Mikel Arteta ‘shocking decision’ as Enzo Maresca ‘finally exposed crack’

Is the Arsenal ‘bottling it’ narrative starting to gain some early momentum? Apparently Mikel Arteta made a ‘shocking decision’.

‘Arsenal missed huge chance that would have been taken by hard-nosed killers’, apparently.

Arsenal exposed!

Mediawatch loves some in-depth tactics talk so we were intrigued to see The Sun‘s take on the big 1-1 draw between Chelsea and Arsenal which was mostly remarkable for crunching tackles, fouls, cards, niggle and very occasionally football.

Chelsea held Arsenal despite being reduced to 10 men for most of the game. But how? Why?

How Enzo Maresca finally exposed crack in Mikel Arteta’s Arsenal side as Chelsea clash underlines defensive drop-off

This should be good…

WE HAVE finally found a crack in this Arsenal side.

Come on then…does one of the full-backs keep being pulled inside? Does Declan Rice struggle to look over his left shoulder? Does David Raya take a half-step to one side like a modern-day Paul Robinson?

Take away the Premier League’s best central defensive pair and, amazingly, they are a weaker side.

Oh. So Arsenal have been ‘finally exposed’ by missing two injured centre-halves? Enzo Maresca, you really are some sort of underrated genius to ‘finally expose’ that the champions-elect’s third and fourth-choice centre-halves are not nearly as good as their very best.

Just wait until he faces Manchester City without Erling Haaland.

Over at the Daily Mail, they tease ‘the Arsenal duo who lack the calmness needed to cope in big matches’. Is it the centre-half pair who have never played together before, by any chance? Of course it is.

Decisions decisions

Obviously we have to pretend that either the Chelsea manager did something remarkable or the Arsenal boss did something indefensible, because this is the modern discourse of football.

And so we go to the Daily Star…

Mikel Arteta’s shocking decision against Chelsea as the Gunners drop points

We honestly had to read this piece through three times (putting us into some sort of Star record book) to extract that the ‘shocking decision’ that Arteta made was to ‘fail to calm his team down’.

The idea that this was a ‘decision’ is of course ludicrous. ‘Oooh, shall I try to calm my team down? I think not. Let’s hope this big decision does not backfire…’

Next: Bukayo Saka’s shocking decision against Chelsea as the Gunners drop points. Imagine deciding not to score. The dick.

Is this the start of the Arsenal bottling narrative?

Over at the Daily Telegraph, we’re pretending that Arsenal have somehow massively failed by getting only a draw at Chelsea after a week in which they beat both Tottenham and Bayern Munich.

Arsenal missed huge chance that would have been taken by hard-nosed killers

They have just literally battered Tottenham and one of the best teams in Europe, fella.

Sure, it is a decent enough point. Sure, Arsenal are still in a strong position at the top of the league table. And sure, this game came at the end of a demanding week.

That’s three pretty big ‘sures’ and if you have three pretty big ‘sures’, we would say advise a little caution on the whole ‘Arsenal are bottling this’ narrative.

But winners, real hard-nosed killers, put their foot on the throat of their rivals when they have the chance and that is what Arsenal should have done when Chelsea midfielder Moisés Caicedo was sent off.

Obviously Matt Law missed the ‘shocking decision’ made by Arteta not to calm down his players. And maybe he also missed Chelsea ‘finally exposing’ the Arsenal crack that was an entirely new central defensive partnership.

Actually, he spotted the latter but…

William Saliba played the full 90 minutes against Spurs and Bayern, but was not available for Sunday’s game after feeling pain in training on Saturday. Given Gabriel Magalhaes was already out, could Arteta have been more careful with Saliba? Hindsight is a wonderful thing, but it is worth considering.

‘More careful’? What does that even mean? Unless you know that Arteta had Saliba do some ridiculous Neil Warnock-style ‘running up sand dunes’ sh*t, we would refrain from suggesting that the Arsenal manager has over-worked a key player.

This was not a performance or result that will prompt many, if any, post-mortems at Arsenal, but maybe Arteta – as he suggested himself – can learn a lesson about keeping his players as fresh as possible through a punishing season.

There is currently no sense they will run out of steam, but some fresher legs may well have helped Arsenal take a real grip on this title race once Chelsea went down to 10 men.

So there’s no sense that they will run out of steam, and it should not prompt many post-mortems, but ‘Arsenal missed huge chance that would have been taken by hard-nosed killers’.

Or at least Arsenal missed huge chance that would have been taken by a fully-fit team who had not already won two massive games this week?

Chelsea, however much they try to claim they are not ready to challenge for the title, will also have taken heart. They have proved they can go toe-to-toe with Arsenal, even when numerically disadvantaged, so what is stopping them chasing down Arteta’s team?

Erm, because they can’t turn every game into a battle in which a point would be a magnificent result, maybe?