William Saliba’s sending-off against Bournemouth was everything he normally isn’t – clumsy, rash and cheap. It was the latest in a catalogue of uncharacteristically stupid split-second decisions which have cost Arsenal points and games.
One loss doesn’t make a crisis. A run of injuries may just be bad luck. Three red cards this season could just be three unfortunate, isolated incidents. Maybe there’s nothing to see here.
Or maybe the pressure is gradually, almost imperceptibly, eroding these Arsenal players, the perpetual tension having just enough impact to trigger these repeated mishaps.
Two seasons of constantly chasing and improving and adapting, of never being able to relent but also never really being rewarded, can fundamentally impact the mind and body. These players are making bizarre errors which suggest a psychological rather than a tactical problem.
Since Mikel Arteta took over Arsenal in December 2019, they have received 18 red cards – more than double Manchester City and the most in the Premier League across that period. Three this season is another league high. There appear to be two obvious factors at play here.
The first is that unrelenting pressure. Manchester City’s sustained, overwhelming dominance has created the fallacy that only perfection will win the Premier League, that every point dropped is not so much debilitating as terminal.
The suggestion this could or should be Arsenal’s season has become the popular unpopular opinion, only bolstered by Rodri’s injury.
There’s talk of a window to win, an opportunity which simply won’t arise again. Everything is seemingly right, but that in itself can create an unmanageable burden. These players are giving everything to have to achieve what has increasingly felt like fate, and by pushing those boundaries further and further, they’re occasionally going too far.
Chasing this perfection is also impacting the fanbase, a large portion of which appear increasingly consumed by conspiracy and fear, with the genuine belief that the league and refereeing body are out to get them. It shouldn’t need reiterating that they aren’t. Howard Webb wasn’t controlling the VAR decisions on live TV. Arsenal are causing their own problems – the players have taken responsibility for that fact and the fans should too.
The second cause is the perceived ramping up of the “dark arts”, the new frontier for Arteta’s Jake Humphreys-esque obsession with marginal gains. This certainly informed Declan Rice and Leandro Trossard’s red cards and may well have contributed to Saliba’s handsy handling of Evanilson, alongside the pressure triggering Trossard’s hideous pass back somewhere near the Frenchman.
Count to 10 before you take a corner, delay set pieces when you can, leave a tad extra on the opposition. Disrupt and disturb and annoy. Anything to gain even the smallest edge. There isn’t a professional team which doesn’t do this to some extent, but Arsenal are becoming particularly vehement acolytes of gamesmanship at a time when the rules regulating it are harsher than ever.
It’s worth saying in all this that what Arsenal are doing is not original or unique or even particularly dark. There’s no issue with the morality of their constant harassing and niggling, just with its efficacy and usefulness.
The only team it appears to be hurting is them – the risk simply isn’t justifying the reward. For all the talk of this being a discipline problem, it’s hard to call it that when it’s so clearly a sanctioned plan poorly executed. They’ve been told to see how far the rules bend and they’re repeatedly misjudging that boundary, fuelled by the enormous pressure weighing on every action. Sometimes you can adapt too far.
Saliba will now miss games against Liverpool, Newcastle and Chelsea, with the first particularly vital. Defeat to Arne Slot’s league leaders on Sunday would put Arsenal seven points off the Premier League pace after just nine matches.
They dropped points against all three last season and now have to navigate their toughest run of this campaign without their second-most important player.
Saliba played every league minute in 2023-24 and hasn’t missed more than one game in a row since his back injury at the end of 2022-23. While this team has developed a huge amount since, Arsenal won just five of those 11 games in his absence and conceded 18 goals.
Their underlying defensive numbers this season aren’t exactly flawless – 14.5 shots per game conceded is the sixth-worst in the Premier League, while they sit sixth for xG conceded – and removing the world’s best central defender is not going to help.
No team will need to be perfect to win this year’s title, but Arteta cannot continue pushing a policy of skullduggery which is doing Arsenal more harm than good. Focussing on football would go a long way to solving their current issues.
from Football - inews.co.uk https://ift.tt/8onSHAB
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