Bournemouth 2-0 Arsenal: A bad day at the office

Match report – Player ratings – Arteta reaction – Video

Arsenal suffered a first defeat of the season after an error strewn performance against Bournemouth yesterday evening.

The team saw Ben White return, Raheem Sterling replace Bukayo Saka on the right, who was not in the squad at all, and a first start for Mikel Merino in midfield. It was a functional side more than an exciting one, and it was a strange game. The pitch was really slow, heavily watered, and that affected the pace of play for both sides. Nothing much happened in either goalmouth until the big incident of the first half.

Quite what Leandro Trossard was trying to do, I’m not sure, but he played a ball from inside their half over the top of our defence and into the path of Evanilson. William Saliba was there, he pulled him back and the referee issued a yellow card. VAR suggested a review, after which the yellow card was rescinded and a red pulled out instead for denying a goalscoring opportunity.

I think it’s one of those where it’s both a bit harsh but also understandable. Would I want it if the situation was reversed and it was Gabriel Martinelli, for example, about to streak through? Yes, I think so, even if it was a long way from goal. Here’s the thing for me – when it comes right down to it, I think Saliba made a mistake. He is quick enough to have chased Evanilson down, and got back to make a tackle. We’ve seen him do that before, more than once, and even if they went through and scored, there was lots of time to make it right. But on this occasion he just panicked in a split second and gave the officials the decision to make. And when the Liverpool fan on VAR had the chance to ensure Saliba would be suspended for our game against them next week, he took it.

That made it an uphill battle, and for the third time this season we were down to 10 men for an extended period. Whatever about the rights and wrongs of the decisions, it’s a problem we need to get on top of. In this instance it was just a freakish in-game situation, a weird, bad pass from Trossard, a bad decision from Saliba and in 2 seconds the game had turned on its head.

The manager’s reaction was to take Sterling off and put Jakub Kiwior on in his place. It’s a substitution I mostly understand, and if anyone had to come off it would have been him, but I do wonder if we could have reorganised differently. Could Declan Rice have gone to centre-half, where he has played quite a lot in his career, and you then have Partey and Merino as a natural left-right midfield duo which means you could keep your wide players on? Maybe it says something about how Arteta thinks Sterling would have coped with the work required down to 10, but that’s another conversation.

To be fair, that substitution came into sharper focus late on with Bournemouth’s second, but for the most part we looked fairly secure despite being a man light. There were a couple of moments for the home side, an early second half chance which Antoine Semenyo blasted over, but by and large they didn’t cause us too many problems.

We also had a brilliant chance to go ahead when they made a mistake at the back, Merino did really well to feed substitute Gabriel Martinelli but he couldn’t find the finish. It was both a bad miss and a good save, but those are moments you have to take in games like this. I don’t think it’s the worst miss I’ve ever seen or anything, but that would have changed the trajectory of the game in a big way.

The fact that 60 seconds later Bournemouth went ahead only heightened those regrets. It was a nice corner routine, finished very well by Ryan Christie, and while we can get forensic on the way we defended it – because we did have numbers in the box to have cut off that chance being created – it was a well worked goal, so we had to respond.

Here, I wish Mikel Arteta had reacted more quickly from the bench. It’s a lot to ask of a 17 year old, but as he showed in the Leicester game, I think Ethan Nwaneri should have been on earlier to give the midfield that spark of dynamism that he brings. Maybe it was something the manager was planning, but by the time it happened, it was too late. Kiwior under-hit a back-pass to Raya, Evanilson went down (far more than being fouled but those penalties are almost always given), and Justin Kluivert made it 2-0 from the spot.

Kiwior suffered the ignominy of being a sub who then gets subbed, but at that point it was a case of throwing on Nwaneri and Jesus and hoping for a miracle. One which didn’t arrive, obviously, and for the first time this season we failed to score in a Premier League, and lost.

Afterwards, Arteta said:

We are obviously very disappointed with the result and gutted because we had to play a game in that context, even more difficult than in the previous two that we already faced this season. Playing for 65 or 68 minutes with ten men at this level is just an impossible task, an accident waiting to happen to not get the points and I cannot fault the team for their effort, commitment, how intelligent they play in the way they have to do it.

There is a big moment at 0-0 when we have a big opening, one-on-one situation with the keeper and we don’t manage to score and at the other end, we do that. We have to fault ourselves; football is a sport where errors are part of that, tonight we made two big errors that has cost us the game unfortunately.

While Declan Rice was forthright too, saying:

The matter of the fact is, we’ve kicked ourselves in the foot three times now this season in eight games. We’ve got away with it twice, home to Brighton, away to City, but not all the time luck can go your way.

We’ve got to stop making mistakes.

To be fair, we’re not a team that usually makes a lot of mistakes. The Rice/Trossard red cards were basically unprecedented, and it’s worth noting we haven’t seen any other player from any other team dismissed for their ‘offences’. Last night, Saliba’s red card was two mistakes, the penalty was a mistake, and even before that, the usually impeccable David Raya had a couple of whiffs which is uncharacteristic for him. So, it’s tempting to put it down to just being one of those nights.

Perhaps the performance does speak to some underlying issues, but for me it comes down to being without really important players like Saka and Odegaard, and playing for over an hour with ten men. That’s our fault, but it’s very hard to properly assess a performance when you’re at that kind of disadvantage for so long.

There’s a very quick chance to react with a Champions League game on Tuesday against Shaktar Donetsk, before we face Liverpool next weekend at home. The kind of game that can get you back on track in a big way. But the reality is, unless we can keep 11 men on the pitch for 90 minutes, we’ll struggle. I’m hoping this is just a freakish kind of run at the start of the season that will correct itself over the duration of the campaign, but much of that is in our own hands.

Right, I’ll leave it there for this morning. Have a good Sunday folks, back tomorrow with more and an Arsecast Extra.

Until then.