Back to Base Camp

Sunday, 28 September 08, 08:20 AM · Comments(3)

What a total let down. Unbelievable. If Tuesday night saw one of the best, if not the best, performance from an Arsenal side at the Grove, yesterday evening was surely the worst. After the gourmet feast of football served by the kids on Tuesday night, their elders served up fare that would have been indigestible at a tenner yesterday evening. Never mind paying £45 to watch that bollocks.

The worst thing about it was that I knew after 10 minutes we would lose, I said so to Jo's dad. There was no pace, no penetration and seemingly no effort. And that's what hurts the most this afternoon. Hull City are a promoted side and I don't care how well they played, and I don't actually think they did play that well (well enough to deserve the win, mind) there is no excuse for Arsenal losing a game like that. Not even if they had one eye on the Porto game on Tuesday.

William Gallas; now I don't want to point the finger, we win as a team, we lose as a team, but how many times does he have to go sleepwalking at a corner before Arsène does something about him? Club captain he may be, that doesn't, in my book, make him undroppable. Of course, he came closest to salvaging a point with a header thumped against the bar late on, but if he had done his job in his own penalty area, we wouldn't have been in the position we found ourselves in last night. Mistakes by Gallas have cost us 3 league goals and 2 league defeats already this season. Something needs to be done because it feels like we're going to concede every time we face a corner. Hull only needed 4 to score one goal, we had something like 14! I would love to see Djourou come back in, I think Silvester the cat is far more likely. Whether he can sort it out is anyone's guess but the Gallas and Touré partnership is not working.

That being said, Theo Walcott, a lovely run for the goal aside, was back to the confidence shy player that has been so frustrating up until recently. He wasted a great opportunity early on after a lovely ball by Fabregas put him clear. He wanted too many touches. Eboue found him unmarked and six yards out, he wanted another touch. There was another instance as well, can't remember what happened, but he was very disappointing. That said, I felt if anyone of the attacking four, apart from Eboue, should have come off, it was Robin van Persie. What has happened to this boy? He is supposed to be a world class striker, yet he constantly needs 6 touches to take the ball and pass it to someone. I never thought I would be saying this, and perhaps that sound I can hear is my knee hitting my desk, but I think Nick Bendtner should be partnering Adebayor right now. And there's someone else who had a very quiet match. I would keep Ade in, though, as I think his physicality and pace offers something up front nobody else has. At the moment, I don't see Robin offering anything we couldn't get from Bendtner.

Eboue was back to standard yesterday too, I'm not singling him out, but who 8 yards out and with only the keeper to beat would look to pass the ball? A converted full back would, I guess. Fair enough if you're going to pass to a decent option, but make the pass. He doesn't have the required composure in the penalty area.

It would be unfair to conclude this blog post without giving credit to a Hull City team who, surprising us all perhaps, came to play, scored a wonderful goal to level the match up and up until Cesc Fabregas tried to singlehandedly drag us back from the brink had had more shots on target in the match. I don't know how the stats on that panned out in the end, but I do know that for the quality of the equalising goal; and their defending in the last 15 minutes, yes, they parked the bus- who wouldn't have?- they fully deserved to win yesterday. I hope we learnt that, even with all the talent we have at our disposal, you can't win games if you only turn up for half an hour of the 90 minutes.

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