Carabao Cup Run Hits The Rails
Dec 19th, 2018 by 'holic
Unai Emery went with a strong, but not his strongest, eleven for the Carabao Cup quarter-final. Petr Cech started in goal behind a back four of Ainsley Maitland-Niles, Sokratis Papastathopoulos, Granit Xhaka, and Nacho Monreal. Ahead of them started the youthful pairing of Lucas Torreira and Matteo Guendouzi. Henrikh Mkhitaryan, and Alex Iwobi flanked Aaron Ramsey behind lone striker Pierre Emerick-Aubameyang
The visitors also switched to their cup tie goalkeeper, Gazzaniga, and relegated Harry Kane to the bench. It was interesting to see how the first North London derby to be played with VAR would turn out.
It took 90 seconds for an already hot atmosphere to ramp up a notch, Winks conceded a corner when the ball brushed his arm unintentionally. Xhaka’s near post delivery was flicked narrowly wide of the far post by the head of Mkhitaryan. Iwobi and Ramsey then combined down the left which resulted in the latter fizzing one just wide of the other far post.
The Nomads first attempt was thwarted by Maitland-Niles who blocked Eriksen’s shot in the eleventh minute. A huge roar went up when at the other end when Mkhitaryan played a one two with Ramsey but hit his shot too close to Gazzaniga and the scoresheet remained blank. Eriksen tried again but cleared the bar by some distance. This was a lively opening.
We were unhinged in the 20th minute when Alli sent a narrowly onside Son scampering through to beat Cech with a low and accurate finish. This first real test of VAR proved the onside call was a good one.
Back came the Gunners through Guendouzi’s feed to Aubameyang who drove the ball wide of the far post. Our early lack of accuracy was evident. The homeless from Middlesex almost doubled their lead in controversial circumstances when Moura and Mkhitaryan ended up on the deck at one end whilst a rapid break to the other end resulted in Sissoko blazing a fine chance into the North Bank. VAR said no penalty for us, fair enough.
With the Gunners losing too many individual battles towards the end of the half the home support were clearly exalting their team to show more fight. When a hard earned corner reached Maitland-Niles he sliced it wide of the penalty area, then Ramsey had a chance to finish Aubameyang’s block but back-heeled the ball to a grateful defender. Ramsey tried again, a glorious effort brilliantly tipped on to the post by Gazzaniga. At last, an effort on target.
The Gunners were finishing the half with much better determination. Sokratis powered another header wide of the far post. It was a recurring theme. Then Maitland-Niles’ misdirected cross almost caught out the visiting ‘keeper. Ramsey had another shot blocked by Alderweireld.
The last action of the half saw Guendouzi bring down Moura, Jon Moss reacted to being surrounding by the bitching Alderweireld and Davies waving imaginary cards. Guendouzi was duly shown the first yellow card. In all though I thought the referee and his team had enjoyed a good half.
At half-time Laurent Koscielny came on for the injured Mkhitaryan and the Gunners reverted to a back three. How much longer would we have to wait to see Alexandre Lacazette? Iwobi’s ball across the box reached Maitland-Niles but his toe-poke was easily blocked. Iwobi, frustratingly inconsistent but hungry for the ball, was proving to be our most creative force.
Cech was called upon to save an Eriksen free-kick, then a Son cross from an offside position which would have been overturned had anything more come of it. At the other end Xhaka’s free-kick joined Sissoko’s earlier attempt high in the North Bank. Cue the arrival from the bench of Lacazette and Kane for Iwobi and Moura respectively.
Immediately Kane sent Alli in behind the high line of the back three and we were two down at a moment when we had been looking to be in the ascendency.
One sensed it might be one of those nights when Aubameyang found Lacazette who saw his first attempt bounce off a goalpost. Emery knew he had to throw the kitchen sink at the nomads now and sent on Eddie Nketiah for Guendouzi. 3-4-3 with three strikers for the hosts. The air turned blue as the home crowd raucously reminded the visitors of their lack of trophies.
Against our new set up the visitors decided to take as much time out of the game as they could, and they were aided by some idiot in the East Stand who hit Alli in the head with a light missile of some description. He took his opportunity to milk the moment to the full, but he was the one wronged.
Aubameyang struck the crossbar with a mishit cross, then Xhaka handled the ball and screamed at the linesman earning himself a deserved yellow card and taking yet more seconds off the clock. Brainless.
With eight minutes to go you would have thought we would have been knocking on the door, but Cech was called on to deal with another snapshot from Eriksen. The headless Xhaka confronted Alli for blatant time-wasting after he was pinged for offside. Luckily only Alli saw the resulting card. Kane avoided the same award when he too killed the game.
To be fair the Nomads were doing what I hope we will do when the roles are reversed at Wembley/White Hart Lane/Milton Keynes later in the season. Eriksen earned another yellow for blocking a free-kick from a yard away. Tonight was their night after their humiliation in the Premier League game 17 days ago. We move on.
22 Responses to “Carabao Cup Run Hits The Rails”
Moving on (up!)
Cheers H. Good write up.
That was a bit of a nasty one. No fun at all. That Spuds team is so thoroughly dislikable. Losing to them is awful.
From the outset I would have chosen the three league points over a win in the Who Cares? Cup.
Good speedy write up, Holic. My wifi packed in at half time and I was forced back onto the Pina Colada train. From what I saw we were much less potent in front of goal than we needed to be; also playing that high back line leaves us in ‘nobody at home’ land far too often.
Brainless? It’s his middle name in Serbian.
This hurts much less than Sunday at St Mary’s.
I hope AMN gets an extended run in the team.
Hard to get perspective but they reacted in the right way to the drubbing they took a few weeks ago.
I’m afraid our 22 game run was rather deceptive because we have no clue how to defend. We concede goals for fun. We got sucked in twice and a long ball let a forward in. Exactly as we conceded on Sunday for the third goal.
I’d like to see Emery get a team on the pitch that can control a game from the start and not be playing catch up with a completely different second half team and I’d like to see us defend properly as a unit.
Sokratis and Mkhitaryan not fit for purpose.
Iwobi and AMN lively but zero end product.
Need Ozil back asap.
Must win on Saturday or the doom and gloom of last season will return. That would be such a shame
Just got home from what can only be described as a really disappointing evening. Not really many positives anywhere to be honest. We lacked any real cutting edge up front, created very little in midfield and defensively looked woeful at times. Let’s hope it’s a genuine one off this time and we bounce back on Saturday.
Not much else to report. We are still a long way from being a top quality side and I very much agree with TTG above about the unbeaten run. As pleasing as it was I think it would be very foolish to read too much into it.
I manage to make another game on Saturday. Anyone anticipating the partaking of festive refreshment post match in the Tolly, please make themselves known.
Onwards and upwards.
The only positive is I didn’t reveal my identity in the Spuds bar and I left without having to watch them celebrate in the end.
I think we are entering a new phase of the Emery era. We’ve had the honeymoon period and despite some encouragement there is much work to do. The most disappointing aspect is that we are if anything poorer defensively than last season despite recruiting a better keeper and excellent DM.
The constant switching between back threes and back fours is either a sign of great tactical flexibility or a manager who has no clear idea of what his best team or formation is.
Seventeen failures to lead at half time is also suggestive of a team that can’t dominate or control games and can’t impose themselves on the opposition, That’s a big problem and despite the wishes of some can’t be blamed on Wenger. His teams often blew teams away in the first twenty minutes. I think we have all seen enough of Emery to have faith in his ability to get it right like Klopp did after four transfer windows of incremental improvement but it does mean we need to do some sensible business this window not let it pass us by.
He also needs to sell Ozil if he really doesn’t feel he can contribute. He hasn’t been helped by the ridiculous deal Mesut was handed last winter He apparently doesn’t much rate Wilshere ( obvious why) , Ramsey and Ozil and does rate Xhaka, Torreira and Guendouzi but Xhaka is not a CB, LB or sweeper.
He’s not been helped by injuries but again we are seeing big disruption of our plans because of them. We had hoped this was a Wengerian fault but it runs deeper at the club. He has some fabulous young players but tonight shows that they have to be introduced sensibly.
So lots of areas for Emery to address and given the fickle nature of our fan base he won’t get forever to do it. I think he has learnt much and expect to see us kick on after Christmas, but we are in bad form at the busiest time of the season so let’s hope Burnley marks the start of a long run as two consecutive defeats did earlier in the season .
Unai you got it wrong, someone needs to tell it and I will. If you don’t trust Mesut, sell him, but play him till you do so as we do not have anyone like for like within the team. It has been found out time after time that we have no creativity and opponents know we are not going to hurt them much. The 2 goals at saints were lucky and yesterday second half we did not give their goalkeeper anything to do but yawn.
The game itself was what we have been recently, decent passing, odd flash of brilliance and in the end no end product. Take out Torreira and we are bang average, Iwobi, mhki do not have an end product, Xhaka as a cb maybe a crisis solution but is absolutely wasted, he is crucial for our midfield and he needs to be there, Niles, Monreal and Kos are beyond words rusty and Cech is done. Guendouzi is going the jack way of being played into the ground, god forbid an injury to the kid. Ramsey for all his professionalism continues to blow hot and cold and his flicks are damn irritating.
This aint a rant though it reads like one, it is just stating the obvious, why are we not addressing the defense year after year is a mystery beyond measure, till we do, we will be the eternal also-rans.
Cheer up gentlemen please!
No point in reading too much into
a couple of bad results with makeshift
defenses.
Where we are is 5th in the PL and
competitive for Top 4. We should have
a more balanced side available for
Burnley, Brighton and Liverpool. Let’s
see if we can keep up our challenge.
Thanks for the report. It fills in some of the gaps resulting from having had to watch the game in my iPhone using the SkyGO app. To be fair, microscopic though it is, the definition of the picture far exceeds the quality of the picture I used to watch on tvs of not so long ago.
We lost because we were unlucky to hit woodwork instead of net; we rarely found a decent final ball; we can’t defend for toffee.
We rode our luck in that run, as TTG and Steve have already observed, and that luck turned innthe last two games. There’s work to be done on this defence. Kos returning to full fitness will help. If there’s a decent mid-20’s CB out there that we can afford then that man should be added. The present may be Sokratis and Kos but the future requires Holding and another top CB.
Onward
Knew the footballing gods were against us when from out of nowhere I came down with a stinking cold yesterday. The usual beers in front of the tv were replaced by a lpile of snotty tissues and a mug of Lemsip. Thought we were decent for about 15 minutes either side of half time but bang average for most of the game. We need an experienced CB in Jan and some clarity about the Ozil thing. Chelski will beat the Totts then lose to Citeh in the LC final. Cough sneeze splutter etc…
OM. Cheer up, you say. Well, where is the class clown?
Merry X-mas by the way, unless that is not your persuasion. Merry Tao-mas?
All 5000 initial tix for Blackpool away now sold out. We may get another allocation. Our away support is awesome.
I must say I agree that with as leaky a defense we have we need our offensive players at their most creative and effective (conversion rate) and that team should include our most creative over the years – Ozil. Not sure why he was dropped just when he seemed to be getting into form – after Leicester game.
If managers doesn’t think he’s the player we need we should be looking at the likes of Isco?
Starting games with 3 CB’s means 6 of 11 in starting players are more defensive players – if you also include defensive midfielder then you have 7 defensive players and that does not surprise me we are trailing or drawing at best by half time. And then we switch to back 4 when we are in trouble in 2nd half. Why not try opposite especially at home. Go out positive and play to win from onset instead of playing catch up. It’s not always that we will be able to turn it around in the 2nd.
Come on Arsenal!!!!
The game was hardly worthy of my special efforts to get there. I had commitments in Norwich at lunch time and armed with a holdall full of Christmas presents travelled via Ely to the King’s Cross baggage drop on my way to the Emirates.
Boy did we miss Hector on the right and Granit was badly missed in MF, Guendouzi rushed around making little impact on the game and our main men up front let us down once again. The Spuds on the other hand took their chances and on the night we were second best.
Have secured a ticket for Blackpool but as yet not sure how I am going to get there !
Hope Emery has a rethink on his defensive lineup for Saturday . It will be interesting how he and the team respond to our last two disappointing defeats.
COYR
Always look on the bright side of life, everyone. The Carabao Cup draw, apart from the fact that the Arsenal isn’t in it by beating the nomads, broke wonderfully well. The main competition with Arsenal for third and fourth place have to devote resources to two extra matches in January, and recent history shows that the two hate each other more than they hate us, indicating that they have to extend resources just for the distinction of getting done in by Citeh in the final. A good break!
Merry Shintomas to you bt8!
Not much religion down Osaka way though
https://youtu.be/F3JPTzHpUHc
Holy cow! (as they might say in India)
Manfred Mann big in Japan, or just pulled that one out of nowhere? 🙂
you mentioned clowns in your
post and I’ve always liked
Manfred Mann – tenuous indeed
but I did once meet a Japanese
bloke who liked old Manfred
First LP I ever bought was Manfred Mann – looking back I don’t know why although 5-4-3-2-1 was quite catchy at the time.
Given that Xhaka is such a shit defender I wonder why we don’t play some youngsters – they couldn’t be any worse and playing in their specialist positions may even be better. Anyway.
UTA.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>