With a bit more quality in the final third and a bit more accuracy in front of goal, Arsenal might well have stood a chance of ending Arsene Wenger’s miserable record against Jose Mourinho, with the Frenchman still to record a single victory over his Chelsea counterpart.

At least it was not a humiliation this time, although a 2-0 defeat continues the Gunners’ poor run of away games against the top sides. But it was a hugely different encounter to the Stamford Bridge mauling that we got in March. For long periods of the gamer, Arsenal matched the home side for energy and aggression, which is something I did not think would happen.

Perhaps it was the scuffle between the two managers on the touchline after Gary Cahill launched himself into a studs up lunge on Alexis Sanchez that convinced the Arsenal players to get stuck in. And they did that part of the game well, it was just a shame that we then lacked our usual sharpness going forward.

Part of the reason for that is that Chelsea have a well drilled and very strong team that defends from the front, but our passing and decision making was lacking at the crucial times. Mesut Ozil was particularly at fault as the German once again looked out of sorts and struggled to have any influence. If we could just get both parts of the game going at the same time, we might even start winning some of the big games.

3 thoughts on “Arsenal game review. Better defending but NO cutting edge

  1. A sensible summary without the doom and gloom spouted by many fans. Focus is on Arsenal getting no shots on target. Chelsea had 2 shots on target, a third being the cross deflected off Flamini. Effectively the game was decided by one moment of brilliance by Hazard and a mistake by Koscielny. Let’s not forget the weak ref who should have given Arsenal a penalty for handball by Fabregas. He gave a corner, it obviously touched his arm and his arm was obviously not close to his body so where’s the doubt ? Both teams were set up predominantly not to concede and unfortunately for Arsenal they made one mistake which they paid for.

  2. Arsene Wenger remains d prob of d team.. he is just making nuisance of hmself wt is poor and bias selectns/subs.. he is destroying stars (hleb, arshavin, gervihno, rosicky, ozil, sanchez, campbell, podosky, vermaelene, arteta etc), wyl d ‘stars’ he tnks he is making r eventually always deserting him (henry, fabregas, nasri, van persie, denilson, song), unfortunately4him, more (wilshere, ramsey, chamberlain, gibbs, chambers, koscielny, jekinson, welbeck, gnabry, myachi, coquelin etc) wl stl go away4rm him to make beta illustrous careers! ARSENE WENGER IS CONFUSED AND BLIND TO D WEAKNESSES OF HIS TACTICS

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.