Arsenal’s goal worry

Friday, 03/02/2012

by Richard Leighton, Shoot's Arsenal blogger

What started off as a blinding week, with a quite astonishing comeback in the FA Cup against Aston Villa, soon became a disaster with more dropped points away at Bolton on Wednesday night.

I can’t even begin to describe the despair I felt at half time against Villa. Two goals down, a sluggish performance, ruthlessly punished at the back and we were all but out of another competition.

Come full time though, it wasn’t so much depression that I felt, as elation and surprise that we’d won 3-2 because Arsenal just don’t do this sort of thing anymore. We have neither the mentality nor, most importantly, the ability needed in the final third to open any strong-willed defence.

My heart says it was a gutsy comeback, showing incredible determination and spirit and that we deserved to go through. But deep down, I don’t think this is an accurate assessment of what went on in that second half. It took two penalties and a ricochet off Theo Walcott to complete the comeback.

Don’t get me wrong, nobody was happier than me to see us turn it around and even with the element of luck – which everybody needs now and then – I started to believe we could use this turnaround as a catalyst in the Premier League.

In my head, we were going to go to Bolton with a full head of steam, confidence sky high, Bacary Sagna back, Mikel Arteta back and finally we would catapult ourselves up the league.

But it was 0-0 so instead we occupy seventh place in the League with 37 points and a goal difference of +6. And the reason we are slumming it down in the land of mid-table mediocrity is because we don’t score enough goals.

Robin van Persie hit the crossbar and the post at the Reebok, while his supporting cast contrived to hit shots into row Z or just straight at the keeper – specifically Theo Walcott (imagine that!).

Chamakh, Park, Walcott, Arshavin, Ramsey, Rosicky and Gervinho have contributed 12 league goals all season and that’s nowhere near good enough if we want to get close to the top four. To give you some perspective, we’ve scored 39 league goals, Blackburn Rovers have scored 33.

When we were chasing the winner, who did Wenger look to with 20 minutes to go? Thierry Henry. A guy we have on loan from an MLS team. This is where it starts to get really worrying because sat on that bench were Benayoun, Park and Arshavin but the boss didn’t want to use any of them. The third substitution never came.

He can say what he likes about belief in his players but actions speak louder and that was a damning verdict by the boss on what he thinks of them. Ouch.

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