Weekend’s defeat to Chelsea at home was Arsenal’s first defeat this season. On the day when most people expected Arsenal to come on top, they bottled. Reasons why arsenal got beaten in my opinion are a few. Defense was all over the places, the goals conceded were avoidable, free kicks that were given away should never have been given away, now Steve Bould has got some work to do in training. Diaby’s injury didn’t help either, his substitute Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain had a horrible game, even though he got an assist.
- A poor game from the Welsh man once again
With Diaby gone, Ramsey had to drop back in the midfield and Ramsey being more attack minded then Diaby was never gonna help out Arteta in the midfield the way Diaby would have done. Another reason was Arsene Wenger’s tactics. He got it wrong with dropping last weekend’s man of the match at Man City Per Mertesaker on the bench, changed the winning formula, they picked Laurent Koscielny, who is faster than Per Mertesacker, for this game.
But I wonder whether Mertesacker is becoming the kind of personality Arsenal need in defense – and whether they missed him on Saturday, and then with he substitutions taking Podolski off when Ox was having a game to forget. Despite all these mistakes, give Chelsea credit the way they played, went into the game as underdogs but outplayed Arsenal at their own game, kept possession created a few chances and whenever Arsenal had the ball, they pressed, no space was given in the midfield to the Arsenal players in the midfield, kept Cazorla quite, Ramires and Mikel for that deserve praises.
Arsenal’s next game is in the Champions League now at home to Oympiakos, which gives an ideal opportunity to the players to get over Chelsea’s defeat before another London derby against West Ham at the weekend.