FROM AWFUL TO AWESOME
Arsenal go 3-0 down... but somehow turn on the style to rescue point at Hammers
ON and on they go, falling and rising on their weird tides. We have watched it across the course of their peculiar season and now we have seen it compressed into one remarkable and absurd match. Strange bunch, Arsenal. Terrible, brilliant Arsenal.
Here we saw it all — a side capable of falling 3-0 behind that emerged later with a slight grievance at taking only one point.
There truly is no middle ground with this lot. No neutral. No grey — no boring, bankable, steady area. They can be the multi-holed bucket that leaked its way to Christmas, or the team which has been the fourth best in the division in the three months since. They are mid-table in the Premier League but the rest of their odd existence at present seems to be found only in the extremes.
And so to this magnificent game to support the point. In the space of 32 minutes, Arsenal conceded three to Jesse Lingard, Jarrod Bowen and Tomas Soucek, and at that stage there may even have been one or two more. West Ham were exquisite, a front-foot force driven by Lingard, Soucek and Said Benrahma, after the stultifying nothingness they served up against Manchester United. At one juncture, half an hour in, they held 70 per cent of possession. Goodness they were sharp, bullies battering the weak.
That West Ham hit three bumps between minutes 38 and 82 will have no great impact on sensible conclusions around David Moyes’ success this season, but in any case, this was not a collapse. It will sting but it was not a capitulation in the classic interpretation of the word.
Sure, the passes lost some zip, the moves lost some speed, too many crosses from the right were permitted. But the prime factor was Arsenal. They stopped their muppet show. They got the ball to Martin Odegaard. And really, that last scenario was the important one, because he changed this game, the 22-year-old loanee finding himself after the hype of his youth at Real Madrid.
Two of the chapters of recovery came from own goals, scored by Soucek and Craig Dawson, and the leveller was buried by Alexandre Lacazette, but if you looked closely, Odegaard was holding the strings.
As a result, it won’t do a huge amount for Arsenal. Nor West Ham and their Champions League dream. But forgetting those trivialities, it was arguably the game of the season, a 31-shot riot.
‘A really good game,’ Moyes said, and there wasn’t much more that needed adding.
Arteta admitted his ‘two-faced’ team are keeping him awake at night after they offered a blend of awful and exceptional football.
‘This game is going to give me a few nightmares because it is really difficult to stop some of the things we have been doing to hurt ourselves,’ he said.
‘I’m very disappointed because I cannot accept my team playing the way we did for certain periods in the first half. I expect the team to play to the level we showed afterwards — we should have scored six or seven.
‘We have two faces. The first face is about giving goals away and not doing what we have to do and it is not good enough. That keeps me awake.’
Even before we got to the 15th minute and the commencement of the goal rush, West Ham were dominating.
Their first strike was a delight. Michail Antonio led the surge and was part of a lovely exchange with Benrahma, before pulling back with the outside of his boot to Lingard.
The forward took one touch on the edge of the area and picked out the top-right corner with the next. It was an excellent finish by Lingard for his fifth goal since joining but credit, too, to Benrahma — he drives Moyes to frustration with his inconsistency, but when he is good, he is very effective.
The second goal was a classic Arsenal mess. The first issue was in their desperately slow reaction to the quick free-kick taken by Lingard that
put Bowen on a course to goal from the right, and the second was in Bernd Leno’s failure to keep out the shot at his near post.
Arteta put a cool face on it, but the third brought more anger. It was rooted in a careless pass from Kieran Tierney that conceded possession and culminated with Soucek getting a toe on an Antonio header to beat Leno.
Arsenal were at their worst since Burnley. But then they weren’t, and it was all very sudden.
Lacazette fired a shot that appeared to be heading wide before deflecting in off Soucek. More openings appeared, mostly via Odegaard, and somehow Arsenal finished the half on a wave of pressure.
They started the second just as well and on the hour they pulled back another goal. As with the first, Calum
Chambers assisted with a cross from the right, and for the second time in successive games, Dawson scored an own goal. It went in via his shin.
West Ham were knocked onto their backs by a Nicolas Pepe cross and Lacazette’s header.