Martin Keown reveals that he almost wanted to go and meet Mikel Arteta to ask him to sub in an Arsenal striker
Arsenal’s loss to Olympiacos would have had some more drama if Martin Keown had his way and approached Mikel Arteta to demand that he makes a striker substitution.
Keown watched in agony as Arsenal failed to capitalise on their first-leg advantage and fell to a home loss to the impressive Greeks.
He found it bemusing that Arteta kept Gabriel Martinelli on the bench until the second half of extra time and he claims that he almost ran to tell Arteta to put on the Brazilian.
Martinelli has scored ten goals for Arsenal this season and the Brazilian remains one of the team’s most reliable goal scorers.
However, Arteta has been rotating his team heavily recently and Martinelli has been one of the players who have struggled to get game time and Keown believes that Arteta should have brought him on earlier.
He said as quoted by the Sun: “We were that close I was tempted to tell Arteta to bring Martinelli on, but you don’t want to be disrespectful.
“It was obvious Martinelli had to come on, we were that close to Arteta I was tempted to go over and say ‘put Martinelli on’. You have to show respect, of course you can’t go and do that.
“The basics and the structure aren’t there. These are schoolboy errors.”
I thought MK was going to explode on the box last night. He was livid
Poor old John Hartson barely got a word in edgeways
Sue, last night was a disgrace, we got a brilliant away win, an away goal, we were at home and we are or at should be able to get through the hime tie against them. Apparently 17 times we have won the first leg away in Europe and 17 times we had gone through. With all due respect, we were playing Olympiacos, not Bayer, Madrid or Barca, they are not a bad team at all but we were in control and didn’t control anything really. In terms of this club going forward, last night was a nail in the coffin as far as being able to plan for the future. Even an ailing Wenger and haphazard Emery got us further in this comp. I think Arteta is a future top coach in the making but he has to look further than his conscience in this team to move us on. He has to make big brave decisions and quickly.
Honestly Reggie I can’t disagree with your assessment of the game and yes we really should have put the game to bed. There has been a malaise surrounding Arsenal for quite a while &
I would be grateful if you could fully explain what you meant by Arteta looking further than his conscience.
If you mean by ditching under performers then I wholeheartedly agree Arteta came after Wenger and Emery were Disappearing or had disappeared down the plug hole That was a long time to reverse the ills of the past and I am prepared to give him a decent stab at it. Finding a Klopp or Guardiola is like finding hens with toothy pegs
And then there was a 70 million floop Pepe!!! I watched and kept wondering in disbelief how this guy was already to stay on pitch for the whole match.
I sort of agree with Martin on this one,however our defensive frailties came to the fore once again and the schoolboy error by Leno was poor decision making, just clear your lines man,at that late stage anywhere will do,I couldn’t believe my eyes when he tried to play the ball out of defence.
Arteta has to be looking at this dodgy back four,I can only give credit of any sort to Saka and Mustafi here ,Luiz is a liability and Bellerin is not the player he was and even then he was’t that great.He should have made a change up front sooner but we had the tie won until Leno’s bad error of judgment.
Lenos “error” after a needless back pass was giving a corner away not a goal. Whatever led up to the goal, it wasn’t Lenos fault. The fact our team cant cope with dead balls is the fault.