Where to Even Begin?

Good morning all. 

My heart still hasn't stopped racing and my body is still in fight or flight. How about you? 

Yesterday, Arsenal smoothly and easily secured an uneventful 1-0 win away at West Ham. Arsenal's critics have been right all season, we are a boring team who plays boring matches that nobody bothers to watch. The only things that made the game any interesting were just the small matters of the humongous stakes at play, the injuries to our fullbacks, the fact we had to substitute a substitute due to the manager needing to correct his original big decision to play our DM at RB, West Ham missing a gilt-edged chance to go 1-0 up, Trossard scoring a momentous goal and a teeny weeny VAR call to rule out a West Ham equaliser at the end of the game. Hang on a second, something isn't adding up here. Maybe these critics are wrong? Maybe they are actually mostly just people with agendas trying to say anything to throw dirt on Arsenal's name and discredit any success the club may achieve? I guess we will never know. 

I wanted to share my thoughts and feelings during the key moments in this game, which are probably not too dissimilar to all of yours. I went into this game fairly confident which is unlike me, but that starting XI and the confident boost we got from the Champions League results just made me feel like we would really show up at the London Stadium with our chests puffed out. 

I thought we started the game in a way that very much continued on from our last couple of performances. The starting lineup being unchanged played a big part in this, but we still managed to perform really well and had West Ham on the ropes for the first 20 minutes of the match. We hit the woodwork twice during a single sequence of play and you felt that the goal was imminent. 

Then the big turning point happened. The worry in the back of my mind that our fragile little Ben White was being played too much in a short space of time materialised. You could say it was an unfortunate impact injury and you wouldn't be incorrect per say. Let me also be absolutely clear that I do not agree with Gary Neville's thoughts (shock, why is he allowed to commentate on all our games at the moment when his agenda is so clear?) - this injury is not Ben White's fault for the way he approached the challenge. It was a 50/50 and in that split second he made a judgment that to not fully follow through would a) mitigate the risk of injury and b) possibly result in us regaining either possession of the ball or our defensive shape. It wasn't a 50/50 in a crucial area of the pitch where to not win it would result in a goal scoring opportunity, it was early in the game and he has suffered a lot of injuries and needs to be sensible in how he approaches the physical side of the game. White getting injured was a real blow but I still felt we would be ok making the obvious change and putting Mosquera on in his place. 

How wrong I was! Arteta said 'Haha! Didn't see that one coming did ya?' and threw on Zubimendi instead, moving Rice to RB. I get the logic in some ways, we were totally on top and so beefing out the midfield at the expense of the defence seemed a low risk strategy that could turn our big chances we were consistently getting into an opening goal. West Ham weren't really threatening us at all. The problem is, it went a bit wrong. Losing Rice in midfield meant West Ham were finding more space between our midfield and defence, driving at us a bit more and allowing them to get out of their half more easily. Having Rice at RB meant Summerville and Diouf were able to skip past him with relative ease on the turn and create problems down that flank. We also lost any creativity from our right hand side as Rice couldn't do what Ben White can do from that position going forwards. 

Finally, as much as I don't like digging out players, Zubimendi in midfield was, let's face it, atrocious. Apart from his half decent cameo against Atlético in the second leg, his performances of late haven't been to the expected standard. It's no wonder MLS has been able to keep his place in the team after dislodging him in the lineup against Fulham. I think what we are seeing with Zubimendi is a mixture of him being knackered from playing so many minutes and being one of the hardest workers during those minutes (see his running and distances covered stats), as well as him being worked out a little bit by opposition teams. He doesn't have the press resistance that MLS has where he can receive the ball under pressure and turn to drive at defences and pick out the killer pass to our forwards. I think he will come good and he is still an important squad member, Arteta just might need to figure out a tweak to our setup when he plays to get the best out of him. 

I was angry at the manager for making this error, but to be fair to him he quickly corrected it by getting Mosquera on for Calafiori at half time, moving MLS to LB. I was happy to see Mosquera at RB but I was unhappy to see Calafiori come off. Sky Sports said Calafiori was taken off for tactical reasons but the manager said afterwards that it was due to injury. It's like we have done a very specific and obscure deal with the devil at the moment - "Yes you can win the league, but you will NEVER have consistency at full back...Mwahahahahahahahahaha!". In the longer term, we hope Calafiori is ok as I think he brings the performance levels higher in this team when he is in it, but if not we at least have the very capable Hincapié and MLS to come in for these final huge games. 

As for the RB position, this is a bit of a problem now for me because Timber looks nowhere near being back in the starting lineup and Ben White was seen in a knee brace leaving the stadium. Mosquera is an imperfect backup and, whilst he might be ok in our next two games, I don't feel great about him being our main defender up against Kvaratskhelia. 

If West Ham started to grow into the game after the Zubimendi substitution, the Mosquera one put some breaks on their momentum and the game started to even out a bit again. It then started to tip back into our favour as the manager made some more positive substitutions and brought on Havertz, Ødegaard and Madueke. Saka coming off is always a shame but he didn't look at it for most of this game, and following his comments about playing through pain to Henry on CBS Sports after the Champions League game I can't help but feel like that was at play here somewhat with his performance. The subs that came on really turned the game back in our favour, which came to a head as our club captain showed tremendous composure to get the ball into the box, hold off the challenge from Diouf and find Trossard who tucked it away superbly. I let out a scream so loud that my girlfriend had to come down and check on me. I haven't felt such a rush of emotion and released it like that in a long time. I started to lose a bit of belief at this point in the game and this goal gave me unexpected euphoria. I regained my confidence and thought surely we see this through now, but it will be stressful. Well, how right I was. 

Before we get to the big final moment of the game, I want to take a step back and talk about that Raya save a few minutes before our goal. Yes, I think Fernandes has to score as it is a glorious chance and he chooses the wrong option for the shot that gets saved. Yes, I felt pure rage towards our defenders allowing him to get in that position. But I take nothing away from the save from Raya, he did the best he could do on the off chance Fernandes takes the wrong option and it paid off. That is top class goalkeeping and I think you can make a real case for him being our player of the year. How many saves has he made to keep us in games this season? Countless. How many crosses has he confidently claimed to take the pressure off us in tight games? In fact, it's almost as if the only way he could be stopped from doing that would be if someone illegally blocked him from claiming the ball...

Let me make this very clear - it is a clear foul on Raya, which happens before the hundreds of others that occur in the box during that corner and during most other corners in the league this season. It is only controversial because of the stakes at play and the fact it happens at the end of the match. If this happened in minute 30 of a mid-table nothing clash where one team was already 5-0 up, it wouldn't get half as much scrutiny. That's normal human nature and I understand it, it is a huge moment at both ends of the table. However, the clear biases, agendas and outright lies I have seen spouted by bitter haters like Peter Schmeichel, Shay Given and Joe Hart is frankly ludicrous. People citing how we have benefitted from this type of thing but then either giving no examples or giving examples of incidents that are not as clear cut as this one. His shirt is pulled and, most importantly, his literal arm is being grabbed to stop him claiming the ball. People need to get over it. 

I must admit, whilst it all played out I was just about ready to check into the ICU and ring up the British Heart Foundation. You can't trust the PGMOL at the best of times and this was a key moment that would decide much more than this match result. I still haven't recovered from this trauma and my counsellor will be hearing about this in my next session. When the decision went our way, and the final whistle blew shortly after, the joy I expressed was immeasurable. I couldn't believe we got through a game of that pressure and magnitude with a win. 

It's interesting because before the game I was very much looking at our remaining fixtures as a collective, seeing the last two league games as more straightforward. But now, after going through that hell yesterday, I am very much in one-game-at-a-time mode and am giving that Burnley game the respect it deserves. Michael Jackson has got them playing with some fight and freedom, as we saw against a Villa team that albeit is somewhat preoccupied elsewhere in their focus. Who knew he had skills in management from beyond the grave, on top of his musical talent? Sorry, I had to make some sort of reference there, it's Human Nature. 

It'll be interesting to see how we fair now that we have such a long break before Burnley, as well as for all of our remaining games because it's pretty much one game per week from here on in. It might give some players a chance to build up their fitness or recover from any injuries and knocks. We shall await for the manager to give us no updates at all throughout the week on that. Assuming Calafiori and White are out for Burnley, with no other injury updates to the squad, I would keep the same XI as that which started the West Ham game but I would get Hincapié and Mosquera in the fullback positions. It should be enough to at least get through the Burnley game, possibly even the Palace game if needed. 

Finally from me, I've had a go at putting in a subscription feature to the blog, so now you can get notified in your email inbox when I post something new. I'd highly recommend you do so that you don't miss out on anything I might decide to scribble down onto this humble little site. Let's face it, how could you live with yourself if you didn't know my every waking thought about Arsenal? I know I would struggle, you know, if I wasn't me. So what are you waiting for? Subscribe before it's too late!