Swansea 3-2 Arsenal: Falling Away from the Top Four

Gloom. Doom. Two words that sum up quite nicely how I’m feeling about Arsenal at this moment. On a weekend when Spurs dropped points to Wolves, a win against Swansea was pretty much a must. A draw would have been massively disappointing. A loss is not far short of catastrophic. It’s not just the fact that Tottenham gained ground on us despite their own wretched result. Chelsea, the only other team we could conceivably catch, completed a fairly routine win over Sunderland. Four points now separate them and us. Further, Newcastle beat QPR today to move level with us on points. Had we beaten Swansea, we would have pulled away from them once again. As it is, we are looking over our shoulders and realising that Newcastle are not actually behind, they’re neck and neck. Seriously worrying.

I would now like to officially revise my position on Tottenham. I don’t think we will catch them. It’s not impossible, of course they are more than capable of bottling it, but they now have a 10 point lead with 17 games to go. That would be difficult enough to overcome even if we were a team in decent form, but we’re not. In the league, we’ve taken four points from our last four games. None in our last two.

It looked like it would be easy. Four minutes in, van Persie’s superb finish caused Martin Tyler to pause in his fellatio of Swansea City, albeit briefly. I worried over the next few minutes that the mistakes from the Fulham game would be repeated, and I was right. We failed to build on our early lead, and Swansea fought their way back into the game well. Their penalty was never a penalty, but at that point there were 16 minutes gone and we should have had enough to retake control of the game. Sadly not. The déjà vu continued after the break, with Dyer’s goal not against the run of play. Even at this point, though, we were in a better position than against Fulham, in that we had plenty of time to get back into it. The removal of Benayoun and the arrival of Henry was a move in the right direction. I actually thought that Ramsey should have made way as he had an absolute nightmare. Even apart from giving away the penalty and Swansea’s second goal, he seemed affected by the crowd’s booing of him when he was on the ball. He gave it away too much, something that quite a few Arsenal players could be accused of today. Even so, we got the vital second goal, a wonderful Djourou through ball splitting apart the Swansea defence and finding Theo Walcott, who finished calmly. It is almost certainly too dramatic, but I will say it anyway: our season hinged on the next 10 minutes. Would Arsenal play like the Arsenal of October, November and December, killing off the game and wrapping up three points? If so, they would gain ground on Tottenham, and go into next week’s clash with United in a confident mood. Alternatively, would Arsenal play like the Arsenal of February-September 2011, totally bottling it and conceding almost immediately? Sadly, you know the answer, and we will host Man United next weekend with a serious lack of confidence and form.

So where is the problem? This being Arsenal, injuries take some of the blame. I really thought we missed Arteta today. Ramsey did not do well, but neither did Benayoun. The midfield in general, including Walcott and Arshavin, should have dominated possession and chances after van Persie’s opener, but allowed themselves to outplayed. Injuries to full-backs and Vermaelen also affected us: Miquel looked alright at times, lost at others. Not a great day for Szczesny either, who was beaten somewhat too easily for the second goal and was probably at fault for the third. Injuries and off-days aside, I don’t know if there is some deeper problem with this Arsenal side that will prevent them from achieving their potential. I am tempted to say that there is not; the psychological demons of last year appeared to have been more or less exorcised until the Fulham game. Time will tell if they are resurfacing or if this is more of a blip that can be put down to an unusually makeshift back four, even for Arsenal, and a midfield missing one of its key anchors of this season in Arteta.

What did not aid my foul mood was the stream of bullshit emanating from the mouth of Martin Tyler. I don’t know if anyone else found him unusually irritating today, but I was reaching for the mute button every three minutes. His obsession with Swansea’s style meant that every pass they completed was evidence that they are on their way to the pantheon of football’s greatest sides. At one point in the first half he said that Arsenal were ‘being given a lesson in the way they like to play’.  Not one of their goals, indeed not one of their chances, came from wonderful football. The first was from a very harsh penalty, the second a mistake when Ramsey gave the ball away, and the third a hopeful through ball and a hesitant goalkeeper. Not quite the triangles that Tyler was trying to portray. At one point he mentioned how they were emulating Barcelona. That’s not to take anything away from Swansea. They beat us, and they deserved to beat us. Now we need to work out why.

All in all, then, not a good weekend. The chances of us getting into the top four are now entirely dependent on Chelsea and Tottenham, and once again we have to start looking over our shoulder at those in 6^th place, when we should be looking ahead. All is not lost though. Tottenham are still Tottenham. For now, we need to look at where we went wrong today, and fix all the problems before the visit of Manchester United in a week’s time.

Gulp.

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