Amongst all the excitement and euphoria from Gooners after the Chelsea victory, it was easy to forget that we had a Champions League match four days later. It seemed some of the players had forgotten as well. The team put so much into the win at Stamford Bridge that it wasn’t overly surprising that we looked slightly off the pace against Marseille. The match wasn’t without positives though.
Whilst we struggled going forward, to keep a second consecutive clean sheet in the Champions League is worthy of note. Marseille have been struggling in Ligue 1, but still have some good attacking players. In the game between the two of us in France, neither team were overly adventurous, but Marseille attacked more at the Emirates, so a clean sheet was very welcome.
Given how open we’d looked in the first half of the Chelsea match, we kept things tighter and it looked like Marseille were going to need to score a special goal to get past us. I was encouraged by the Mertesacker and Vermaelen partnership, and it puts us in the strange situation of having three good centre backs to choose from.
So often in recent seasons, we’ve had selection problems at the back because of how bad some of our centre backs have been. However we now have three centre backs that actually make me feel more confident about our defending. Per Mertesacker is still learning about English football and does lack a burst of pace, however his positioning at times this season have made up for that as he reads the game well.
Thomas Vermaelen is Thomas Vermaelen. Need I say more? After he missed most of last season, I was slightly worried that we thought more highly of Vermaelen due to his absence, that we had a mystical idea that he’d return and save our defence. The thing is though, he really is that good. At the start of the season, he looked excellent before getting injured again, so we can only hope that he gets a sustained period of full fitness.
I’d probably consider Mertesacker and Vermaelen as our first choice pair at the back, however Laurent Koscielny has arguably been our best centre back this season. He didn’t play last night, but was probably only rested as his performances didn’t merit being dropped. The challenge for Wenger is to keep the three of them fit, in form and comfortable playing in any combination. I don’t think we’ll play three at the back, but with Sagna out, playing Koscielny at right back is a good option as we can’t rely on Jenkinson to play every game for the next three months.
On full backs, Jenkinson put in another good shift on Tuesday, although Andre Santos’ defending does leave a lot to be desired. He’s clearly an attacking player that’s become a defender and does seem slightly limited in his tackling style. Going forward, he looks great. His cross in the first half to the back post for Ramsey was superb and should have resulted in a goal, and as we saw against Chelsea and Olympiacos, he can find the net himself. He’s a lot better going forward than Clichy was, but Santos does lack the pace to get back at players if he’s beaten or caught up field attacking, often leaving us exposed on the left. Despite a few issues, I still really like Santos, it might just be because of the mystical nature of an attacking full back. His defending will improve the more he plays, as undoubtedly he offers us an extra dimension going forward that we’ve lacked for a few years.
We created some good chances in the first half of the Marseille game, but the match fizzled out in the second half, even with the introduction of Robin van Persie. Marseille’s defending was better than Chelsea’s was at the weekend, not that that was hard, although we lacked some of the creativity we’ve seen more of in recent weeks. I think the best chance was spurned by Ramsey when he dallied in the box before having a shot blocked.
Ju-Young Park started ahead of Robin van Persie, and as much as we wanted to win, we have to be realistic about keeping van Persie fit, so resting him was understandable. Park did little to dispel the questions, particularly from some of the media, about what we’ll do if we lose van Persie to injury. After playing well against Bolton last week, Park was slightly anonymous. In fairness to him, he wasn’t given much to feed off up front, however his movement wasn’t as good as van Persie’s is to make space to receive the ball and make a difference.
It was a shame we didn’t qualify, and arguably, had van Persie started, we might have won the match and be through already. However, we’re still top of the group and should go through with a home game against Dortmund and a visit to Olympiacos to come. In a strange way, drawing against Marseille means we’ll take the other games left more seriously and therefore ensure we don’t finish second in the group. That cost us badly last season so winning the group is important.
Overall, the game was a reminder that scoring five at Stamford Bridge doesn’t mean we can relax. We didn’t play badly, but we didn’t have the same intensity and slick movement we saw on Saturday. The Chelsea was a crazy, fantastic match, but the reality is still that we’re a team that are developing and are nowhere the finished article.
The last game before the next international break is West Brom at the Emirates on Saturday. They got too many points off us last season, but Almunia won’t be playing this time around after his howlers at the Emirates and the Hawthornes. Robin van Persie should be back, and we need to take the confidence from last week to keep climbing the table. Going into most games this season, I’ve not been expecting great results from an Arsenal point of view, however I’m expecting three points on Saturday. We mustn’t be complacent, we mustn’t treat West Brom lightly, and we have to work hard as team. Chelsea and Marseille are gone so the team need to be ready to run their feet into the ground again for the club.
Source: Sam Limbert, ESPN Soccernet on 3 Nov 11
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