Premier League R2 - Everton 2 - 2 Arsenal: Football can be a simple game

At half time I was very much in doom and gloom mode. An all too familiar half away to a big side, with little cause for optimism left me predicting Everton to pile on the misery and beat us comprehensively. Certainly, the tone of this would be distinctly different to what it will be now.

But football is never short of surprises and Arsenal can defy expectation every now and then. We looked very much out the game, but found two goals from somewhere and come away with a point that many would have accepted before kick-off.

As I've said in the previous threads, Arsenal are very much a team still searching for full fitness and tactical understanding. A short pre-season with new players has made us look a little off the pace and disjointed and this game against Everton came at a pretty bad time. This is an awkward time for the team and fans, because expectations are so high, but we aren't ready to meet them yet. As an example, the team that played the first half would've been many people's first choice eleven for this game, yet it didn't yield the results we wanted.

It's clear as day that Alexis isn't on the same wavelength as the rest of the team, and that Debuchy isn't on the same wavelength as the rest of his defence. Chambers showed his inexperience at times, while Mertesacker and Ozil, unsurprisingly, didn't look up to speed. So really, expecting any sort of cohesive performance from this lot isn't realistic right now.

It was a highly frustrating first half where Arsenal played okay up to the edge of the Everton penalty area, but lacked any sort of penetration. Chances were limited to half-chances, particularly shots from the edge of the box, most of which were squandered by Chamberlain. Arsenal lacked a focal point in the middle, with Alexis torn between coming short and getting involved or trying to play off the shoulder. Our left hand side also became too congested, with Ozil, Wilshere and Ramsey all congregating in that area, leaving no one to move in behind Everton.

We tried to break through with quick exchanges of passing but it was too precise and too complex every time. It's so typical of a modern day Arsenal attack; it has to be tight and intricate, quick one-twos and pretty patterns. Yet we're just crying out for something more penetrative. Maybe some nice wing play, or a more direct ball, or an overlapping full back. Something simpler. Football is, when you get down to it, a simple game.

Everton proved as much. They had few shots and not a lot of the play in our half but scored the opening goal from a simple lofted ball into the penalty area. Barry had about 100 years to pick out the pass from the edge of our box, and Coleman, marked by Ozil, for some reason, got on the end of it to head it in. It's lax defending, exposed by one pass and one run.

Things got more annoying when Everton passed the ball around at the back for a good couple of minutes while Arsenal, a goal down, stood off and let them. We just allowed Everton to take the sting out of the game. Where's the pressure? Where's the urgency? Why were letting them control the pace of the game? This was remarkably similar to last year. The fight wasn't there.

So when Everton went 2-0 up through a simple counter attack, I really feared a collapse. Another Arsenal attack broke down, Everton played out to Lukaku who rolled Mertesacker, evaded Monreal's diving challenge, played in Naismith who scored through the keeper's legs. Easy as you like, and helped by the linesman who failed to give Naismith offside.

The second half compounded the feeling that nothing was going our way. Arsenal kept going with their tippy-tappy stuff around the box but couldn't make any decent chances. Giroud had a difficult chance at the start of the half but couldn't keep his volley down, and that was the best of it. A couple of shots from the edge of the box was all we managed to produce.

Then we do something simple. Monreal puts a good cross in, somebody, for once, makes a run at the back post and they score a tap-in. None of this intricate passing rubbish that isn't producing anything. Just a routine cross from a full back to Ramsey making a late run at the back post.

A miracle occurred when we did it again. Ramsey's cross is awful, but it luckily falls to Monreal. He put it back in, right on Giroud's forehead, and he buried it. And that goal felt like a winning goal in the circumstances.

It's a great result for us at this point. We performed poorly again, and that's expected, yet we still got a point out of it. That's an improvement from last season, where a poor performance resulted in a thrashing. That we kept going and was rewarded for it is the biggest positive we could take from the game.

As I said, I think many of us would've taken a point before the game. We all predicted a slow start to the season so all that mattered were positive results in August. Well, so far, we've won the Community Shield, have four points in the league and have nearly secured Champions League qualification. We're on target.

Now onto another big game on Wednesday. Let's hope we have no more injuries between now and then.

awesome summary really! extremely satisfied with the point!

Horrible 80 minutes, really need to be much better but good result.

Giroud is better as a sub he shows this every time he comes on. Giroud is the type of player you need in these situations where the opposition are sitting back.

Have to say Giroud played well in the second half and should have had more than one goal but Wenger must buy another striker.

It was a very frustrating match but we shouldn't take away any cast-in-stone conclusions. The squad we have is still achieving fitness and understanding, that's all.

Poor performance overall but we came into it and got an away point against a very good team. I'm gonna wait a few more weeks until making any judgments about how Arsenal are doomed to failure, or how Alexis is absolutely 100% incapable of playing up top against any opposition.

its true, every time giroud comes on as sub he plays well, when he start he plays poor. but in this type of game when the opposition team is prone to sitting deep, giroud has to play.

The first half was simply frustrating!
We played a stupid sitting game. Now that might work sometimes, but our pressing was just ridiculously disjointed. We gave Barry too much time in that half let alone for the goal. We had no fluency and incision in our attack (same as 2 matches before). Ramsey played poorly and made poor passes. Alexis tried to stretch the Everton defence but there was just no one close to him to take advantage of that.
Özil was non-existent and Debuchy was no where to be found at RB.

Second half. We started brightly. Giroud changed the game for us and credit must go to him for that. We then continued in a subdued manner. And as the half went on Everton just increasingly sat deeper and THAT'S the reason why I think we got the point in the end.

I know it's still early on in the season. But these have been the faults in our game in the first 3 matches. We have no fluency in our build up play. Everything is slow. And it looked like our back 4 was same old, same old again like it was last season away at the big teams. Some of you might not like complaints early on in the season but these are issues which needs to be addressed as quickly as possible.

I'm not so sure about Debuchy atm. He really needs to improve his positioning and one on one defending.
Wilshere played decent in the first half but he really needs to improve more as well.
Flamini is not good enough at DM.

Couple of other things I noticed:

- Sanchez is used to intense amount of pressing from Barcelona days, you could see him did hand signal push every time Everton passing the ball around

- When Koz & Mertz plays, the latter sit deep, while with Chambers, Mertz seems to be the 1st one went for the ball. I'm not sure if it's just the 1st time they combined or tactical decision from Wenger.

- Jack needs bench & Monreal needs help.

Twoism wrote:Couple of other things I noticed:

- Sanchez is used to intense amount of pressing from Barcelona days, you could see him did hand signal push every time Everton passing the ball around

- When Koz & Mertz plays, the latter sit deep, while with Chambers, Mertz seems to be the 1st one went for the ball. I'm not sure if it's just the 1st time they combined or tactical decision from Wenger.

- Jack needs bench & Monreal needs help.

When Sanchez looked at Özil and gave him the hurry up I was like ... 'Well, good luck with that.'

Flamini and Arteta are simply not good enough, we need real steel in the midfield. DM and CF is a must.

Are the reports of Giroud being injured true?   Season hasn't started and we dropping like flies.  

Was a really good summary Jay, completely agreed.

We need to stop giving away daft goals in these sort of games, playing everton away from home is hard enough without giving them these type of presents. In terms of performance it was better than Palace and Besitkas, we moved the ball better and there was some fluency about our game but we were still far from our best especially in the final third.

I lost count of the amount of times moves brokedown in the final third. I think to play the way we play we need a focal point, someone who will occupy the two centre halves and give the attacking players something to hit. Giroud came on and certainly did that although he still frustrated us with one or two misses. Sanchez can play upfront but it has to be against teams who play a high line, once Everton got that second goal they sat deep and played on the counter attack which made it difficult for him

Wenger on Giroud.

on Giroud…
I have more strikers than before so sometimes I can give them a little rest. Giroud has just played one game since the World Cup so I gave him a little breather today but I knew we were dominating the game in the second half and we needed some physical presence up front and he did that very well in the second half.

    

Good result at a difficult place, poor performance - similar to the ones we had against Crystal Palace and Besiktas except we faced a much better team.

I've probably repeated this far too often but why does Wenger insist on putting some of our attacking players in uncomfortable  positons? It's really *bleep* frustrating. Oxlade-Chamberlain is NOT one of those kick and run players you can put on the wing and tell him to make runs, he needs to see the pitch, on the left or centrally. If you have seen Neymar playing on the right wing under Martino, that's the same crap Wenger is pulling with Oxlade-Chamberlain.

Then you have Özil playing for 90 minutes on the left wing. Just because Löw did it, it doesn't mean you have to do it. Özil didn't play his best games on that left wing for Germany and this is with Höwedes playing LB, leaving him with little defensive responsibility. What happened to the "preferential vision" Wenger was blabbing about? Özil clearly sees the pitch better while he is drifting right, every child knows that.

Anyway, in the end the players showed great mentality to get back in the game. Against Besiktas we won't have Ramsey popping up with a late goal so we better perform as a team, it's about time.

great come back

our starting XI was gamble,Alexis and others doesnt know each others moves well yet
but Giroud had clear physical advantage of being fresher vs CBs,thats the good thing about him as a sub

Chamberlain need to work in his shooting technique
has to get them on target

hopefully we go back to 4231 with Özil central
he would have used space behind full backs better if he had freedom in #10 role

love that bit when Alexis weas covering for Chambers vs Mirallas tracking all the way back

again for all the talk of wenger not doing tactics(lol)we changed our way but a bit late more like a mistake corrected
although everton yet again were lucky this fixture came right time for them
A fit Kos would have started and Lukaku would have done zilch

a bit worrying The role Naismith played again and worked quite well(could have been exposed more if their CMs had more goal threat

Perhaps having a holding Mid who can play CB is the solution to deal with it

Once the full game is up on Arsenal Player (or once someone provides me a link to the full game *hint hint*), I'm going to take a look at Arsenal's first half attacking, complete with screenshots. Haven't done something like that in a while.

http://livefootballvideo.com/fullmatch/england/premier-league/everton-vs-arsenal-2

Nothing more to add to the OP. But few things I'll discuss.

I am as concerned as everyone else about the lack of technical stability. But it will come with time because we have players who are playing at a level they shouldn't be at. It's a shame this was a WC year because we could have started the season running had the understanding been there between the players and they all played together more. Like Jay said, Sanchez doesn't have the understanding with the rest of the team. He comes deep too often when he shouldn't and he makes runs at the wrong time. All the things which will improve in few weeks.

And of course the lack of balance is still there in midfield with Wilshere-Ramsey. I love Wilshere and IMO he has been playing better than Ramsey performance wise, but he should benched because he is not letting Ramsey play his own game atm. Ramsey has to sit too deep and eventhough he is good at it, our whole system suffers because of it. Ramsey is best at a B2B role and atm he has to play as  CM. If you watched MOTD, Savage brought an interesting point where he said Wilshere is a frustrated player. I don't agree with all of it because Wilshere cares more about the team than himself, however he was right in the sense that Wilshere is scared he will be benched once everyone is fit and that is leading him to do things he would never do. Which in the end does lead to the performance overall being poor and lack of balance between attack and defence.

Flamini was decent today. Against Besiktas i am hoping to see a midfield of Flamini-Wilshere-Cazorla. Or if by some miracle Diaby is fit, then Diaby-Wilshere-Cazorla. Upfront Oxlade/Joel-Giroud-Sanchez. Although I doubt it. Cazorla will start at LW probably.

In any case. A point at Everton is fantastic. Top teams WILL drop points there. We did 1 point better than last season. And we don't go to goodison again in the PL!

Enjoy the weekend and lets hope we put 5 past Besiktas

We've got the players in our squad that can score goals, but at the moment our attack is so impotent. I can't believe we are still stuck in the mindset of tippy-tappy 2-1s around the box which requires perfect precision. Every team in the EPL know how to defend against us, just pack 8 defenders in the box and we can't break through. The lack of movement once we got to the Everton box was astonishing. How did we think we were going to score against 8 Everton defenders, 2 of our guys in the box with no movement and trying to walk our way into the box. Of course once we inevitably lose the box, 3 passes later and Everton are through on goal.

I honestly believed that after the West ham game last season, when Podolski and Walcott brought in directness and end product, that we were capable of switching it up and changing our attacking strategy. Just because tippy tappy worked twice last season from a billion attempts and looks good, doesn't mean there aren't other ways to score.

Other points:
- Enough of this 4-1-4-1. Just bench Wilshere already. Don't care if it "kills his confidence".
- Play Ozil in the middle.
- Play Cazorla in the middle.
- Direct fast pace men on the flanks (Ox, Walcott, Sanchez, Campbell, maybe Podolski).
- Stop trying to play out from the keeper. One of these days we are going to concede.

Sina wrote:http://livefootballvideo.com/fullmatch/england/premier-league/everton-vs-arsenal-2

Thanks for that.

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So, here we go then. A whopping 19 screenshots here, hence I've wrapped them in spoiler tags to prevent this post from being stupidly long. Apologies for the annoying giant black boxes.

Three common things I observed:

1) lack of numbers and movement in the penalty area
2) poor decision making
3) Monreal made excellent overlapping runs

Spoiler:

If people want me to, I could do the second half as well.

1. ozil needs to man up or fk off!
2. play 4-2-3-1 instead of 4-1-4-1.
3. it wasn't sanchez fault we conceded 2 goals, and it wasn't his fault we were shit in attack too.
4. Giroud changed the game but he is still a donkey.
5. Ramsey need to be reminded to simplify and clean his game up.
6. Wilshere need to be taught to simplify and clean his game up.
7. Put the kid Chambers out of his misery, its getting unfair.
8. Somebody help monreal.
9. Mert needs Kos to cover his ass.
10. Flamini should be fitted with a patch of nails permanently attached to his ass, so it always hurts when he slides into tackle.
11. Wenger needs to buy the barclays premier league 13-14 Armageddon DVD boxset, to watch last seasons games again to relive such moments as:
'wow! lukaku on the right! is that allowed?'
'wow! schurrle scored a hatrick! thats the same goal running on loop right?'
'wow! sktel beat my zonal marksmen! I am not sure i get it, did that happen twice in like 2 minutes?'
'wow! fernandinho of all people! is this tape tempered with?'

Great work Jay and thanks. That Chamberlain moment once again proves that he shouldn't be playing on the right wing, if he was on the left side and Özil making the run on the right side Chamberlain would've seen that run and pass it to him, because when he receives the ball the first thing he does is look on his right side.

When you have time do the second half aswell, we need more of this in the Arsenal section.

Chris Kamara: "There's no way Lukaku can get that ball because he's behind Mertesacker, the only way he can get it is by fouling him"



Pissed me off a lot, that.

Part two of my analysis coming up. Key points this time:

1) Increased numbers in the box but poor delivery
2) What Giroud offers
3) The simplest route is often the best route to goal

Spoiler:

Yeah but at the same time Giroud handballed in our box so that even out

Twoism wrote:Yeah but at the same time Giroud handballed in our box so that even out

No he didnt. it hit his chest.