A new season, a new kit, a different pre-season venue to play in, but the seemingly the same old problems for Arsenal. In the second match of the pre-season Asia Tour, we played well against Manchester City, however couldn’t convert chances and were punished for some slack defending on the break. It’s important to remember that it was only a friendly; however it’s never good to lose to a rival like Manchester City, especially when the loss came in a similar fashion to many of the ones we’ve suffered in recent seasons.
The squad for the Asia Tour is still missing a large number of first team players because of injury and fitness after Euro 2012, however we still fielded quite a strong team against Manchester City. Being honest, I didn’t rate our chances of winning the game as very high. We didn’t start with a regular striker, and had the inexperienced Kyle Bartley at centre back. Seeing a City team sheet including Carlos Tevez, Sergio Aguero and Yaya Toure was a concern, and their clinical counter attacking proved to be the difference.
The 2-0 score-line didn’t do the match justice, but rarely does a result reflect the overall flow of a football match. Hopefully we can get these matches out of our system before the season starts; where we dominate, but don’t turn that pressure into goals.
Arsenal’s defending let the team down once again, with both Carl Jenkinson and Kieran Gibbs showing they’re still learning the full-back trade. For the first goal, we got hit on the break and Gibbs was sucked in to close down Yaya Toure, leaving Zabaleta free on the right to finish. For the second goal, Jenkinson followed Aguero’s run, leaving space on the left for Kolarov to bomb forward into space, leading to Toure’s goal.
It was a shame that those two lapses occurred, because otherwise I thought we defended quite well. Carl Jenkinson generally had a strong first half, Thomas Vermaelen was good and Ignasi Miquel was impressive after coming on at half time. Kieran Gibbs grew into the game and got forward well in the second half.
The attacking set-up of the team was strange, with Gervinho primarily playing as a central striker in the first half. Andre Santos played on the left wing, with Theo Walcott on the right. Undoubtedly, we missed a lead front man in the first half, because Gervinho still tended to move wide when on the ball. However all three looked lively and caused Manchester City problems with their pace. Given we were lacking a proper striker, we could have done with runners from midfield trying to get forward. However it was pre-season, so fitness would have been an issue had players been busting a gut to do that.
Having gone 2-0 down, I feared we’d roll over with youngsters coming off the bench. If anything, we were more dominant in the second half, and were very unlucky not to breach the City defence. Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain added some drive to the midfield in terrible weather conditions, and hit a thunderous shot that hit both posts before coming out. Chuks Aneke and Thomas Eisfield impressed in midfield, building on their goal scoring performances against the Malaysia XI earlier in the week.
The biggest feature of Arsenal’s attacking game that stood out, was our willingness to shoot from outside the box. It’s a long running criticism of Arsenal that the passing is too intricate around the box and that no-one is prepared to take a shot on. Walcott, Jenkinson, Santos, Aneke and Oxlade-Chamberlain all took aim from range, and on another day could have scored. It would be easy to say that even though we did shoot from distance, we still didn’t win. However it showed that the team are willing to adapt, and it was encouraging.
The defeat was full of positives, except for the fact we lost and didn’t score. We still lacked a cutting edge up front, although the team for next season is still in its early stages of development, with a lot of excellent players to return once the team finish the Asia Tour. Bacary Sagna, Per Mertesacker, Laurent Koscielny, Tomas Rosicky, Olivier Giroud, Aaron Ramsey, Jack Wilshere and Lukas Podolski will all add something to this squad. Where we lacked movement and a cutting edge up front in China, Olivier Giroud and Lukas Podolski will add that.
Off the pitch, our pre-season preparations have slowed somewhat with the Robin van Persie issue still hanging over the club. He appears to be in a sticky situation after effectively making his position at the club untenable. Arsenal are rightly holding out for an appropriate fee for a world class striker, and the clubs reportedly chasing the Dutch striker haven’t met that fee. I fear that the longer this goes on, the less likely it’ll be that our other transfer business will get done, however we shouldn’t accept a cut-price fee. If it looks like clubs won’t pay the money for Robin, I think he’ll have to do an embarrassing u-turn and try to mend his relationship with the club and the fans.
He could have done with following the example of Laurent Koscielny. He’s signed a new contract and hopefully others are in line to do so. Once that business is sorted, we can continue to build towards the new season so we aren’t left with familiar feelings of hope and encouragement, followed by frustration.