ARSENAL STILL NEED OVERHAUL
The manager may have changed, but his tired old players remain stuck in a fog of Wenger’s making
THE black armbands mar k e d the death of former chairman Peter Hill-Wood and the end of an Arsenal dynasty. The football revealed the size of the task ahead for a club which has been left behind, lost in the mists of t i me, while t he rest accelerated ahead.
Some perspective is necessary, even amid the debris of all this. The Emirates managerial guard has changed in 2018 without the kind of self-combustion which has beset Manchester United. Arsenal have one point more at the halfway stage of Unai Emery’s first season than they did in Arsene Wenger’s last. What wouldn’t Old Trafford have given for t hat after Sir Alex Ferguson walked away?
But it was a brutal and bloodying reminder of the distance Arsenal have to travel, all the same. Emery had said before the match that ‘defence is the difference between them and us’ but he did not in his remotest imagination expect this.
The third of the Liverpool goals was perhaps the worst of it. A corner kick, needlessly conceded by goalkeeper Bernd Leno’s frequently dubious footwork, cast the Arsenal rearguard on to the carousel which at that stage had already done them twice in two minutes.
A high ball, looped over Stephan Lichtsteiner by the metronomically accurate Andrew Robertson, a cushioned pass from Sadio Mane, lurking behind the defender, and clear green turf for Mohamed Salah to accelerate in. The ball was in the net before Sokratis arrived at the scene of the break-in.
There were times during that first-half e v i s c e r a t i o n when Arsenal could not even come close to touching their opponents. Echoes of February 2014 here, when Brendan Rodgers’ Liverpool were three up in 20 minutes and won 5-1.
Emery has a habit of stroking his chin, as if there might be a solution lurking somewhere within his interior mind, though this was the story of how lost in a fog of Wenger’s making Arsenal have become. Liverpool have spent the proceeds of losing Philippe Coutinho on cementing a defence which has conceded eight Premier League goals all season. Arsenal have seen their best players drift out of contract and lose interest.
Sokratis has not been as bad as his utter incapacity to stop Roberto Firmino wriggling through for the second goal suggested. Emery did manage to stem the tide after the much-missed Laurent Koscielny arrived after the break. But the vulnerability to long balls into the area and the struggle to pick up movement from Liverpool’s forwards has been a soundtrack to this winter.
And as all of that was unravelling, those up ahead were written out of
the script. A desperately isolated Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang had seven touches of the ball in the first half, four of which were kick-offs. He disappeared without complaint after 70 minutes. Aaron Ramsey, appointed captain and positioned behind him in what has been season of such mixed signals from the manager for him, could barely provide a service.
The club’s best creative outlet, Mesut Ozil, was left behind in north London, nursing what was said to be a thigh complaint. It’s a well- established fact that Ozil doesn’t care for evenings like this and though Emery’s refusal to humour him is welcome, the absence of a game-changing creative presence contributes to the team being so far adrift. When Ozil was taken off at half-time in the draw at Brighton on Boxing Day, the chances dried up. Alex Iwobi, who replaced him, could be seen asking Granit Xhaka: ‘What formation are we playing?’
The early stages had actually offered Arsenal some hope. Emery’s players pressed and hus- tled Liverpool into mistakes. Virgil van Dijk’s loose ball out of defence was seized on with menace and shipped to Iwobi, whose burst down the left brought the whipped ball behind the Liverpool defence from which Ainsley Maitland- Niles arrived to score.
Arsenal’s football going forward was moderately good, throughout. It should also be said that Emery does not allow his team to give up the ghost as his predecessor did. Lichtsteiner is the on-field leader. The sight of him appealing for an infringement while launching into a tackle was gratifying, at the end of a year in which this team were labelled spineless.
So, too, the sight of Xhaka, questioning Salah for the soft fall which won Liverpool their first penalty and fourth goal, as the pair walked in at half-time.
But these were minor compensations, given that every time Liverpool advanced there seemed to be serious trouble. The optimism of the autumn in north London, when a bouncing Emirates saw Aubam- eyang equalise against Klopp’s side eight minutes from time, has given way to realism. The team has looked tired this past month. The new Emery intensity may have something to do with that. The need for new players has more.
Arsenal have conceded more than 30 goals after 20 league games for t he first t i me since 1966 and shipped 21 goals in their last fiveand-a-half matches at Anfield.
A top-five finish seems the limit of Emery’s expectations. He cannot overhaul this squad soon enough.