By: @1topham
It was yet another night Arsenal FC would love to forget in rush, coming from their comfortable 5-0 victory over Lincoln City in the FA Cup a win over West Brom was what everyone at the club expected.
Two headed goals from Dawson and Kanu’s goal dealt further blow to Arsenal’s hopes of making the top four to further pile pressure on Arsene Wenger.
Like Thierry Henry pointed out, we saw things we have never seen in a Football game before in this tie.
Here are three things we observed from the match.
1. West Brom will always play the West Brom way
Going into this tie we all knew what West Brom will do, wait and see how they can punish you from the setplays, and that was what worked the magic for them.
They won’t throw men forward trying to outplay you but will soak in the pressure wait for their chance and nick it if you give them space.
On Saturday Arsenal gave them spaces and they were thoroughly punished by the Hawthorns. Two of their three goals were from set plays in fact they had just 33% of the possession but they got the maximum points in the end.
Arsenal gave them so much space that the third goal would have been scored by two other Westbrom players had Dawson missed the ball.
2. Arsenal lack a leader
Wenger in and out will continue as long as the Frenchman remains the gaffer at Arsenal but is it entirely his fault?.
You will agree the guys seemed totally unsure of what to do, Craig Dawson scored two goals via set play and in similar fashion. No one seemed interested in marking him or stopping his run.
I thought after the first mistake, if there was a leader in the team he would have warned them against impending danger from such play. They were all on the pitch running like headless chickens. Not sure of what to do and when to do them.
3. The players just don’t care anymore, they want Wenger out
They players showed no urgency. It is very unlike Arsenal they have failed to win any of their last four games against any top flight sides this is very unlike the Gunners unless something is wrong somewhere that we don’t know.
We are familiar with this type of story, recently Leicester City fired Ranieri and since his sack they’ve gone on to win four games on the bounce. The same set of players who were in relegation zone are getting result week in week out.
There could be other explanation for these poor performances from Arsenal players, but it isn’t far from the fact that Wenger might not be popular among his players any more.
