Consider the following utterances from Arsène Wenger after a match in which Arsenal conceded after 18 seconds and were all but beaten by half-time. “Honestly, I feel the spirit of the team is great and they want to do well but Stoke just was off the block sharper and we have to learn from that. You come out of the game and think it’s unbelievable you didn’t get anything just because we didn’t start well.” Yes, poor old Arsenal, losing just because they did not start well. And as for unbelievable, you would think they would be accustomed to it. You may also think they will never learn from it under the Frenchman.
Wenger’s team developed a humiliating habit of being blown away in first halves last season, notably at Liverpool, Manchester City and Chelsea. Those teams were all title challengers whereas Stoke went into this match in 13th place yet were 3-0 up by half-time after goals by Peter Crouch, the superb Bojan Krkic and Jonathan Walters, and they could have been even further ahead before Arsenal belatedly roused themselves. Rather than learning, the Gunners appear to be regressing. Little wonder they have 12 points fewer than they did by this stage last term.
Arsenal fans must hope Wenger speaks more stridently in the dressing room than he does in public where, increasingly, he comes across as a man trying to rationalise his team’s failings rather than eradicate them. He should have been embarrassed to declare – after a match at the Britannia, of all places – that his team were “too tender in the tackle” and “maybe we were a bit feeling sorry for ourselves [after falling behind early]”, but instead he spoke as if satisfied to have offered some kind of explanation. Perhaps he was still flush with the relief of seeing Santi Cazorla and Aaron Ramsey score in the second half to spare Arsenal from an even heavier defeat. But this was still a walloping.
Wenger also pointed to his team’s injury problems as a point of mitigation, saying that having to field two 19-year-olds in defence meant “we were a bit too young at the back”. But while that seems a more acceptable explanation than persistent mental weakness, it does not really fly either. Because an injury to one high-class defender should not leave a team of Arsenal’s aspirations as vulnerable as they are and, with all due respect to Nacho Monreal, Laurent Koscielny was the only high-class centre-back missing. Arsenal’s lack of depth in that area is another problem that has long exasperated Arsenal fans, especially since the sale of Thomas Vermaelen in the summer.
Here it seemed like Calum Chambers and even the right-back Héctor Bellerín were having too much responsibility thrust on them too soon, albeit not quite to the same extent that Yaya Sanogo sometimes has had at the other end. Wenger answered “maybe” when asked whether the reason Chambers has been shown nine yellow cards this season – including two here – is that his inexperience leads to him being caught in the wrong position too often, although the manager still believed Chambers’ sending off was “farcical”.
The most scatty Arsenal defender was their most senior one, Per Mertesacker, who began by making a pitiful attempt to stop Crouch from opening the scoring and never looked steady.
The German is supposed to be Arsenal’s leader at the back but he has struggled for consistency this season, admitting several weeks ago that he was finding it difficult to refocus after his country’s World Cup triumph last summer. That, no doubt, is part of the reason that Stoke’s manager, Mark Hughes, felt targeting Arsenal’s defence would yield success.
Arsenal may have kept clean sheets for three successive matches before Saturday but Hughes believed they could still be got at, even if Koscielny had played. Hughes said he felt they were especially weak in the air, which is why he recalled Crouch for the first time in a month. “We had a gameplan and it worked to perfection,” said the approving striker.
That was another thing Arsenal looked alarmingly short of at times: a gameplan. Cazorla, Alexis Sánchez and Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain all showed flashes of skill but they seemed like individual ventures rather than patterned attacks, unlike the conniving of Bojan who produced brilliance within a well-crafted Stoke framework. And the home side had an edge up front whereas Arsenal had Olivier Giroud, who squandered a superb opportunity when the score was 1-0 and proceeded to produce a performance which if it had come from Mario Balotelli, for example, would have been lambasted.
Danny Welbeck was far more dynamic and dangerous when introduced in the second half but he, of course, has his frustrating days too. Up front, then, is another area where Arsenal cannot count on consistent top quality. Believe this, Monsieur Wenger, Arsenal are pretty much where they deserve to be in the league.
Man of the match Bojan Krkic (Stoke City)
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