After the Gunners fired away on all cylinders in their recent (4-0) dismantling of newly promoted side Reading, many people, including myself, believed that the good times had returned; however, as evident in their last four matches, the problems facing Arsenal are more serious than Arsene Wenger would like for you to believe, and a victory, no matter how convincingly against the weaker sides of the Premiership, is no means by which to measure the heart of the current Gunners side.

While the spirit, cohesion, and quality are still engrained in the side that youth built, the tenacity and know how to manage games has seemed to have been put to rest at their old ground, Highbury. Arsenal no longer has the formidable strength to see off the stronger sides of England and Europe though Arsenal usually out play their opponent.
    
In their last four matches the side has only been able to tally up one goal and that was in the draw against Everton two weekends ago. Otherwise they are coming off a loss on the road and a tie at home to Spartak Moscow in the Champions League, having been held scoreless by the Russian Champions, as well as another goose egg in an emotionally charged loss to West Ham in this past Sunday’s EPL round.

Their only goal in the last four matches came courtesy of Robin Van Persie, who hammered in a powerful free-kick against Everton. Unbelievably, Arsenal has been unable to score during the run of play, exposing their inconsistency to put away goals. In the string of matches, Arsenal players have been guilty of squandering chance upon chance, which no doubt has caused a headache for Arsene Wenger.
    
The usually cool cucumber, Wenger, found himself in a shoving match with Alan Pardew after the West Ham fixture as Marlon Harewood fired home a doorstep goal in the final minutes of a tense match that saw a legitimate penalty on Hleb go unnoticed. Wenger took offense to Pardew’s celebrations (perhaps even fueled on by his frustration with his own side’s inability to find the net) and let West Ham know that gloating gets you nowhere.

It gets no easier this week as Arsenal face Liverpool on Sunday. I hope the Gunners can break the draught, but against the defensive organization of Liverpool it could be another scoreless weekend.

Carvings from the Dagger

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 9th, 2006 at 3:13 am and is filed under Soccer World, England. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.