Garcia Breaks Arsenal Hearts In Valentine’s Day Defeat
134 comments February 15th, 2006
To what’s left of my readership,
If a team goes into a match and makes no attempt to win it, they deserve to lose. That’s precisely what Arsenal did last night.
Last minute winners for the opposition are always gut-wrenching, but less so when you can only hold your hands up and say it was coming. But for an outstanding performance yet again from Jens Lehmann, it could well have been 3 or 4.
And at the other end? There was one incorrect offside descision against the hard-working Emmanuel Adebayor which could well have yielded a goal. That aside, we were toothless.
Robert Pires, who was defended by many fans after his second-half showing against Bolton, showed his true colours yet again last night with a limp display devoid of any imagination. Gilberto too was very poor: he won the ball back consistently, but seemed to enjoy doing so so much that he just not wait to give it away again.
Fredrik Ljungberg tried but is just no longer a threat, and Thierry Henry probably ran around less than Jerzy Dudek, who was forced into just one save in the Liverpool goal. I actually forgot he was playing instead of the suspended Jose Reina.
Mathieu Flamini put plenty of energy into the left-back role, and Cesc Fabregas did his best, but was swamped by Alonso and Sissoko. How we’d love to have two players like that in our midfield. Emmanuel Adebayor too was a willing runner who showed a couple of nice touches in attempt to link the midfield and attack. But these players were severely let down by the senior members of the team.
Yes, we could’ve scraped a draw, but it would’ve been unjust. We went there hoping that Lehmann would keep them out and we’d steal a point. That’s not the way to approach top-class football.
The team is carrying a lot of dead-wood. Players like Ljungberg and Pires are surely in the dying embers of their Arsenal careers. A major overhaul is not ideal for stability, but is surely neccessary.
Arsene says we can no longer reach the top two. I’m starting to worry about the top four.
