Arsenal’s second-half capitulation at Watford on Super Sunday was like watching a’semi-pro’ group, states Graeme Souness.
Arsenal hauled away the points through two errors after being 2-0 up at half-time through a Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang double. To begin with, Sokratis Papastathopoulos tried to play out just to Tom Cleverley to capitalise and halve the deficit, until David Luiz gave away.
Arsenal have conceded seven goals in their past three games, a number of them coming from mistakes in the back, also Souness didn’t hold back in the Sky Sports studio in his evaluation of the Gunners.
«They capitulated in the second halfof Arsenal. They didn’t win a challenge. If you are an Arsenal supporter you ought to be scratching your head. It has two teams. It’s like here is another one later half-time, along with the very first team at the first half. Proper teams do not play like that.
«Arsenal in the second half were like a semi-professional team playing soccer. That I mean they were not learning from the mistakes they were performing time and time again.»
In particular, Souness questioned Unai Emery brought on Reiss Nelson and Joe Willock when leading 2-1 in the second half.
«They bring about a few kids, that was a match where at 2-1 it was time to dig in and regroup, make sure they did not lose the match, and they should have lost it. When the children came on they had been all around the place, it was like a sport of basketball and if you were still an Arsenal fan, which could deeply, profoundly worry you.»
The first goal came in Papastathopoulos’ pass from defence by a Bernd Leno goal kick, something seen more this year after rules altered to allow defenders to accumulate the ball inside the box.
However, Souness said Arsenal should have gone long after a warning signal from the first half.
«There are senior players in this type of defence. As a supervisor, you expect your players, it doesn’t need to be the ones, work out it that they’re going to concede.
«Why did the big players not say’let us just go with it for 10 minutes and see where it’s us’, since persisting with it was going to charge them, and they are fortunate it only cost them one.»
Among Arsenal players Granit Xhaka, on the afternoon confessed Arsenal were’fearful’ at the second half,» but stated playing from the trunk was among several problems, not the issue.
«That which was wrong [in the second half]we didn’t play our gamewe were scared, we know they would push us in the second half but we must show more personality and play, rather than be scared. You can’t give a performance.
«We train for short goal cries, of course mistakes are here however, it is not an excuse. Next time we must do much better, we have to analyse and we’ll see what happens. It wasn’t just this scenario that was a problem – it had been the entire second half.»
Back at the studio, Souness responded to Xhaka’s interview by asking:’How can Arsenal be scared?’
«They are saying they were scared – I have never been frightened at a game of football in my life. I don’t know it. In the game plan Watford dropped .
«It’s easy to play when nobody’s coming after you, in mind. I could’ve played that Arsenal team from the first halfof the But the whole thing affects when Watford are let off the lead, you are confronted plus they did not stand up for it.
«Sometimes you’ve got to have a hat on for a single sort of match, and another hat for yet a different. Arsenal proved now they can only play 1 way – they can not go to war.»
Talking after the match to Sky Sports, Arsenal manager Emery explained the ball from goal strikes would have induced his side to get rid of the battle that was physical at midfield, also admits his side has to learn from their mistakes.
«Trying the long ballthey are physically stronger than people, and they were winning that chunk. We wanted to split the first line and join with Mesut [Ozil], just like we did with the aim.
«It had been two distinct halves. At the first we commanded the match how we wanted, in the second they pushed for our mistakes, and we’d more than we ever wanted to perform. We will need to consider how we could improve, how we could do better.
«We can grow up with all the errors and learn for the future games. Knowing they’d do more, and in the next half we needed to do the identical job, although we stated at half-time that 2-0 isn’t enough. They did that, and the lines couldn’t break.
«I keep with our way of functioning. We will need to improve, take some advice from this match. We can be let down, but we learn about that.»
Arsenal visit Eintracht Frankfurt in their initial Europa League group phase battle on Thursday at 5.55pm, before hosting Aston Villa in the Premier League on Sunday at 4.30pm.
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