Watford 2-2 Arsenal: Gunners display had me screaming at the TV – Martin Keown
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By Martin Keown
Former Arsenal shield and pundit
While I watched the second half of Arsenal’s draw with Watford on Sunday I was yelling at the TV screen
With the Hornets managing 31 shots and 23 of them coming after the rest, mathematically it had been the display by the Gunners since Opta’s records started in 2003.
Seeing them in the production workplace that was MOTD2, it felt like that.
From having their opponents by the throat when they were 2-0 up, Arsenal inexplicably handed Watford a method back in the game at the way when they surrendered after trying to play out of their own area from a goal-kick.
But what made things worse is when things went wrong because of 20, that the group of Unai Emery could not react. Rather , they disintegrated.
That 1 mistake was enough to derail them. In 1 instant their optimism evaporated. After that, they weren’t able to make a decision, and they could not make a move.
Their vanished. They were lucky to concede yet another target – by a penalty after another filthy by David Luiz – and so were left hanging on for a point from the Premier League side.
It could have been a great deal worse.
As a team, they were deserted by the collective mind of Arsenal in the next half. As individuals I looked at them thinking how are they conceding so much distance, and wondering who picked up who.
There appeared to be a fear that gripped something their Swiss midfielder, their gamers Granit Xhaka confessed later.
We could see it too, and it is worrying for Emery. I think that the second half was the toughest 45 minutes he has had since he chose the Arsenal task .
Emery now knows also, and he’s to reestablish confidence in the hearts and heads of the players put together a strategy.
He’s got to work through exactly that which Arsenal do wrong, and also work out whether they are good enough to play how he needs them to play because it is similar to watching schoolboys occasionally when they attempt to bring the ball out from the rear.
Arsenal had had a warning and Matteo Guendouzi was caught in possessionof
They didn’t learn from their error. Instead they handed Watford a path back, and repeated it.
Yes , there was a suspicion that Gerard Deulofeu was at the box once he intercepted Sokratis Papastathopoulos’s clearance to set up Tom Cleverley to make it 2-1, but it was a decision that is completely moot by Arsenal to play that way in the first location.
I was a participant when the legislation have transformed in a way that influenced defenders – from choosing up back-passes in 1992, such as when goalkeepers were stopped.
There was no choice you had to change the way that you played, and also the way the team played.
But in such a circumstance, teams do have a decision. You do not have to perform with passes in your area from goal-kicks because you can.
I believe we are with it in a bit of an experimental phase, together with some teams when it just does not suit them doing it and others doing it at the incorrect times.
The latter was the situation for Arsenal on Sunday, when they have been architects of their own downfall.
I admire that they’re currently attempting to play out of defence but, if they wanted to do there, there was yet another pass on for Sokratis – broad into right-back Ainsley Maitland-Niles, that was a means of doing it.
In the event you do exactly what Arsenal make it wrong and did it is comical and you seem stupid.
Since if you mess up, you are giving your opponent the ball over the border of your area, It’s crazy soccer, really – and it ends with a tap-in being conceded by you.
By practicing passing away from the back, if Arsenal ready for this game, they did not appear to arrive at the next stage, which might have been’what happens when we lose it?‘
There were not any responses from the Gunners when Watford pulled back a goal. They had no way of viewing out the game.
They tore their prior strategy, which had been to maneuver the ball, and appeared to alter their thinking to’let go long‘.
But while you do that, you must do it as a group, and move up the pitch.
You might try to target 1 side, and that means you’ve got the numbers hold up the ball there to get the knockdowns and squeeze the opposition in that region.
But, Arsenal did not adapt their form to do that in any fashion.
Instead they played chunks to isolated strikers, and everyone remained rooted to the spot in heavy positionson the edge of their box.
Each part of their group had been strung out and entirely disconnected, which meant they couldn’t keep ownership – it fell from 57% from the first half following the fracture to 37%.
Things got really bad for Arsenal, it was with Watford attacks coming . It was constant.
When that is happening to your team, as a player you want to take control. You remain, and make yourself more compact as a unit in touch with one another.
Arsenal’s game management was non-existent, nevertheless. In the event you were in their own defence, then you had binoculars to see their players, they were far off.
That is all pretty basic things, and lots of the moment, if you’re keeping the perfect distance between, say, midfield and defence then it moves unseen.
When it doesn’t, you concede chances at the rate Arsenal were in the second half.
Alarm bells should be ringing for Emery, and sort out things and he wants to get on the practice ground.
With no Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang about the pitch, Watford could have won and they definitely deserved to.
Arsenal have already suffered 20 away Premier League beats in only two seasons, and this is simply not good enough.
Emery has been for a number of these campaigns, but the thing is his side have enormous issues and they do not seem to be improving. In reality they appear to be getting worse.
Martin Keown was talking to BBC Sport’s Chris Bevan.
While Steve Smith won after the ball-tampering scandal over crowds, David Warner suffered a torturous Ashes.
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