Arsenal appear a club lacking in every department in capitulation to Chelsea | Jonathan Liew

Arsenal fans: honestly, what did you think was going to happen? Probably, in fairness, exactly that. Indeed, had you simulated this game several thousand times in advance, “an easy 2-0 milking for Chelsea with Romelu Lukaku running riot” would probably have been among the more common outcomes.

All the same, there was a startling quality to the way Arsenal lost here. Not simply the speed of their capitulation but the sheer stupidity of it, the bone-headed determination to keep making the same elementary mistakes, the way the 11 on the pitch were pretty much the only people in the stadium unable to see what was coming.

The first point to make is that Chelsea did to Arsenal what they are going to do to a lot of teams this season. Of the four apparent title contenders, they look like the ones with the strongest idea of themselves: a deceptively simple approach based around the rapidly advancing wing-backs, quick transitions through midfield and now the finely calibrated destruction of Lukaku up front. When the pace drops, as it did in the second half, Thomas Tuchel could simply bring on N’Golo Kanté and Hakim Ziyech to spice the pot.

This is a serious, high-grade team. And yet they might not get an easier ride all season.

Naturally there will be plenty of scrutiny of Mikel Arteta’s tactics, the 4-2-3-1 that looked entirely devoid of natural width against a team with plenty of it, and had the gaping flaw of leaving Reece James with half a pitch to run into.

But to blame the shape lets individuals off the hook. The problem here wasn’t the four-man defence but the utter inadequacy of the personnel employed to carry it out. To be clear, this isn’t so much about technical deficiency as a sort of in-game idiocy: the total absence of the sort of tactical education or positional grammar to fall back on when the ball is pinging about and world-class players – or really just Brentford these days – are massing ranks against you.

Let’s take the opening goal by way of illustration. To that point Arsenal had probably been the better side. Yet when Chelsea mustered their first attack, the players all suddenly started doing strange things. Lukaku’s presence on the ball seemed to drag about four defenders towards him. Kieran Tierney inexplicably decided to reinvent himself as a centre-half. Pablo Marí tried to barge Lukaku out of the way and was simply shaken off, like sand at the beach. At the moment James delivered his cross, there was arguably not a single Arsenal player in the right position.

Mikel Arteta waited until after the hour mark before making changes in the defeat to Chelsea
Mikel Arteta waited until after the hour mark before making changes in the defeat to Chelsea. Photograph: Tom Jenkins/The Guardian

There is no formation that cures an illness like this. And it wasn’t just the goals, Arsenal were doing this all afternoon. Who was supposed to be covering for Tierney when he went forward? Why was Nicolas Pépé chasing the ball all the way to the left wing? What is Bukayo Saka’s actual position? Why was Granit Xhaka 40 yards ahead of his midfield partner Albert Sambi Lokonga (who actually had quite a good game and spent most of the afternoon looking like he’d stumbled into an experimental dance video)? And why isn’t the full-time on-duty manager of Arsenal Football Club doing anything about any of this until after the hour?

But to blame individuals lets the culture off the hook. Individuals don’t do stupid things in a vacuum. There was a moment in the first half when the newly readmitted crowd howled at Emile Smith Rowe for having the temerity to pass backwards. You lost count of the number of times when fans screamed at players to chase after the ball. And so that’s what they did: chased the ball, heedlessly and indiscriminately, without the first thought for shape or how their run might affect those behind. There are worse Premier League teams than Arsenal, but few that can be so easily bent out of shape. All you have to do is point and shout, and immediately about five red shirts run in that direction.

Of course you can argue that Chelsea can simply go out and spend £97.5m on an oven-ready elite striker. Arsenal can’t do that, partly because no self-respecting elite striker would join Arsenal at the moment. And so if you don’t have quality and you can’t buy quality, then you have to blend it yourself, through smart coaching and chemistry and a culture of improvement. It takes genuine expertise: on the training ground, in the analysis department, at executive level. Nowhere, from dressing room to boardroom, is that expertise in evidence.

Arsenal actually looked better in the second half. They offered a threat from set pieces. Pierre‑Emerick Aubameyang came on for the wayward Saka. Bernd Leno made a brilliant save from Lukaku that will almost instantly be forgotten. And occasionally you got a fleeting glimpse of the better, more interesting game that might have ensued had Arsenal managed to keep their wits about them for more than 15 minutes, had they not succumbed to such basic errors. But then, this is the problem in microcosm: if they stopped making those errors, they’d stop being Arsenal.

source: theguardian.com