We all know that Arsenal only narrowly beat PSV at the Emirates last week, but there were very few pundits that didn’t think we would be able to get the single point we needed in Holland to secure our status as group winners, especially as PSV were beaten by the Dutch minnows Groningen at the weekend.
But the Gunners seemed to be totally over-run by PSV and in the first half the Dutch had two excellent goals in the back of Ramsdale’s net in the first half, but to ther relief of Arsenal fans they were both ruled out by VAR decisions in our favour.
PSV wre not deterred though and continued to embarras the Gunners in the second half, scoring two goals and getting yet another ruled out for offside. We looked a shadow of the side that carried all before them in the early part of the season, and Mikel Arteta could only congratulate Ruud van Nistelroy’s side after the game, and wonder what has gone wrong with our superstars. He told Arsenal.com: “Yeah, it’s the end of a long run. Today’s the first defeat after a long period. It’s time to reset, to analyse what happened. Congratulations to PSV – they were the better team and they deserved to win the game. There’s no question about that. We were nowhere near our level today, especially the way we competed.”
It is obvious that our levels have dropped recently and fatigue seemed to affect our performances. After a few 1-0 wins, we finally dropped points at Southampton at the weekend, and Arteta was asked if he saw this defeat coming: “I don’t know.” he continued. “We have periods where we’ve been excellent and periods where we’ve suffered. For sure, we haven’t had the consistency for 95 minutes to maintain the level we want. That’s the next challenge and the next aim for this team. Today I think it was very different, right from the beginning. Even though we had periods where we controlled the game, I didn’t feel that we had the threat and the aggression that we’ve been playing at.
“That was worrying. In the second half, the moment something went wrong, we just went down and we didn’t really find moments to give us some hope to react and get something out of the game.”
It was certainly a very disappointing night for our traveling fans, and the team themselves must be wondering what has gone wrong.
All we can do is regroup and try and get back to winning ways against Nottm Forest at the weekend…
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