Typical Arsenal: Dominant and relentless, but fail to get the result

After their dominant performance against Manchester United on Saturday, it was a shock to see Arsenal not take a single point from the Emirates.

A stadium where they have played splendid football and built up an unbeaten streak, until United won 3-1 with 10 men. Many believed Arsenal gifted United the first two goals due to lacklustre defending.

However, some say Jose’s tactics were the sole reason as to why United won outright and deserve their goals from the open play. Their goal, was to allow Arsenal to have the ball then United would counter attack and break.

Even though Arsenal mustered well over thirty attempts, which is a rare sight to see it is hard to picture how Arsenal only scored one goal in 90 plus minutes. Three words: David De Gea.

Currently, one of the world’s best goalkeeper, the Spaniard broke a record making 14 saves, matching the record for the most saves in a Premier League game. Jose Mourinho stated ‘I told him after the match what I saw today was the best goalkeeper in the world’ on De Gea’s performance vs Arsenal.

However, it was Jesse Lingard who stole the headlines, picking up the Man of The Match award and celebrating with a smooth Milly Rock in Arsenal’s backyard. I think Lingard could teach Martial a thing or two about Milly Rocking, because his was a sight that many do not want to see again.

Lingard’s moves went viral as he posted on Instagram ‘At The Emirates I Milly Rock’ achieving well over 350 thousand likes.

Wenger thinks his team can take encouragement from the performance, believing they have shown the brand of football they are capable of producing.

“I believe from the game, it has to make us angry and even more determined,” said Wenger. “If I am a player, and I think with what we produced, we have a huge potential, and we lose the game. We cannot accept that.”

The goals came when Antonio Valencia pounced on a loose Laurent Koscielny pass to drill the opener, before Jesse Lingard side-footed a second after robbing Shkodran Mustafi to link smartly with Romelu Lukaku and Anthony Martial.

The strikes meant United had scored as many goals in 11 minutes as they had in eight away fixtures against the Premier League’s so-called ‘big six’ clubs.

Although Laurent Koscielny and Shkodran Mustafi made errors which led to United goals in the opening 11 minutes on Saturday, Wenger is refusing to seek scapegoats for the loss.

“I am not here to especially blame people,” he added. “I want Arsenal Football Club to win. When the performance is of that quality, we have to be efficient.”

Alexandre Lacazette scored Arsenal’s goal to initially halve United’s advantage, but it was the visitors who struck next and from there they shut up shop, But Gunners fans will have surely now seen enough of the Frenchman to know they have a potential superstar on their hands.

Lacazette’s latest strike was his eighth in an Arsenal shirt and he will score plenty more between now and May, with his movement, confidence and finishing ability all clear to see.

De Gea took all the plaudits with a superhuman display in between the posts but that should take nothing away from Lacazette, who did everything but add to his first-half strike.

Lingard struck on the counter-attack following fine work from Pogba, who was then shown a straight red card for a studs-up challenge on Hector Bellerin. The midfielder’s offence carries an automatic three-match ban and rules Pogba out of next weekend’s Manchester derby.

Arsenal now sit in fifth, whereby they are one point off Liverpool and four points off Chelsea. Their next game is a midday kick off which is away at Southampton followed by another away game against struggling West Ham.

Hopefully, Arsenal can see the positives from their performance against United and look forward to start off all guns blazing at St.Mary’s.

Their next Premier League match against a top 4 team is against Liverpool on the 22nd December, hopefully if the squad remain injury-free can look to penetrate Liverpool’s leaky back four with the likes of Lacazette and Sanchez.

 

Written by Giovan Hayer

Follow Giovan on Twitter @GiovanH

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