Good morning, everybody. Let's see what the fallout is, both well- and ill-considered, from yesterday's defeat at Old Trafford:
Jonathan Wilson analyzes the match for Sports Illustrated:
That said, there is a carelessness that is consistently undermining Arsenal: laxity in possession, laxity in picking up opponents, laxity of thought. Perhaps it is simply lack of confidence, but irrespective of physique or tactics, too many players are not performing tasks that are well within their ability; at Old Trafford there was almost a resignation about their performance.
His piece is much more nuanced than the above paragraph, but the above is also a growing theme in a lot of the Arsenal-blogospheric analysis this season. Here's Arseblog, from his report:
Bottom line for me is that United worked harder, wanted it more and that’s what made the difference.
Zonal Marking breaks down the match,"lack of quality" a common refrain in Mr. Cox's analysis.
7AM Kickoff thinks effort is the problem (and, as loathe as one might be to try to analyze players' mental states, there's no denying that Arsenal lost the ball right away a lot after winning tackles yesterday):
A Cultured Left Foot reminds us that Wojciech Szczesny's excellent debut got lost in the shuffle:
Wojciech Szczesney dealt with an early Rooney effort comfortably, as he did with an Anderson free kick. The young Pole had an impressive night. Unable to stop Park’s header, he dealt confidently with everything else United threw at him.
Richard Williams often kind of misses the point of things in The Guardian, saying that the start for Szczesny was somehow emblematic of Arsenal's problems. However, he is right about one thing:
Marouane Chamakh, Andrey Arshavin, Gaël Clichy and Alex Song were all booked for fouls on Manchester United players to whom they had just lost the ball.
And [Ed.: I almost can't believe I'm doing this] David Pleat sums up Nemanja Vidic's play yesterday, although one wonders how much of this was Vidic and how much was Arsenal.
Daniel Taylor, though, is confused, in his "five things we learned" column:
2 Arsène Wenger will live to regret not having a better goalkeeper.
...wait, what? What on earth does that have to do with yesterday? How is that one of the five conclusions one could draw FROM YESTERDAY? HOW?
And finally, in lieu of a goal (it just doesn't feel right, nor does linking to a clip of Wayne Rooney's hilarious penalty attempt) (oh, all right), here's a song by The Fall.
Have a good day, everyone.