What a weird and wacky loss that was. After just 11 minutes, Arsenal found themselves 2-0 down. It was a deficit that they were unable to overcome, not through any fault of their own necessarily. The huffed and they puffed, but the house just would not blow down. Arsene Wenger and his players deserved better. They did not get it.
The first half started in disastrous fashion. Arsenal actually looked quite fluent in possession, fizzing the ball around with precision and tempo. Too fluent, in fact. Because they slumped into complacency, and that cost them. Twice.
The first culprit was Laurent Koscielny. A wayward pass across the front of the defence was intercepted by Antonio Valencia, nipping in front of Sead Kolasinac. An exchange of passes with Paul Pogba, which saw four Arsenal defenders attracted to the ball, leaving the Ecuadorian with time and space in the box to take a touch, set himself, and fire a low shot through legs of the desperate Nacho Monreal block and Petr Cech save, who perhaps could have done better to deflect it away with his feet.
The second mistake came just seven minutes later. Shkodran Mustafi dallied on the ball, Jesse Lingard stole it from him, and a nice move involving Romelu Lukaku, who Mustafi should have fouled when he had the opportunity to kill the attack, and a wonderful Anthony Martial spin and flick, led to Lingard sliding the finish off the far post and past the helpless Petr Cech. 2-0. 11 minutes. Game over, seemingly.
But that was far from the case. Although at halftime Arsenal still hadn’t scored, that was not for the want of trying. At the break, they had had 71% possession, had 15 shots, seven of which were on target, hit the post, hit the crossbar, and forced multiple last-ditch blocks from the United defence. It was downright astonishing that they hadn’t scored.
Alexandre Lacazette could have had a hattrick, seeing one effort sounded out by a scrambled David de Gea, with the shot eventually careering off the crossbar — Granit Xhaka would proceed to clip the post with his rebounded attempt to end the goalmouth scramble. De Gea made a remarkable save from Romelu Lukaku, who was tangled up with Granit Xhaka at the back post from a set piece, while Aaron Ramsey, Alexis Sanchez and Mesut Ozil all had strong opportunities denied at the last second, whether it be a block, a save, or a mere unfortunate bounce of the ball.
Social Plugin