\nMikel Arteta\u2019s shocking decision against Chelsea as the Gunners drop points<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
We honestly had to read this piece through three times (putting us into some sort of Star record book) to extract that the \u2018shocking decision\u2019 that Arteta made was to \u2018fail to calm his team down\u2019.<\/p>\n
The idea that this was a \u2018decision\u2019 is of course ludicrous. \u2018Oooh, shall I try to calm my team down? I think not. Let\u2019s hope this big decision does not backfire\u2026\u2019<\/p>\n
Next: Bukayo Saka\u2019s shocking decision against Chelsea as the Gunners drop points. Imagine deciding not to score. The dick.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Is this the start of the Arsenal bottling narrative?<\/p>\n
Over at the Daily Telegraph<\/strong>, we\u2019re pretending that Arsenal have somehow massively failed by getting only a draw at Chelsea after a week in which they beat both Tottenham and Bayern Munich.<\/p>\n\nArsenal missed huge chance that would have been taken by hard-nosed killers<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
They have just literally battered Tottenham and one of the best teams in Europe, fella.<\/p>\n
\nSure, it is a decent enough point. Sure, Arsenal are still in a strong position at the top of the league table. And sure, this game came at the end of a demanding week.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
That\u2019s three pretty big \u2018sures\u2019 and if you have three pretty big \u2018sures\u2019, we would say advise a little caution on the whole \u2018Arsenal are bottling this\u2019 narrative.<\/p>\n
\nBut winners, real hard-nosed killers, put their foot on the throat of their rivals when they have the chance and that is what Arsenal should have done when Chelsea midfielder Mois\u00e9s Caicedo was sent off.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
Obviously Matt Law missed the \u2018shocking decision\u2019 made by Arteta not to calm down his players. And maybe he also missed Chelsea \u2018finally exposing\u2019 the Arsenal crack that was an entirely new central defensive partnership.<\/p>\n
Actually, he spotted the latter but\u2026<\/p>\n
\nWilliam Saliba played the full 90 minutes against Spurs and Bayern, but was not available for Sunday\u2019s game after feeling pain in training on Saturday. Given Gabriel Magalhaes was already out, could Arteta have been more careful with Saliba? Hindsight is a wonderful thing, but it is worth considering.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
\u2018More careful\u2019? What does that even mean? Unless you know that Arteta had Saliba do some ridiculous Neil Warnock-style \u2018running up sand dunes\u2019 sh*t, we would refrain from suggesting that the Arsenal manager has over-worked a key player.<\/p>\n
\nThis was not a performance or result that will prompt many, if any, post-mortems at Arsenal, but maybe Arteta \u2013 as he suggested himself \u2013 can learn a lesson about keeping his players as fresh as possible through a punishing season.<\/p>\n
There is currently no sense they will run out of steam, but some fresher legs may well have helped Arsenal take a real grip on this title race once Chelsea went down to 10 men.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
So there\u2019s no sense that they will run out of steam, and it should not prompt many post-mortems, but \u2018Arsenal missed huge chance that would have been taken by hard-nosed killers\u2019.<\/p>\n
Or at least Arsenal missed huge chance that would have been taken by a fully-fit team who had not already won two massive games this week?<\/p>\n
\nChelsea, however much they try to claim they are not ready to challenge for the title, will also have taken heart. They have proved they can go toe-to-toe with Arsenal, even when numerically disadvantaged, so what is stopping them chasing down Arteta\u2019s team?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
Erm, because they can\u2019t turn every game into a battle in which a point would be a magnificent result, maybe?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Is the Arsenal \u2018bottling it\u2019 narrative starting to gain some early momentum? Apparently Mikel Arteta made a \u2018shocking…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":417392,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[5407,461,6076,204,9655,195528,13721,106181,221,62,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-417391","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-soccer","8":"tag-arsenal","9":"tag-chelsea","10":"tag-enzo-maresca","11":"tag-front-page","12":"tag-home-page","13":"tag-mediawatch","14":"tag-mikel-arteta","15":"tag-popular","16":"tag-soccer","17":"tag-sports","18":"tag-united-states","19":"tag-unitedstates","20":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115644841541271075","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/417391","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=417391"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/417391\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/417392"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=417391"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=417391"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=417391"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}