There is nothing more sickening than losing two points in a game which should have been terminated by the referee immediately after what looked like the winning goal from Robin van Persie.
The inconsistency of the official aside, Arsenal have to take an awful lot of criticism for the way in which the penalty was conceded. Emmanuel Eboue showed a level of naivety that should be below him by now. He has played in a Champions League final where he attempted to shackle Ronaldinho, and successfully doing so, yet in a moment of crass stupidity, he put the final nails in the coffin of Arsenal’s title challenge.
This is not a criticism of Eboue alone. He actually had a rather decent game apart from the penalty incident, but Arsene Wenger has to appreciate that the squad players he has at his disposal are quite simply not useful enough. They may well be talented players individually, but their roles in the squad need re-defining.
Manchester United, who now look certain to regain the title, could have chosen from multiple players to fill the gap left by the injured Bacary Sagna. It is always difficult to accept when a rival team is superior, but one has to accept that the potential to play Rafael, O’Shea, Fabio, Brown and if desperate, Fletcher, in one position is infinitely better cover than at Arsenal. It is cover that is copious enough to ensure that the manager can pick the best reserve to face the qualities of the opposition. At Arsenal, there is nothing like that sort of cover, despite the number of players in the squads being nearly identical.
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Arsenal are now at 9/1 to lift the Premier League title following their 1-1 draw to Liverpool
Thus this is the area in which Arsenal will have to strengthen over the summer. Whilst there can be arguments over whether there should be a concerted effort to improve the first team, it seems a more pressing issue to rectify the clear problems that exist within the squad. When Alex Song is injured, like he has been in the last few weeks, there has been no like-for-like replacement for him within the club, and that is a fault of the management. Without replacements for the injured star players that can actually fill a number of roles in an effective manner, the same old March to May disaster will repeat itself time and time again.
Wenger knows this too. If he was entirely convinced by all of his players, he would give them more time earlier in the season. The reality is that he is reluctant to use certain squad players until he feels it absolutely necessary to do so, and this has the knock-on effect of forcing players who are not match-fit to play in positions to which they are not accustomed to. There is surely no better example of this than the woefully misused Nicklas Bendtner. This summer will undoubtedly be a pivotal one for the Gunners- – no mass changes are required, but astute ones are needed. Whether they are delivered is another matter entirely.
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we should have got makoun in january but we let him go to villa smh…what we need is to let cesc go cause after yesterday everyone could see he just wasnt into it. then we need to revert back to 4-4-2 so we can have wilshere song diaby ramsey frimpong rotating. only frimpong out of those five isnt capable of being a box to box midfielder. and i only say that cause ive barely seen him play.
Arsenla don’t have a big enough squad, we are dependent on the usual suspects, we need fresh blood and players who will challenge the first team. At the moment the first team have know challenging for their positions and this is why the first team is performing, they know if they have a bad couple of weeks, no one will replace them. Plain and simply we do not have any squad depth.