wicked.football

Opportunity missed for Arsenal as one player’s form is a real concern

Sunday’s draw at Fulham felt like a massive opportunity missed for Arsenal after Liverpool’s game at Everton had been postponed earlier in the weekend.

It was a real chance for Mikel Arteta’s side to close the gap on the league leaders and they couldn’t take full advantage, which was a real blow. You could sense the disappointment afterwards.

I didn’t actually think they played too badly. Fulham are a decent side who have had a good season so far and Arsenal completely dominated them in terms of territory and possession, but again the issue was they just didn’t do enough with the ball in and around the final third.

It’s an ongoing issue with this Arsenal side, especially when they come up against teams who set up in a low block. They just find it difficult to break teams down.

It was no surprise that the goal they scored came from a set piece, we know all about how dangerous they are from dead ball situations. But given how much of the ball they enjoyed in the Fulham half, they really should have done more with it.

On the whole, Arsenal don’t struggle to score goals. They score plenty. They did last season and only Chelsea and Brentford have scored more than them in the current campaign.

The problem is in these really tight games, when teams are sitting deep against them, they can struggle to unlock them. They really do lack that mercurial X-Factor type player who can do something out of nothing and win a game on his own.

That’s why I really wanted them to go for Michael Olise in the summer. I think he would have been perfect for this Arsenal team and was the exact type of player that they were missing. Nothing that he has done since moving to Germany has changed my mind.

Gabriel Jesus’ form is a real concern as well. His cameo in the second half at Craven Cottage summed up where he is right now as a player.

He looks shot of any sort of confidence. When you throw a striker on at 1-1 midway through a second half you really want to see him influence a game. To get on the pitch and show why he should be starting.

Gabriel Jesus of Arsenal (Photo by Alex Pantling/Getty Images)

But Jesus did the opposite. He could barely find his man when he was on the ball and when a half chance came his way from Declan Rice’s clever pass, he didn’t even swing his foot at it.

He was really poor and his ongoing struggle for form and confidence means that Mikel Arteta has little option but to continue playing Kai Havertz week in, week out and he is unsurprisingly now starting to look like he needs a rest due to the sheer amount of minutes he is being asked to play.

So there are clearly attacking concerns at Arsenal at the moment which will once again raise the question about why nothing was done to really bolster the forward options in the summer, aside from the late call to sign Raheem Sterling on loan.

They are justifiable questions as well and you do feel something has to be done to strengthen Arteta’s options in the final third in January if they are to have a chance of keeping pace with Chelsea and hunting down Liverpool.

Gabriel Martinelli criticism is harsh, but Arsenal have looked at signings in his position…

I’m not as concerned as others seem to be about Gabriel Martinelli at the moment.

Yes, it was a mistake for him to get caught offside in the build up to the late disallowed goal. He should have done more to hold his line given he was looking across the pitch.

But the Fulham defenders deserve credit as well. They stepped up just at the right time and that also led to Martinelli being caught offside.

I actually thought he was bright when he came on and Arsenal looked much more of a threat. They had a balance to their attack which was missing before he was introduced.

I feel Martinelli just seems to be getting some unfair criticism at the moment. Could he offer more at times? Yes, undoubtedly. Could his end product be better? Again, yes. But he’s not the biggest problem at Arsenal right now.

Having said that, I do feel the left wing is an area where Arsenal could improve and the fact that the club have chased Nico Williams and Mykhailo Mudryk in recent transfer windows suggest they agree.

I’m not saying that Arsenal need to move Martinelli on. I still think he has a big part to play in this squad going forward, but it’s pretty clear that another option on that side would be really beneficial in terms of the attack.

Mikel Arteta got one key decision wrong against Fulham

I was watching Arsenal’s players get off the coach at Craven Cottage on Sunday and as soon as I saw that Oleksandr Zinchenko was not a part of the squad I was worried that we were going to see Jurrien Timber shifted to left-back again.

That is what happened obviously, with Timber being asked to cover for the injured Ukrainian and Thomas Partey once again filling in on the right side of the back four.

Don’t get me wrong, I thought Timber and Party both played perfectly fine in those positions, but I still don’t think it was the right call by Arteta to play them there.

The big issue is how much it impacts the team in an attacking sense. Timber can do a job at left-back, but he’s not playing on his natural side and he is no way as threatening when over on the left.

When he plays on the right he gets forward all the time, supports Bukayo Saka and gets on the overlap, which often gives Saka more space to work because defenders are forced to track Timber’s runs.

That just doesn’t happen when Partey plays at right-back. He rarely gets on the overlap and operates much more as an inverted full-back, which leads to him going into what is already a congested central area.

I just don’t really think it works and so is not what the disruption that comes with moving Timber to the opposite flank and taking Partey out of midfield, especially when you have Kieran Tierney and Myles Lewis-Skelly sitting on the bench.

Now, Lewis-Skelly was only just back from injury on Sunday so maybe he wasn’t fit enough to start, but Tierney has been training for several weeks now and has been on the bench for the last four games.

I know he has his injury issues and is probably being carefully managed. But why is he on the bench if he is not going to be used when you have several other left-backs unavailable? What’s the point?

Again, I don’t think this is why Arsenal dropped points at Fulham. With the players they used and the system they played, so still did enough to win. They just didn’t take the chances that came their way.

But I still felt there were things that could have been done differently to cover for the absence of all the injured defenders.

Arsenal will inevitably have to sell this £34m star

It’s good to see Fabio Vieira started to get more game time at Porto after the early injury he picked up there following his loan move.

He’s clearly a talented player and I hope he has a strong second half to the season and shows everyone why Arsenal invested so much money to bring him to England in the first place.

I don’t think it is an absolute certainty that his Arsenal career is finished. The fact that the club did not insert any sort of buy option in his loan move suggests that they have not totally washed their hands of him.

But I would be surprised at this point if he comes back and makes the grade in north London. I still think the most likely option is that he moves on permanently come the end of the season.

Mikel Arteta admitted that Vieira was allowed to leave so that Ethan Nwaneri could get more minutes this season and Nwaneri has already shown how good he can be, despite still only being 17.

So Vieira would find himself being Nwaneri in the pecking order next season should he still be around and I can’t imagine he would be too happy with that given his need for game time.

It just feels like an exit is inevitable and that Arsenal will have to take a fairly big financial hit on a player they spent £34 million on back in 2022.

The post Gabriel Jesus a huge concern as Arsenal miss major opportunity against Fulham appeared first on CaughtOffside.