I can’t accept Arsenal’s lack of passion, desire and fight in Villa defeat | OneFootball

Arsenal crumble under pressure yet again. by Konstantin Mitov

Well lovely Arsenal people, it’s happened again. We’re throwing it away for the third season in a row. Yes, mathematically it’s not over but that second half performance told you everything you need to know about Arsenal.

When the going gets tough we crumble. It was in our hands. Beat 7 teams we’re better than on paper and we win it. Liverpool threw it away, it was all in our hands. The minute it was all on us we failed miserably.

Aston Villa were the only team that deserved to win this game. Good ebening! Don Unai schooling Arteta again. I haven’t forgotten that Villarreal game. This performance was similar. ‘Different players, “different” Arsenal’ some said. Same old manager though.

We sacked Unai for missing out on top 4 and losing the EL final and didn’t back him with the players he wanted. We should already be looking for a new manager as the season will end officially on Wednesday.

Villa played on Thursday, 48 hours later than us, had Douglas Luiz out and still looked the far better team. I can accept defeat, but the lack of passion, desire and fight is a death sentence. You can have all the ability in the world, but if you don’t want it, if you don’t work hard, you don’t get it.

It all started from the line up. Zinchenko. This player would never touch a ball with the first team again if it was up to me. He shouldn’t have started, we had 2 other options, but no, we opted to have a liability and voila, it paid off. For them of course.

The unfortunate reality is that City will win it again without even needing to work hard for it. Granit Xhaka lifted the Bundesliga title today. Think about Xabi Alonso in his first season ending Bayern’s domination. It’s about mentality, the desire to win. They are still unbeaten for god’s sake.

Mikel has been here 5 years. How many times does history have to repeat itself? We even had leads against Tottenham and City in the past 2 seasons. I tried to warn you, saying that bad results with us come in pairs, well here it is. Bayern and now this. Both competitions thrown in a week.

Even if we do beat Bayern, which we should do, but given our situation now will be a true miracle, what happens if we face City in the semis? They’d wipe the floor with us. Mikel Arteta has terribly mismanaged the squad.

Declan Rice is playing every game, even though he’s been poor and obviously tired, and our midfield has been overran 3 games in a row. The only difference at Brighton was that we took the lead and they lacked quality. If one pass eliminates our midfield, I’d be throwing the hairdryer on the players, unfortunately we had a statue on the bench.

And the squad is a reflection of the manager – clueless. I had to drive 4 hours back from a trip and I delayed it to watch this abomination of a performance. No wonder the fans were leaving early, they are not stupid, we could see we’re never winning this game and the title is gone.

Why is Smith Rowe coming on? Is Partey a ghost? Last season he was compared to Rodri, now he’s suddenly a nobody? Player favoritism and over-working the same players is why we don’t have enough steam now. Pep can bench De Bruyne and they’d still win. They can go to the Bernabeau and score 3. They have players who can decide a game on individual quality.

We have this “system”, but the moment it doesn’t work, we’re screwed. That was the first game we went behind in the league this year and we had no clue how to respond. Our subs were negative, Villa’s were positive and they won the game.

Football is sometimes simpler than people trying to work it out. Villa wanted it more. Let that sink in, we didn’t want to take a grip on the title. 20 years and it’ll easily take another 20 with a mindset like that. City have never been pegged back in a title race. It will not happen this season.

If I had to make a guess, I’d bet some money on Wolves beating us next weekend. City play in the FA cup, it’ll be another chance to go top of the table and we will bottle it again. The last thing I want to say is that this fanbase absolutely deserves this. Toxic positivity is the reason why we are here. If this is Real Madrid, explanations would be demanded. Here, everything is okay.

The state of this football was summarised when Odegaard was taken off, the one player who had the ability to keep the ball, and the only one with desire, he gave the armband to Jesus who was subbed at the same time and didn’t even had the time to put it on!

You could’ve played Benny hill over this scene and laugh, otherwise you have to cry. But this fanbase will find another excuse. We had it in our hands. There’s no-one else to blame.

Konstantin

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