Opinion – Arsenal needs to rescue a season in peril and they can | OneFootball

As the business end of the English Premier League commences, Arsenal must be careful not to fall into the kind of form that other big-name clubs are currently battling with. The truth is that the form these clubs find themselves in can happen to anybody.

Big names no longer guarantee success in football. To sustain your “big name” status, you must, as we say in Nigeria, “show working” every single game. There should be no slipping into a false sense of security, even for one second, throughout the season. Complacency breeds this false sense of security, and once that attitude seeps into a match—especially if you scrape through with a win—the tendency to think that will always be the case in every match sets in. This mentality leads to drawing or even losing matches that should otherwise be wins.

Aside from a few instances, there have been games this season where, just five minutes into the match, you could tell Arsenal would needlessly drop points or lose outright. It didn’t matter whether the opposition was Manchester City, Liverpool, Chelsea, Fulham, Brighton & Hove Albion, Newcastle, or even Bournemouth. Our approach to games these days reeks of complacency. We are a club yet to win any major trophies for quite some years, yet our players approach most matches as if they are “big men” who have won everything and have nothing left to prove. They sometimes play as though it’s a routine, not recognising that there is anything at stake—without a sense of responsibility to the fans who endure relentless trolling both online and offline every week due to the players’ lack of grit, fight, and determination on the pitch.

The last match against Newcastle was not enjoyable to watch. Our complacent approach to games until we go a goal or two behind is troubling. We caress the ball too much, wasting time moving it backwards or sideways when we have opportunities to counter quickly before the opposition has time to recover. Instead, we dally with the ball, show a lack of proper awareness and sharp vision by looking up and down for teammates before passing—and sometimes even give the ball away, allowing our opponents the time they need to regroup, settle, and get back into shape. Then, we pass backwards and sideways again when we should be making incisive runs or threading through balls into the gaps left by these opponents.

Why we approach games this way, instead of playing with the same grit we showed in the final thirty minutes against Newcastle after going 2-0 down, is something I can’t explain. These mistakes happen in almost every match. The boys play with a mentality of “We are Arsenal,” expecting respect and fear from their opponents, only to get punished by teams that do not show such respect or fear—no matter how lowly rated they may be.

(Photo by Alex Pantling/Getty Images)

A perfect example was our match against Ipswich Town. In the first half, the Ipswich players showed a lot of respect for Arsenal, but because we didn’t impose our ‘superiority’ on them, they returned in the second half with no respect, having seen in the first half that we were merely human after all.

We must change our mentality and approach every game with the same toughness, determination, grit, and fight—crowned with the flair that defines us, just as we would against Manchester City, Real Madrid, or Liverpool. No team should be considered a walkover before the match even begins. While Arteta and his coaching staff must address these errors, our players need to approach every match with the intent to tear teams apart for daring to play against us.

Great respect goes to our fans who pay a lot to attend games at the Emirates. But they can do better in cheering the team on. They need to cheer louder and make the Emirates truly feel like home for our players, intimidating the opposition into chaos. A situation where away fans out-chant our supporters is not ideal. We can—and should—do better.

In conclusion, it’s good that we know we’re still very much in the Carabao Cup. In recent years, teams have beaten us at the Emirates, but we’ve always exacted our vengeance on their home ground. It’s the same situation now. We must be motivated by our near-perfect away record in recent times and brace ourselves for the fact that we’re still very much in this tournament. We need to go to Newcastle and get the job done. Yes, it can still be done! And our season can still end on a high!

Jude Ndukwe

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