It has been continually remarked about Arsenal this season, that when they get a one-goal lead, against any opposition at all, they immediately sit back and just try to defend their lead.
Even Arteta has mentioned it many times himself this season after games, but during our unbeaten run it was thanks to our great defence keeping clean sheets in most games which stopped us surrendering our lead.
But it certainly didn’t work against Man United, but we failed even more against Everton, in fact we have conceded 9 goals in our last 4 games including the 4-0 at Liverpool.
But there is absolutely no excuses for letting a very poor Everton side to come back into the game, and in fact they could have scored many more, but if only we didn’t stop putting the pressure on once we had taken the lead.
Odegaard was asked if it was a mentality problem after the Everton game and he said, “I think it is. When you’re leading 1-0 you get afraid to lose the win and in my opinion that’s what we did wrong today.
“You go for the second goal and that was the intention, but we didn’t manage to do that on the pitch.”
“It’s very disappointing. I think it’s a game we should win or at least get a point. It’s not our best game, but still they they gave us so much space to play.
“I think in my opinion we stopped doing what we had to do. We stopped playing football after after we got the lead, especially in the second half. We just kicked the ball long and and gave them the game they want to play.
“We have to keep keep the ball better.”
So, Arteta has said it himself that it is a problem in the side, so the question needs to be asked; Can he fix it?
It’s certainly happening a bit too often of late…