Arsenal seem to be incapable of attacking or playing as a team | OneFootball

Arsenal struggling with same old problems again. by Konstantin Mitov

Well lovely Arsenal people. here we are again. It’s a global pandemic, yet Arsenal still manage to be up there with the most depressing things you can imagine. We are playing Wolverhampton at home and we are beaten again, but what really hurts is again our style of play.

After our Villa defeat, Arteta said we didn’t play as a team and today that was evident again. And it wasn’t just sloppy passes and lack of concentration. Our players have the ball and they look around and there’s nobody to pass it to. It doesn’t look like we’ve trained in ways to attack and how to break the opposition up.

We’re heavily relying on individual brilliance to give us something, but the players lack confidence and it’s evident. Our midfield is a huge problem. Xhaka and Ceballos were non-existent again. There isn’t much to say here, those players are as good as a relegation midfield. We should’ve sold Xhaka when he flipped the fans, and we went for Ceballos on the cheap and you can see it.

It was too easy to move the ball through us. In the first half we were defending with 11 men in our own half. Even that didn’t help us, as we were stretched on the wings and the goals we conceded were shocking. Leno for me should be dropped. His positioning was extremely poor on the first goal, and he never managed to recover, but the second was truly pathetic. He should’ve saved, then we should’ve cleared it, but instead we let them score, because they wanted it more.

I don’t think the players we have play for the shirt or the manager, no matter what they say. Arteta doesn’t seem to trust them either, with constant rotations and change of rotations which seem to confuse the players more than help them. They shouldn’t be spared the criticism though.

Even if we aren’t playing well I expect to see a fight from them. Where is Aubameyang when you need a captain? Give a rallying cry, show some energy, be a leader. I didn’t see one player who gave me confidence he can make something happen.

This is the first time ever in the 15+ years I’ve followed Arsenal, where we are just incapable of attacking. If we count our goal as one from a set piece, we’ve not scored from open play in probably close to 10 hours now. Last season we had 16 points after 10 games with a goal difference of +1. Now we have 13 and a negative goal difference of -2.

The way I see it, either the club is willing to heavily back Arteta in January, or he’ll be gone soon. There have been times where I felt we needed just those one or two players to make us a really good team, but now I can’t see how one player will suddenly change the atmosphere around the club.

Football is an unforgiving industry where mistakes are heavily paid for, and we should think very carefully how much we’re willing to invest into the Edu-Arteta pair and then if we chose to opt for a new manager, not just cheap out, but bring someone in who is up to the task at hand – and it’s a steep mountain to climb.

Konstantin