Arsenal must learn to keep up the pressure and finish teams off

We all expected a reasonably easy day at the office for Mikel Arteta’s young Arsenal team (Dan Kit!) against Newcastle at the Emirates yesterday, but we were surprisingly easy on Don Howe’s team, especially in the first half, where we failed to make our dominance count and went into the break with a scrappy 0-0 stalemate.

We finally got the breakthrough 15 minutes into the second half through Bukayo Saka, and after he went off injured a few minutes later, his replacement Gabriel Martinelli quickly doubled our lead.

So basically the points were believed to be in the bag, and, as we have been seen to do many times this season, we began to sit back and seem happy to just defend our lead and take the points, instead of keeping our focus and going for the throat.

Mikel Arteta made a point of mentioning it yesterday after the game. “Yeah, after the 2-0 we know we have to go to a different level as a team. We gave too many sloppy balls away and weren’t organised in the press and we allowed them to run a few times and it created a different feeling.

“That’s the moment that we have to give even more, and go for the third or the fourth and make another step forward.”

“We had moments in the first half when we took the game where we wanted, but without really hurting them enough, and not playing with enough urgency and probably quality as well.”

So, I know a win’s a win, but yet again we were hardly impressive against the only team without a win this season and we should have won much more comfortably.

At least Arteta knows we have a problem, and hopefully he can do something about it, because sitting back will backfire on us at some point…

Tags Arteta Newcastle

5 Comments

  1. Haha good one Pat
    See what you did there 👍
    Regarding the article …
    You are spot on as our poor goals scored proves ,we should be going all out against teams of this quality and bagging as many as we can ,it was a game of two halves ,and took a good move down the left to open them up .
    15 goals in 13 shows we are lacking something offensively.

  2. I don’t think we are in the level to go all out against any team yet, yes we are in form, we have new players with huge potential and bla bla, let’s not forget this is arsenal that has been in constant decline in the past 5years, finishing 8th place in the last 2seasons, been cautious is very reasonable.
    We have too many pundits are so eager for us to fail and bring up their doing articles as usual,
    We can all see examples in the last defeat to Liverpool, ‘same old arsenal?’ , such articles wouldn’t go away any time soon.

    I support the team to be cautious, 1-0,2-0, are all 3pointer, after this season, if we are able to get top 4 and be in Europe, then we can start demanding huge performances with convincing wins, but atm, we have to be contented with any good results so far we getting points and not losses

  3. We really need ruthless midfielders and strikers, the hammers top us with goal difference, if only we had been scoring enough goals, hopefully we’ll get some better guns in January.

  4. They really need to learn how not to fold under a high press. And to learn to counter it, instead of sitting back and trying to absorb the pressure…IJS

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