Arsenal’s second-half capitulation at Watford on Super Sunday was just like seeing a’semi-pro’ group, states Graeme Souness.
Arsenal drove away the points via two defensive mistakes after being 2-0 up through a Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang double. To begin with, Sokratis Papastathopoulos tried to play out for Tom Cleverley, only of the trunk to capitalise and halve the deficit, even until David Luiz gave away.
Arsenal have conceded seven goals in their past 3 games, many coming from errors in the back, also Souness did not hold back in his evaluation of the Gunners from the Sky Sports studio.
“They capitulated in the second halfof Arsenal. They didn’t win a struggle. If you’re an Arsenal supporter watching that, you should be scratching your head. It has two teams that are distinct. It’s like here is the team at the first half, along with a second one after half-time. Proper teams don’t play like that.
“Arsenal in the second half were just like a semi-professional group playing football. That I mean that they weren’t learning from the mistakes they were performing time and time again.”
Souness questioned when leading Unai Emery caused Reiss Nelson and Joe Willock.
“They bring about some children, that was a game where at 2-1 it was time to dig and regroup, make sure they did not lose the match, and they should have lost it. When the children arrived they had been all around the place, it was just like a sport of basketball and when you were an Arsenal fan, which would deeply, profoundly worry you.”
The primary goal came from a Bernd Leno goal kick, and something found at the Premier League this year after rules altered allowing the ball inside the box to accumulate from Papastathopoulos’ pass from defence.
But Souness said Arsenal should have gone after a warning sign from the first half.
“There are mature players in this type of defence. As a supervisor, you expect your bigger players, it does not need to be the ones, work out it that they’re likely to concede.
“Why did the big players not say’let’s go long with it for 10 minutes and watch where it’s us’, since persisting with it was likely to cost themand they are lucky it only cost one.”
Among the better players on the day, Granit Xhaka of Arsenal admitted Arsenal were’fearful’ in the second half, but said playing out from the back was among several issues, not the problem.
“Everything was incorrect [in the second half]we did not play our gamewe were scaredwe understand they’d push us more in the second half but we must show more personality and drama, and not be scared. You can’t provide a performance in this way.
“We train for brief goal kicks, naturally mistakes are here however, it’s not an excuse. Next time we have to do better, we must analyse and then we’ll see what happens. It was not only this scenario that was an issue – it was the entire second half”
Back in the studio, Souness responded to the meeting of Xhaka by asking:’How do Arsenal be fearful?’
“They are saying that they were scared – I’ve never been scared in a game of football in my entire own life. I don’t understand it. From the game program Watford dropped off.
“It’s easy to play with nobody’s coming after you, in your face. I could’ve played at the first half in that Arsenal team of the Nevertheless, the whole thing affects when Watford are allowed off the guide, you are faced with a person who’s moving through youpersonally, plus they did not stand up to it.
“Sometimes you’ve got to have a hat on for one kind of match, and yet another hat for some other. Arsenal proved today they could only play one way – they can not go to war.”
Talking after the game to Sky Sports, Arsenal director Emery admits that his side should learn from their mistakes, also reported the ball from goal strikes would have induced his side to drop the conflict in midfield.
“Attempting the long ballthey are physically stronger than us, and they have been winning that chunk. We wanted to split the line and join with Mesut [Ozil], like we did with the second aim.
“It was two different halves. At the first we commanded the game we desired, at the second they pushed for our mistakes, and we’d more than we ever wanted to do. We need to consider how we can improve, how we could do better.
“We can develop all the errors and find out for the future games. Knowing they’d do more, and at the next half we needed to perform exactly the same work, although we stated that 2-0 isn’t enough. They did that, and we couldn’t split the lines.
“I keep with our way of functioning. We need to improve, take some advice. We could be disappointed, but we know about that.”
Arsenal visit Eintracht Frankfurt in their first Europa League group phase battle on Thursday at 5.55pm, before hosting Aston Villa in the Premier League on Sunday at 4.30pm.
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