Arsenal badly need a lucky break by Sam P
When Arsenal traveled to face Southampton at the end of December with the chance to go top of the Premier League it was certainly a bad night and the below par performance was heavily punished by a 4-0 defeat. But Arsene Wenger was still right to point out that three of the four goals should not have stood and with the stats showing that we had the same number of shots on target as them, you could certainly say that luck was not on our side last night.
And I am struggling to remember a game since then when it was, apart from Flamini’s yellow card against Bournemouth when it could have been red. The rest of the time it has all been the other way. It certainly was on the side of Swansea last night as replays clearly showed that neither of their goals should have stood. It was a blatant foul on Ozil and then Ashley Williams was stood in an offside position when Sigurdsson whipped in his free kick. What was the linesman doing on that free kick so that he missed it?
Even after that the luck was with them as Williams knew little about his goal, it just hit him from Cech’s parry. Yes we should have been better but with even a teaspoon full of luck we would still have won that game and it seems to me that we just cannot catch a break of any kind right now.
People are wondering why our form and confidence is so bad but I think the cumulative effect of nothing going our way for game after game has got to the players and probably the manager as well. They say that a striker on a scoring drought or a team in a slump sometimes just needs a lucky goal or a lucky result to get them out of the rut and I think that is true of Arsenal and the likes of Alexis and Giroud.
Smashing the woodwork three times, shots defleted narrowly wide, rebounds going straight to defenders or their keeper and penalty claims going begging, while the opposition has two shots on target and score twice while both should have been disallowed. Are you really suggesting that Arsenal were NOT unlucky last night?
Unless it changes against Tottenham on Saturday, what chance have Arsenal got of breaking this cycle?