Arsenal 1 Wigan 2 : Defending without organisation

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This was Arsenal’s 10th defeat in the league this season. Yet another win snapped up by a lower league side. This time at home where we’ve only lost twice all season, one to the team that is looking likely to lift the title and one at a time when we were in shambles. When we were supposed to increase the gap between us and the other sides chasing the Champions League spots, we dropped the ball.

Wigan showed just why they’ve been able to beat Liverpool, Manchester United and just narrowly lost to Chelsea. They were tight in defence and every single one of them worked their socks off to deny us. Not only that, they were also competent in the attack despite the numerical disadvantage of having less men supporting the attack than us having men defending.

Wigan did to us what we did to Wolves last midweek. A two minute spell in which they broke away with devastating effect brought us to our knees. Just like it was in our last defeat against a lower side in QPR, defensive mistakes cost had us the game. The opener came from a counter attack from our corner kick. When the ball was cleared, Mikel Arteta was signalling to the bench that he couldn’t continue. He did not sit down and seek for medical attention. Wigan did not stop the game. Had he sat down, I wouldn’t be calling for Wigan to stop the game either. They had every right to play on.

And they did, by putting the ball in the back of our net. Victor Moses sprinted away from the squadron of Arsenal players tracking back. Franco Di Santo was wide open in the middle. The cross was perfect, Wojciech Szczesny came from the goal line to close down Di Santo and managed to block the shot but it fell kindly to in the path of the advancing Di Santo to guide home the ball into an empty goal. Andre Santos probably should have stayed central and stuck with Di Santo instead of going across to close down Moses. That would have made Moses to delay his pass and we could have had the covering players back in position. Not the first time that the opposing team has countered well against us when a set piece is cleared for them to breakaway down the flanks. Our positioning during set pieces needs to be addressed.

A minute later, Moses was again the instigator, turning Bacary Sagna inside out and driving to the by-line. This is as illustrated in the picture above. There were no bodies from midfield supporting the defence (2). Thomas Vermaelen followed his men because no one gave him a shout that Jordi Gomez was running behind him (3) which meant the former and Johan Djourou covered the same man. Tomas Rosicky did not pick up the runner (4). Classic bad organisation in defending.

The problem was exacerbated by the loss of Arteta. Which explains why Rosicky was the only man from midfield inside the box defending a Wigan attack. That’s not to say Arteta would definitely be there defending, but there’s arguably an understanding between Arteta and Song when it comes to positioning. Yet, it puzzles me as to why Song didn’t stay back and allow the others to push forward when he’s without the support of Arteta. Most of the game, Aaron Ramsey played further behind than Song.

Apart from Moses being through on goal in the second half, this game was pretty much all us. Yossi Benayoun got at the end of several headers in the first half but was denied by Ali Al-Habsi. That Benayoun was winning those headers could be indication of the weakness in Wigan’s defence but it was not exploited by us. Perhaps Marouane Chamakh could have been useful in this situation or perhaps not.

We did manage to claw one back before half time through Vermaelen. Rosicky’s inch perfect cross met the Belgian and there was still 70 minutes of football left to be played. We drove on and kept the pressure up in the first half but couldn’t find the equaliser. We fared no better in the second half, in fact it was worse from an attacking sense.

There was a period where Theo Walcott seemed to desert the flanks and play as a second striker. Like we saw at the Stadium of Light, that did not change anything. Gervinho was the only player wide and we made it easy for Wigan to focus their defending on one side of the pitch. Even when Walcott finally moved back wide, he could not find the opening. Gervinho’s constant cutting in was only to run into walls of defending Wigan players.

Wenger is right. We tried to do too much individually. Players like Song, Gervinho, Benayoun, Ramsey and to an extent, even Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, when he came on. All of them over-ran with the ball. Wigan ganged up to close down those dribblers and succeeded.

Yes, we have to give credit to the way Wigan played. Long ball routines were replaced with good movement and pace. Based solely on this performance, they do deserve to stay up. However, we were poor. Tactically we did close to nothing to try to get back into the game.

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Edited by Staff Editor