Arsenalist

2nd Leg Highlights: Here are the highlights and blog entry for the 2nd Leg on March 7th at the Emirates Stadium.

Pathetic performance by Arsenal. Just downright nasty and despicable. Arsenal was hoping to score rather than trying to actually do something about it. PSV coming off a tough game against SC Heracles Almelo had a plan: absorb Arsenal pressure and start a quick counter-attack.

Neither Arsenal or PSV possession was threatening but Rosicky managed to fire one in from the right which tethered on the line before being cleared out. No more chances until Henry tries to drop one over the keepers head after finding space on the left. Henry’s counter attacking run later on was ruined when Fabregas’ return pass was easily intercepted. This was indicative of the way Arsenal passed all night long. Nothing was crisp, it was all, “I hope this sneaks though” type passing rather than something with a purpose.

Cocu fired one in after a nice turn but Lehmann did well to grasp it. Soon after Rosicky had his second chance of the night when he didn’t curl one enough from the left side after all the PSV defense hadn’t recovered after dealing with an Henry threat on the right. Both teams playing cautiously and conservatively, something which never suited Arsenal. All Arsenal attacks were timid and ended either a pass to early or 6 passes too late.

Senderos looked nervous and one instance decided to play the ball back to Lehmann from a yard out while blocking out Kone who was applying strong pressure. Henry had little impact on the game aside from two shots: one from the outside the area at the end of the half which didn’t stay down and another from six yards out which Gomez saved. Three guy’s surrounded Henry anytime he tried to make a move but that’s not an excuse why he didn’t try to have a bigger impact on the game by involving himself in the play early rather than waiting for service, which was few and far between.

Despite PSV holding Arsenal, it really looked like unless Kone got some serious space, PSV would have trouble scoring. Early in the second, Kone was offside but the flag stayed down and he fired a shot across goal which missed by a couple feet. Would’ve sucked if it had gone in but serious pain was about to be inflicted on Lehmann. For some reason, Lehmann was protecting his left side when Edison Mendez fired a shot from well outside the area. Lehmann tried to go left but it was too late, an embarrassing goal to let in.

Mendes 1-0

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After that instead of finding the motivation and desire to get the crucial away goal, Arsenal relied on useless long balls for Thierry Henry which showed a lack of imagination on the part of the Gunners. Fabregas’ almost found a reprieve for his miserable game but his shot from 15 yards was saved brilliantly by Gomez. A weak Adebayor header off a Fabregas free kick was all the Gunners could muster up.

At this point I came to the conclusion that Aliadiere, Denilson and Diaby would’ve had a greater impact than Henry, Fabregas and Gilberto, respectively. The Baptista for Hleb substitution was hardly an offensive one since the misfiring Beast didn’t get a single chance to blow this time around. Here’s what pissed me off the most: Adebayor has a chance to either shoot or beat his man just outside the area to get into an even better position. He does neither, instead he runs into the defender and hopes for penalty. Pathetic. William Gallas must’ve made a hundred bad passes today, it’s probably the rust but maybe Hoyte would’ve been a better pick. Hindsight is 20/20.

Horrible, pathetic game and not the way you want to enter the Carling Cup final.

Match Highlights (without early Rosicky chance, go here for that)

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Arsene Wenger put it in plain and simple words after the game:

“I feel we had decent first half and created chances to be in front. We had chances in the first half to kill the game and we could not do it. But what happened in the second half is difficult to say. We dropped our level of cohesion, our passing and fluency went. We created barely anything.”

The though of getting eliminated in the first round is sickening and if that does happen because of our poor performance today, the blame relies on a horrible midfield performance where we couldn’t string together three meaningful passes all game. The strikers were waiting for perfect service which never arrived instead of moving to areas on the pitch where space was available and ready to be exploited. Arsenal now must score in the second leg.

I’ve also uploaded the starting lineups and kickoff on DailyMotion.