Seeing a defence line housing Laurent Koscielny who was out of first team action from May till last week and Granit Xhaka no doubt birthed thoughts of a possible shocker even before kick-off. The adoption of a makeshift defence was necessary due to injuries and suspension to key players. If you saw the match then you would get to know the impact Rob Holding, Sokratis and Shkodran Mustafi have had on the team's progress since the arrival of Unai Emery.
Southampton came into the game with high morale and optimism maybe because there had been a recent change in team management. They mounted pressure on us and that eventually tore us apart. Having failed to take our first chance of the game which was one crafted by Matteo Guendouzi for Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, we suffered moments later as Ings took advantage of confusion in our defence to put his side ahead. We came back eight minutes later and it was Henrikh Mkhitaryan that headed home, courtesy good teamwork from Alex Iwobi and Nacho Monreal.
Arsenal went close to getting another almost immediately but Lucas Torreira's cross into the six-yard box was intercepted on its way to Aubameyang's tracks. Play continued and again we got punished. It was another header for Ings at the stroke of halftime. As if we hadn't been punished enough, Hector Bellerin got injured and had to be replaced by Alexandre Lacazette in the second half. We then had to go back to a back-four defence.
McCarthy prevented another Auba shot from going in but it was Mkhitaryan who would later get the job done and put us back in the game. The Armenian received from Lacazette and struck a shot which deflected past the man between the sticks for the home side.
What looked like the winning goal came from Southampton but the flag went up to get it rightly ruled offside to the relief of the traveling supporters. "What will be will be" they say and that was what we saw in the 85th minute. They finally got that winning goal from another shaky display from Arsenal. They caught us on a counter that resulted to a cross which Bernd Leno couldn't reach, gifting Austin the chance to score and that was how we were unable to make it 23. It was our first loss since losing to Chelsea in August.Â
Tomorrow, we'll discover our next opponent in the UEFA Europa League then host Tottenham in the Carabao Cup quarter-final on Wednesday night. It will be an avenue for us to return to winning ways by replicating the result we recorded against them two weeks ago. Hopefully, we would have some of our players back by then.
0 Comments
Your comments are highly welcomed but please be informed that comments which include abusive remarks, hate speech, racial discriminatory remarks and any other form of prejudice are prohibited. Also note that comments visibility is subject to moderation so they will not show immediately.