Arsenal vs Brighton: Having all but missed out on the top four, it’s time some serious questions were asked of the Gunners
There have been isolated bad results all the way through the season but the fatal damage, when fourth place was up for grabs, has come in the last month
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Your support makes all the difference.There was an emotional send-off for Aaron Ramsey last night at the Emirates, and a warm farewell for Petr Cech, but the most memorable sight came before the lap of appreciation, before the parting gifts for Ramsey, Cech and Danny Welbeck, and before the applause for the successful under-18s and women’s teams.
It was the sight of Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, Alexandere Lacazette and Sead Kolasinac slumped in the Arsenal dug-out after the final whistle. Kolasinac was leant forward, elbows on knees, propping up his head with his hand, staring emptily into the distance. Aubameyang sat back, arms glumly crossed like a truculent schoolboy. His 26 goals for the season were about to be shown on the big screen but his body language was projecting anything but pride.
The Arsenal players looked beaten. They had drawn this game with Brighton but it was still one of their worst results of the season. Because it meant that they are now desperately unlikely to finish in the top four. The only way they play Champions League football next season is if they win the right to do so in Baku at the end of the month.
And that represents a failure from Unai Emery and his team.
Yes, Arsenal came sixth last year, and so fourth was always going to be an ambitious target this time. But nobody could have expected the utter poverty of the other teams around them. A Manchester United team who had half of a Mourinho season, briefly enjoyed some new manager bounce before falling back down again. A Chelsea team in transition, where the fans have turned on the manager and their best player is seemingly off. And then a Tottenham team running on empty, who have taken just 10 points from their last 11 league games.
Given that dramatic Spurs collapse, and the weak challenges from Chelsea and United, fourth became a far more attainable target for Arsenal than they might have expected. The door was open for them, and they have failed to walk through it. At the start of the season, fifth and a good Europa League run would not strictly have been seen as a failure. But given how things have panned out, some harder questions need to be asked.
There have been isolated bad results all the way through the season but the fatal damage, when fourth place was up for grabs, has come in the last month. They have won just one of their last six league games, losing four of them. And those four losses – to Everton, Crystal Palace, Wolves and Leicester – have been four of their worst performances of the whole season. Games where they have showed so little fight, skill, organisation or belief that it is hard to picture how Emery has been working with these players for almost one whole year.
Emery was not in the mood for analysis afterwards, saying that it was “better to focus on Thursday against Valencia” rather than looking into what has gone wrong this year. And in one sense he is right: if Arsenal win the Europa League then that will overshadow their league struggles, take them into the Champions League, and nobody will much mind that they failed to take advantage of Spurs’ collapse.
But the Europa League final is more than three weeks away and there is no guarantee that they will win it, or even that they will be there. Three weeks to assess this season – the first of the post-Wenger future – and think about why they have struggled to put any real form together. To think about the unbalance of the squad, the question mark over the role of Mesut Ozil, the defensive errors, the flimsy midfield, and the unhealthy dependence on their two brilliant strikers.
These are not Emery’s mistakes as such, but they are his problems. They have grown out of a lack of direction and leadership that has left the club to drift all year. There are plenty of things wrong at Arsenal on and off the pitch, but Emery and the players are still those that bear the brunt. As bitterly frustrated as they are about how their league season has gone, they must know that the solution does not only lie with them.
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