That year, Arsenal was eliminated from the FA Cup by Man.City – their main rival in the race to win the Premier League championship. This year, Mikel Arteta and his team were eliminated from the FA Cup at the first hurdle at home by Liverpool.
Common point: Arsenal lost to opponents who seemed to be their best match at any given time. This is a mental problem. Whenever they meet an equal opponent, Arsenal cannot overcome themselves to win against that opponent. And that is the characteristic of a team that cannot dispute the title. This is not the time to discuss any team’s ability to win the FA Cup (there are still 4 more rounds to go before reaching the final). In other words, we don’t know how important the recent victory was for Liverpool, but this is really Arsenal’s loss. They were too squandered on opportunities and were punished for this. Arsenal defender Jakub Kiwior scored an own goal in the 80th minute, then Luis Diaz set the score 2-0 for Liverpool in extra time.
Arsenal needs a psychologist
After 20 rounds in the Premier League, Erling Haaland (Man.City) and Mohamed Salah (Liverpool) both have 14 goals, even little-known strikers like Dominic Solanke (Bournemouth) or Hwang Hee-chan ( Wolverhampton) have all scored 10 goals or more, while Arsenal’s number 1 scorer, Bukayo Saka, has only 6 goals. Lack of a “killer” striker – a weakness that has been mentioned repeatedly by observers when discussing Arsenal this season. The match against Liverpool in the FA Cup just exposed that weakness again.
Arsenal had half as many shots as Liverpool, almost twice as many accurate shots, but the score was 2-0 for Liverpool. In Arsenal’s 19 shots at the goal, there were 16 situations that were counted as “scoring opportunities”. When asked in the post-match press conference if missing too many opportunities is a big problem for Arsenal right now, coach Arteta admitted: “Yes. We need to press the restart button in the next few weeks.” coming day”. And he said: perhaps Arsenal needs a psychologist to improve their finishing efficiency.
Kai Havertz played as a center forward in the recent defeat, finishing 6 times. Next are Saka and Reiss Nelson in the wing forward positions. The attacking trio had a total of 15 opportunities to score. Need to buy more good strikers this transfer season? That cannot be a good solution. How to get Saka, Havertz, Gabriel Jesus, Gabriel Martinelli, Martin Odegaard, Eddie Nketiah, Leandro Trossard to score more goals in the remaining half of the season is Arteta’s job. At first glance, we can only see clearly: the struggle in front of the opponent’s goal is a big reason why Arsenal has only won 1 of the last 7 matches, counting all tournaments. An attack-oriented playing style that is not coupled with the ability to score goals is… doomed!
