Arsenal came away from today’s trip to Manchester United relieved to have picked up a point after a disappointing display, but was it the player’s or the manager who should pick up the slack for our downfall today?
The French boss had some tough decisions to make today, and some of those could come under question, including choosing to leave out Alex Iwobi, Olivier Giroud and Granit Xhaka.
Arsenal had their fair share of the first half, although failing to muster a shot on target, and I cant help but think that Alexis Sanchez failure to stay in an advanced position made life difficult for our other attacking players. Think I have to blame this on the Chilean himself, unless we believe that he was told to drop back and play as a sixth midfielder?
Mesut Ozil is a player who has come under criticism for his failure to have an impact on the game today, but I feel like he was limited to little time on the ball, and as above, the movement out of position by Alexis will have made life difficult for the German.
Granit Xhaka was a slight surprise to find himself on the bench, and it could be argued that he may well have helped to break up the Man United dominance in the second half, but no such complaints could be made before the interval, and some tactic changes from the Red Devils may have been to blame for our early failings after the break.
Arsene Wenger can be blamed for his reluctance to make a change before minute 73, when he brought on Giroud for the Egyptian midfielder, despite watching our side struggle for to stay in the game from the restart.
We will certainly feel happy with the point considering our failings within the 90 minutes, but with the form of our side compared to that of United’s, we should have been going into the match hoping for more.
Do you think the players failed to keep to the script, or simply didn’t play there best? Or do you think that we were set-up wrong from the off, and Arsene’s tactics were off?
Pat J