the balance of play. We tried to score another goal but it just didn’t work out.

And then you felt that each mistake could be costly. Sagna breaking his leg outside the field was not very helpful. Jenkinson had to come in a rush and this is not really a good thing to have. If you can prepare yourself well you enter the field in a completely different shape. Jenkinson struggled against Bale but I have seen many big international defenders struggling with Bale.

And unfortunately it was Arsenal that made a mistake. I’m not going to say much about Szczesny in this because I felt it coming from the moment Tottenham got a throw in and we just went asleep. That really was the worst moment of the game for Arsenal. Nobody picking up that run was amazing. I hope some words are said about that moment on the training ground. That is the mistake that cost us. The suddenly swerving and  dipping shot made our keeper not look great but the Tottenham attack shouldn’t have gone that far in the first place.

I wonder if we would have seen Park make his PL debut if Sagna would not have broken his leg in the last quarter?  But now this was impossible and we lost an attacking option with Sagna getting injured. I would have gambled and taken Coquelin off and throw in the extra striker. But now Arshavin came in and he didn’t get really in the game.

3 points lost. 3 points that hurt a bit more than the average points lost. And by the way the game was played we shouldn’t have lost those points. The one-armed Dutchman, the blind(ed) cat, the lucky swerving ball and the fact that we didn’t take our chances cost us 3 points.

Oh well, let’s swallow the bitter pill and hope for no more injuries in the next 14 days. I think we can do without them for the rest of the season.

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