After failing to overcome Liverpool and West Ham, the Gunners intended to bounce back, but their redemption game on Sunday ended in a 2-1 loss to Fulham.
Bukayo Saka gave the Gunners the lead in the fifth minute, but they were unable to hold on and went on to lose. Some Arsenal players were not at their best in Sunday’s loss to Fulham. Here are those I believe could have performed better.
Gabriel Martinelli put on another poor performance, with fundamental positional and passing errors that led to Fulham’s transition attacks. Despite the obvious effort, Martinelli’s recent performances have fallen short of expectations. His inability to make a significant impact – he created just one chance before coming off – made Arsenal’s offensive problems worse.
Eddie Nketiah’s 90-minute appearance against Fulham had fans scratching their heads, unable to recall any good influence. Despite drawing a few fouls, Nketiah was mainly unsuccessful, failing to create chances or demonstrate dynamic ball dribbles.
As a key member of Arsenal’s rotation in the Premier League title fight, Nketiah’s performance will be scrutinised, especially given his prime years.
While not awful, centre back Gabriel Magalhes was chastised for blunders that led to both of Fulham’s goals. During a corner, he struggled against Bobby De Cordova-Reid, losing a physical battle and enabling a decisive goal.
Despite being regarded as one of the league’s top centre backs, Magalhaes showed an unforgiving margin for error versus Fulham, costing his club vital points.
For me those are the players that negatively influenced Arsenal versus Fulham, what about you?
Darren N
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The problem is EPL teams have already been familiar with Arteta’s 3-2-4-1 tactic and blocked the half-spaces with human walls
If Arsenal keep using the slow build-up tactics, they would need a physically-dominant CF, who can push those human walls and beat them in aerial duels
Arteta’s tactic is similar to Guardiola’s 3-2-4-1. But Arteta’s lacks variations in the final third and relies too much on Arsenal’s diminutive CFs, whereas Guardiola has the big Haaland and the strong Alvarez
@Gai, Sometimes Arteta is too rigid with his formation and “one way traffic” even when things are not working unlike his mentor Guadiola. He also need to improve the use of his bench
Matinelli and Saka are experiencing gradual burn out after many games last season. Nelson and ESR should be used more regularly to serve as completion.
We need a good CF and at least a defender in January even if a loan if Arteta is ambitious in fighting for Epl trophy.
Arteta should’ve seen how Klopp fixed Liverpool’s problems
Liverpool won UCL and EPL, then some EPL teams figured out how to defend against them
Klopp solved it by changing Alexander-Arnold’s role and signing two tall CFs
Klopp also spent a lot on these players and the jury is still out on them. Even though Liverpool are riding high at the moment it is not certain that they will sustain this run.
Also, for all the talk about formations it is worth noting that when successful Klopp has consistently had a number of world class players as parts of his team: e.g. Allison, Salah and van Dijk.
In my opinion, we also have several world class players, such as Saliba, Rice, Partey, Martinelli and Jesus
But Liverpool and Man City have various CF types to vary their attacking methods, whereas we just have two small ones
So to understand… the article is about some Arsenal players who were corpses? And the three who were the most were Martinelli, Gabriel, and o,n’ket?I think about such a serious talk if you want,since you never mention anywhere,the name of the ghost football player,buoy Sakka,because it has become now,and the goal He didn’t put it in, the ball built him a scorer… Then what can I tell you? The worst player for a month, he is only theoretically in the eleven and you don’t see it? That’s how you hurt him, everyone wants to They get it when they sleep. This gentleman has a huge stock market value that never goes down why? Is that fair to the rest of us? He is the best rival team mate.why doesn’t Arteta dare to have him on the bench, what does he offer? at the moment nothing, when he starts to justify his value again then yes. There is never a change and let him sleep for the whole match, and now you here, you don’t even see, you see right martinelli, gabrielle, but n’kettha is not key for this review, while the tourists are missing sakka, odegaard, you expect from some players To make a difference, that’s why they are paid handsomely, and based on their performance, to lure the rest as well, right?Some… also the first to praise the tourists is Arteta… the coach doesn’t have the guts to throw names on the bench and is exposed with their performance, which basically damages the club Club…. But will someone say who to put since the bench has terrible subordinates. Well, this is not my fault, this is also a huge problem, the lack of worthy players, and the depth In the team it is non-existent. So they need at least five transfers to add depth. Is there money? If not why are we sitting and talking about titles and Europe?
Arsenal’s problems are both fullback positions. In reality Arsenal do not have an a real energetic fullback and have been fortunate to get away with using central defenders or midfielders in those positions. The full back has to be the most energetic player on show and the lacking of forward overlapping runs is not giving space to Martinelli or Sake to play with. The Arsenal so called fullbacks are also not getting back in time to prevent or slow down that early in swinging cross by the opposition. Arteta needs to recall Tierney at least and invest in two quality out and out energetic fullbacks the can run up and down the pitch all day long without breaking sweat. That is why Martinelli and Saka are not at their best, it’s because of the lack of options and support buy fullbacks.
@daveg that’s precisely how it is.Not to mention that our fullbacks are not fullbacks by trade.White is a C.B and Zinchenko a midfielder. Only Arteta knows why we do not have fullbacks anymore.
As mentioned above by daveg, our big issue is having centre backs as fullbacks! Very little support for the wings and with Ode consistently playing close to Saka even less support for Martinelli. Havertz may cover a lot of ground in stats but it’s not often effective and the timing of support is just off completely. We need a proper box2box midfielder with Rice sitting at DM for now.
Martinelli and Saka have been absolutely run into the ground so it’s difficult to have a go at them for a poor performance when they are never rotated and tactics are never changed….leads to predictability which is clear for all to see but 1.
Gabriel and Saliba have been carrying the team heavily this season, can’t really blame 1 of them for having a off game once in a while.
PJ-SA, Sorry to hark back to a post two days ago. But I posted a sincere apology to you which however failed to appear so you will not have been able to read it.
You wrote the word “loss” which I FOOLISHLY misread as “boss” and therefore I posted a heated post berating your, to me at the time, , APPARENT contradiction.
Another poster kindly pointed MY mistake to me and so I immediately TRIED to post my apology, as I WAS OF COURSE STUPIDLY WRONG.
Unfortunately, for various reasons, that apology post did not appear, so I NOW REPEAT THAT SINCERE APOLOGY TO YOU AND HOPE WE ARE STILL FRIENDS.
I wil try to read more carefully another time. SORRY!!
I much agree with your post above, which in the case of both our wingers OUGHT to have been avoided, but sadly was not!
All this is on Arteta.He has been a player, an assistant manager and now manager for 4years in the Epl and he has no excuses having the team he has.
We are lacking physically, no subs for some players, players playing out of position and obvious favouritism on specific players.
This situation needs urgent addressing orelse it will get worse.
The biggest and only problem was one day rest between tough fixtures. Fulham had five days rest before our game.
West Ham also has five days rest after our game.
Our players are not machines!
HH time to get over the fixtures bud, we aren’t the only team that will play 2 games in 3 days this season. It comes with the territory of being in more comps. Like I told you already, that’s what a squad is for and we are only playing 3 games in 15 days 🙂
Victim mentality get’s you nowhere
While I accept your point HH, there are a number of players who are regular bench warmers who are as fresh as daisies, yet they are evidently not trusted by our Manager?
Grandad I don’t know why is that so. Why doesn’t he rotate at the expense of losing games? Considering he is the biggest loser when results doesn’t go our way?
Does he want to lose? Of course not, then perhaps he doesn’t know how? Perhaps he has become so good tactically only when his first eleven are concerned. When they are injured or out of form he become clueless on what to do.
No. this is simply excuses. From worst situation Liverpool beat West ham in midweek game Still able to Draw with Arsenal in weekend Then again win the midweek and weekend game continuously. Liverpool had more busy schedule than us. Do not blame the schedule for lack of planning by Arsenal Manager and team
DARREN, I fully accept SOME of your valid points, esp MARTINELLI and even more, about Nketiah, who seems to almost all Gooners, to judge from their comments, to have proved by now he will NEVER be the striking answer for a club of OUR stature.
On Gabriel however, though I take your points about the Fulham game, that is just one game and he has had a very good seaon til Christmas, so I put that down to simply ONE less good perf, nothing more.
I accept of course that on GABRIEL, you did mention that it was only in that GAME, but I still found it rather harsh, given his excellent form til then
Hi lads , our gunners are coming up against defenses that are deep blocking us…..that has proved challenging because our front squad are misfiring and not playing with the same togetherness and fluency as last season when they were a joy to watch. Good defense is vital , but you cannot always rely on it to win games….