A Fish rots from the head – a team from the back

What?
By Boris Mellor
January 22 2006

For five matches Arsenal kept a clean sheet and confidence began to grow. Confidence in the back four gave confidence to the midfield, and then the forwards began to play. The goals started to flow.

 But it all went wrong very early for Arsenal at Everton, it didn’t take the Toffees long to discover that Gilbert was raw (true he recovered from his shaky start to play quite well), and that Senderos is going through a confidence crisis. Campbell was sluggish and took little responsibility for Senderos, and as a unit the defence was all over the place. In front the invisible wall should be named the incompetent wall, as his errors led to even more pressure on an already creaking defence.

Resolute defence would have raised confidence – when Arsenal missed two quick chances in a row the confidence of Everton rose, and their goal followed on almost immediately.

When the goal came it was hardly a surprise, and it was largely down to poor defending. With the defence caught out too far up the field neither Sol or Phil could get close enough to Beattie (unless by fouling him). Beattie took his chance well, although later he was to spurn an equally good one, although Lehmann positioned himself well, perhaps putting him off.

With 13 minutes gone the die was cast for Everton to win, after that neither Arsenal nor Everton had many chances. Everton because they concentrated on flooding the midfield, and defending what they had, and Arsenal because they kept running into the cul de sac prepared for them.

In the second half Arsenal poured forward, but it was unimaginative, and Everton blocked most activity and found time to break away. We didn’t play well, indeed its hard to think of one good performance, only numerous candidates for worse player of the match. With Freddy and Bobby ill adapted to 4-5-1 the Gunners failed to get round the back of Everton.

Everton rarely score, and one goal is a feast for them, so the key to their victory was not conceding – they held Chelsea to a draw earlier this season with similar tactics, the only difference was that the Chavs refused to be generous and give them the easy goal for a win.

Even if we couldn’t play well that was no reason for losing, a resolute defence could have left us with a chance to win it late on, instead the Gunners got more frustrated and desperate. Increasingly risking the second goal.

Missing three left backs, Eboue and Kolo, the defence could not get its act together. If Wenger cannot drill the defence to cope with these absences then things could be rocky until some class defenders come back. A fish rots from the head in Arsenal’s case the rot started at the back. A better team than Everton would have had a hatful.