Premier League Match 16 - Arsenal 3 Southampton 0

 

I Predict Saints Will Be Shite and Lose Easily

Apparently we’ve not won away Arsenal in the league in 26 attempts. That’s a good record isn’t it? We do of course have a couple of League Cup wins in recent times which were secured with goals by the likes of Ryan Bertrand, Jordy Clasie and Nathaniel Clyne. Against a full-strength Arsenal at Highbury or at the Emirates? Forget it.

Today’s assignment is made more difficult by suspensions to two of our definite first team starters with both Oriol Romeu and Mohammed Salisu missing this one. In addition, it’s not expected that Jan Bednarek will be fit so the only two centre backs standing are Lyanco and Jack Stephens, who is himself coming back off of a three-month injury absence. All in all, this is not one that I am expecting to get anything from so anything will be a bonus. Oh and of course, it’s Big Willy time.

Arsenal started the league campaign terribly and lost the first three games and were bottom of the league but then the fixture list got kind for them and they beat a few sides that they were expected to beat and now comes the levelling off period.  They are what they are, a 7th to 10th place team at Premier League level. This of course is not enough for Arsenal and though Mikel Arteta and his team have shown signs of improvement, you do wonder if the patience is going to be there to allow him to think long term. They certainly have some promising youngsters with the Saka, Martinelli, Odegaard and Smith-Rowe. Thomas Partey makes a difference now he’s fit in midfield but the major problem at the moment seems to be the form of Pierre Emerick Aubameyang who has a combination of not being arsed and getting old. Defensively they have two new regulars in Tomiyasu and Ben White, who is starting to prove something like his worth.  Tierney and Gabriel are decent but in every game I see Gabriel play, he either gets sent off or should get sent off. Aaron Ramsdale was proved to be a major upgrade in goal which is surprising given he has been relegated in the last two seasons that he has played at Premier League level. Hopefully he can show his Bournemouth or Sheffield United form today.  The shock is that neither Cedric or Calum Chambers get much of a look in.

The teams are in and Saints have more changes than expected. Big Willy is in goal, the centre backs are the fit again Bednarek and Stephens. This means that Lyanco is on the bench which I think is very harsh., Diallo is as expected, in for Romeu and there’s a change upfront with Che Adams injured and Adam Armstrong taking his place. The first thing that strikes me about our forwards is that there is a lot of pace there so we should be able to cause Arsenal a few problems with neither Ben White or Gabriel being the quickest. The thing that worries me is that our spine is missing and without Salisu, Romeu, Lyanco and Adams, we are a bit short physically and it strikes me as a team of nice footballers, without any bastards. This is a thing that Arsenal themselves have been accused of on many occasions.  Arsenal have no Aubameyang – dropped for disciplinary reasons.  Fair play to the manager for not putting up with that shit, even though the player is on an eye watering amount per week.

Here we go and Saints start well with a decent passing move out of defence with KWP finding Redmond with a crossfield ball and he in turn finds Tella who skips past Tomiyasu and drives to the edge of the box before scuffing one along the ground from 20 yards that Ramsdale just picks up.  Typical Saints move, lots of nice fart and no shit at the end.

We are dominating physically against Arsenal and winning possession with ease.  A Bednarek challenge set up another attack on the left hand side with KWP combining with Tella to free Adam Armstrong in the box and he cuts outside of Ben White before firing an effort at the near post, which Ramsdale does well to get down and save.

A ball over the top finds KWP bearing down on the box on the left hand side and Saka just runs straight through the back of him and that’s a clear foul right on the edge which brings the Arsenal man a yellow card. From the free-kick which is to the left of centre, JWP decides not to go for his favourite corner and goes for the far side top corner and gets too much on it and it flies over the bar

Ramsdale takes the goal-kick and gets of all back off Gabriel.  He takes a ropey touch and Broja nearly nips in but he gets it away to Ben White. 15 seconds later – 1-0 to Arsenal for fuck‘s sake. Arsenals passing frees Saka on the right hand side and Bednarek doesn’t come across so Saka gets his head up and cuts it back to the penalty spot and there is Lacazette with the freedom of North London, to pass it first time into the net, giving Big Willy not an earthly. When the ball hits the net, we have seven outfield players in the box and not one of them is marking a player.

Five minutes later it’s 2-0 as a cross comes in from the right hand side and Tierney somewhat fortuitously spoons it back into the box where it flips up in the air and Odegaard is completely unmarked to head the ball in the net. This is another defensive disaster with Bednarek and Stephens leaving it to each other to clear it and Diallo totally leaving Odegaard to run into the box for a free header. Pathetic and game over after 25 minutes.

Big Willy, having not touched the ball yet, is in the game straight after that and he creates his own work for himself by scuffing a clearance into midfield which is eventually played through to Saka who is clear on goal but Big Willy makes himself even bigger and stands up well to block the effort.

Things calm down a bit for the next 10 minutes but then get worse as Adam Armstrong pulls up and he has to go off.  Surely it’s Shane Long time but no, Elyounoussi is summoned.

Half-time and to be honest the referee may as well blow the final whistle now because there is no way on earth we’re getting anything out of this.  Maybe if we had senior players who were demanding more from certain individuals then we may have a chance… but we don’t and we haven’t.

The second-half starts with Arsenal having all the play and winning an early corner. The corner comes in and Big Willy has a big flap at it, misses and Gabriel bundles it into the net.  Luckily, the flag goes up for offside. It looks like he’s only offside because Caballero has come flying out and missed the ball, meaning that there are not two Saints players between Gabriel and the goal. Anyway, Martinelli wins a corner on the left hand side off of Livramento which has actually come off the Arsenal man but there you go. In comes the corner and in an almost carbon copy Caballero comes for it, gets nowhere near it and Gabriel gets above a half arsed jump from Bednarek and heads into the net. 3-0 and can we go home now? I mean it probably wasn’t a corner and it was probably a foul by Lacazette but it doesn’t really matter.

Willy Get There? No Willy Won't

It’s nearly four after some pathetic defending in the centre of Saints defence as Jack Stephens basically passes the ball to Martinelli and his right foot curling effort strikes the post before Odegaard smashes the rebound goalwards, which hits KWP and deflects wide.

Saka is next to have a go as he cuts in from the right hand side and despite the presence of about four defender around him, he casually strokes a shot goalwards, which hits the far post and out again.

And it gets worse again as Broja lamps off to be replaced by Lyanco and we change the formation.  With Arsenal not being bothered any more, we create a chance as Redmond picks up a ball deep inside the Arsenal box and cleverly find space to get the shot away which is actually straight out Ramsdale but he manages to make it look like a world-class save by flying in the air flapping his arms around and pushing over the bar.

We have another effort as the game dies down with Stephens doing well to intercept a ball that was intended for Martinelli and he fizzes it in to Tella, who again doesn’t catch the shock cleanly and though it’s on target, Ramsdale gets down easily enough to push it wide.  The end, thank fuck.

Well that was pretty shit and inevitable from the moment the Arsenal scored their first goal with their first attack. In the time before that, we had managed to create openings and have chances without scoring, as usual. Once Arsenal went ahead and especially when they added the second goal, there was never any chance of us scoring even once, let alone scoring enough goals to get a point. The third goal was a foul in my opinion but I can’t be bothered to get too annoyed about it because it really had no relevance to the game whatsoever. So, a shit day at the office it looks like all three of our main strikers are now injured with Armstrong and Broja going off today, which is going to leave us with an anxious wait to the next game where Shane Long may well be in the team.

The first Arsenal goal was a really good goal from their point of view but there was some horrible ball-watching when the ball finally did come into the box. The second goal was absolutely shit defending by the centre back pairing who are basically watching the ball bobble around and almost expecting the other one to deal with it as Odegaard headed it into the net. The one thing I will definitely criticise Ralph for today was the choosing of that centre back pairing. Both had been injured and Lyanco didn’t deserve to get dropped. Taking Lyanco out meant that we had one less bastard as I said at the start of the game and Bednarek and Stephens as a pairing were just too passive and were not difficult to play against in any way shape or form.  Let’s not sugar coat it here – they were terrible.

Where I struggle to criticise Ralph is that the team was set up well and was causing Arsenal problems and this is a pattern that happens most weeks. We start well and are usually the better side for a period of the game. It’s not Ralph’s fault that we don’t score and it’s not his fault that the defenders are ball watching or not getting across into the right position. Like I said, he picked those two defenders which I think is an issue but I’m coming round the way of thinking that the majority of our problems are the players that we can put out on the pitch just not being good enough.

There were a couple of players out there today who had quite a lot to gain by putting in decent performances and cementing their places in the team going forward. Adam Armstrong did very little before he got injured, Armando Broja had one of those games where he looked like he couldn’t be bothered. Nathan Redmond provided very, very little going forward and Elyounoussi was the same when he came on. Ibrahima Diallo had a kind of nothing game and KWP and Tino found it difficult to get forward much, probably because they had one eye on the car crash in central defence.  Big Willy did okay for his first game aside from being a bit flappy on corners. You could say that he should have been stronger on the third goal but he was trying to get the ball and was impeded and also, weak defending by Bednarek didn’t help.

It’s another one to write off as an expected result. It’s now 27 years since we won on the red side of North London so we have to write it off and say, no damage done. The bigger concern is the fixtures ahead, starting with palace away on Wednesday and Brentford at home at the weekend. The positives are that both Salisu and Romeu will be available and let’s hope that a couple of the strikers can also make recoveries. Oh yes, an appearance by Stuart Armstrong will be most welcome.

It’s not sour grapes but Arsenal weren’t even that good. A better, more ruthless team than us would’ve been one or two up before Arsenal got playing and then it’s a different game. We were ideal opposition for Arsenal to play given that they had lost three out of their last four games and we didn’t really provide any sort of challenge to them. In fact, we were very, very similar to what Arsenal get criticised for being when they are playing badly. Too lightweight, too many nice footballers at the senior players not stepping up to the plate. When you look at it, our senior players today were Bednarek Stephens, Redmond and JWP and all four were poor / average. Sure, we had a few shots and Ramsdale made a few saves for the cameras but did anyone seriously think we were going to score at any point?  Arsenal hit the inside of the post twice so it could’ve quite easily ended up being even worse. There was a quality issue at both ends of the pitch today for Saints and you are not going to win many games if you’ve got both of those things going on. As the great Nigel Atkins, Forever a Saint always said, draw a line under it and move on.