Following their shock home loss to West Ham United yesterday afternoon, our resident Arsenal fans in the Football Transfer Tavern haven’t known whether to laugh or cry.
While this was season was meant to be the one in which the Gunners start fast while really pushing Chelsea hard for the title, they’ve started it off in the worst possible fashion with even the likes of Petr Cech flattering to deceive when it really mattered.
Winning the Community Shield last week of course, Gooners everywhere were on cloud nine but they’ve been brought right back down to earth with a bump and considering Arsene Wenger’s men face Crystal Palace away next at a vociferous Selhurst Park, they’ll need to bring their A game far sooner than later.
Prior to the kick-off at Emirates Stadium yesterday, there was pretty much nobody expect for optimistic Hammers fans that were predicting a victory for Slaven Bilic’s men but in fairness to the men from East London, they were absolutely fantastic on the day and deserve all of the plaudits they’re receiving at the moment.
For Arsenal on the other hand, they’ll need to wake up and fast with many of their fans still in a state of shock at what happened yesterday afternoon.
If you’re brave enough to continue reading Gooners, we’ve devised a list of five reasons why Arsenal suffered a 2-0 loss to their London rivals on Sunday.
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Click on the image below to reveal the 5 reasons why Arsenal lost to West Ham United on Sunday.
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Complacency
As alluded to at the outset, nobody as predicting that West Ham United could get a draw at Emirates Stadium, let alone a win given the Hammers’ shoddy record against Arsenal since 2007.
As we saw in the Champions League against Monaco last season, what appeared to be the case was that Arsenal thought they could simply turn up yesterday afternoon while rolling over their inferior London opposition but how wrong they were.
We all know that footballers are human and they must be averse to what’s being written about them in the column inches and what’s been the monologue of late is the fact that Arsenal are now the real deal and this is their season.
Much like taking Monaco lightly last term, it seems as if the Arsenal players bought into their own hype while seriously undervaluing their opponents.
This complacent attitude needs to be rectified at source in the eyes of many Arsenal fans are much like they did against Aston Villa on the opening day of the 2012/13 season, they’ll now need to bounce back and fast.
West Ham further in their preparations
Arsenal fans won’t buy this excuse from Arsene Wenger but following the game in the Frenchman’s post-match interviews yesterday, the Gunners boss alluded to West Ham United being further along in their fitness preparations ahead of the new season.
While this seems to be clutching at straws, the Hammers have been involved in the Europa League qualifiers for the past couple of weeks and while it was a different team that were beaten by FC Astra last week, the majority of the first team squad would’ve been training together for competitive competition, even if they didn’t play.
So with this being a matter of fact, despite it sounding pathetic on Arsene Wenger’s part, this is again a line of reasoning into why West Ham took Arsenal by surprise yesterday afternoon.
Individual errors from Petr Cech
Who could’ve ever predicted that Petr Cech would enjoy a nightmare debut between the sticks?
For many, this is one of the great reasons why we love the sport; the sheer unpredictability and scripts that were obviously not read by everyone connected with West Ham yesterday.
For the former Chelsea goalkeeper, there is no getting away from the fact that he was at fault for both Cheikhou Kouyate and Mauro Zarate’s strike with the latter goal a real howler in every regard.
Since the game, Arsenal fans have cynically been wondering whether Cech even made two mistakes in his whole Chelsea career, let alone two in one game.
While Arsene Wenger moved to not blame Cech after the game, it can only get better for the Czech Republic international after Sunday’s performance; I mean it couldn’t get worse could it?
Four yard passes a problem for Cazorla, Ramsey and co
It goes without saying that if you manage to dominate the midfield in a Premier Leaue fixture that you’ll usually go on to achieve a positive result.
How many times have we grown used to Arsenal not only dominating the football in possession but also the midfield since Francis Coquelin’s emergence in the team last season but none of that was apparent on Sunday.
Well apart from ball possession of course with Arsenal so many times retaining a high level of possession, only to do nothing penetrable with it going forward while getting caught on the counter with a sucker punch.
What was one of the strangest facets of yesterday’s game was the fact that pass masters such as Santi Cazorla and Aaron Ramsey simply couldn’t manage to string four yard passes to one another with so many misplaced passes by that duo and more of the Arsenal team setting a depressing theme.
It was only really Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain that could walk away from Emirates Stadium with any credit after he tried his best to run West Ham ragged in the first half with his direct running abilities.
It was a nightmare first day at the office, no matter which way you look at it.
Because Reece Oxford and West Ham were fantastically astute
Before everybody claims no credit has been given to Arsenal’s opposition, lets get one thing clear – on the day, West Ham United were absolutely fantastic and nothing can be taken away from their contribution.
The Hammers were as effective as Arsenal were poor and with this combination, it was clear as of the 60th minute that the East Londoners were going to be heading away from North London with all three points.
There were many standout names for West Ham yesterday afternoon, namely man of the match Winston Reid, new signing Angelo Ogbonna and midfield hardman Cheikhou Kouyate but it was 16-year-old Reece Oxford who has taken most of the plaudits.
Receiving his first professional start in the Premier League, the teenager was anything but fazed and West Ham fans have absolutely been relishing in the fact that the kid who is yet to take his GCSE’s completely had a World Cup winner in Mesut Ozil in his pocket all game.
Give West Ham credit; they fully merited their 2-0 victory yesterday afternoon and all Gooners have to hold their hands up on that one.
