In the aftermath of defeat, statistics so often provide that sprinkling of solace you need to help make sense of it all.
The shots on target were in our favour, you discover, we dominated possession, attacking territory, corners, cards, passess, the lot. You can analyse and excuse, justify and hypothesise – convince yourself that this was just a blip and that, on another day, things would go in your favour.
We’ve all done it, we all do it: it’s just part and parcel of the modern football experience.
However you look back at yesterday’s game, though, it was a miserable affair and no amount of statistical jiggery-pokery can belie what we witnessed with our eyes. It was turgid, soulless and utterly without inspiration. It was tired and insipid and lacking any of the desire and verve we have come to expect from this Arsenal side.
Yes, Mikel Arteta’s men dominated the ball – a ridiculous 82 per cent of it – and they had the better of the shots, shots on target and corners too but that tells you little about how they really performed.
If a game was won in the statistics, this would have been a comfortable win for the Gunners but, in reality, it was a million miles from it. They struggled all afternoon to find any cutting edge or rhythm, stymied more often than not, by their own insouciance.
In fairness, this is a side weighed down by those who are missing; William Saliba, Oleksandr Zinchenko, Takehiro Tomiyasu and Gabriel Martinelli – a roll call of quality that would affect any side in the Premier League, and some odd tactical tweaks from the manager yielded little meaningful impact either.
However, the players at our disposal should have had more than enough to hurt Forest and they simply didn’t – not in any serious way. I can’t really recall a missed opportunity which should have yielded a goal or a particularly sharp save. There was so little to enjoy about the way we played.
A big part of that is because the hosts had no intention of allowing us to play football. They have learned, as so many have this season, that you don’t need world-beating quality to shut a game down, you can do it with fouls, with time-wasting, play-acting, and deceit. Against that back-drop, it is difficult indeed to build any momentum, string any passes together, press or probe at a defence – it is impossible to do much of anything.
It makes for an horrendous spectacle for anyone who isn’t a Forest fan but, as so many have said, why would they care? They run the risk of losing if they play football so why bother? Let the officials deal with time-wasting and, if they don’t, simply carry on pushing the limits.
And while that is an issue that the FA and other rule-makers need urgently to deal with, it is something Arsenal wouldn’t have to keep dealing with if they didn’t back themselves into silly corners. So often in this last month, we have given away cheap goals to poor opposition and then, when forced to respond, we’ve simply been unable to do so.
And so it was yesterday.
Credit to Forest, their plan was executed to absolute perfection while Arsenal, already struggling for motivation and form, simply went down with a whimper – with pass after pointless pass frittering away the entire second half.
It has been a brilliant campaign for Arteta and his young side but it has come at last to a bitter end. Instead of fighting to the death, the team have thrown in the towel, exhausted, battered and drained of all hope. We all deserved better.
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