Arsenal vs Southampton Report: Embarrassment to Ring in the New Year

Arsenal vs Southampton FINAL: 0-2.

Everyone has New Year resolution. It’s a new chapter, a new page, a time to start anew. Not for Arsenal.

The Gunners were in a position to win three Premier League games in a row for the first time this season and again they couldn’t have come out any flatter. Even when the starting XI was announced, the question was “who’s going to score?” With no Giroud and no Welbeck, there was no presence in the box. We’re already bad enough from set pieces, corners especially, but take away our tall strikers and we look abysmal.

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But that wasn’t the story of the game. The story was our horrific team defense. I can’t think of a single redeeming play from our back five (Szczesny included). The Pole in goal had a couple fantastic saves, but the first goal was almost entirely his fault and the second wasn’t much of an improvement.

Per Mertesacker and Laurent Kocielny looked like they were meeting each other for the first time and Mathieu Debuchy and Kieran Gibbs lacked any presence as well (barring Debuchy’s miraculous head save).

With Francis Coquelin and Calum Chambers rocking out the defensive mid, there was no chance for driving attacks from the back, as both are incredibly defensive-minded and lack any real pace or creativity going forward. Coquelin looked pretty decent considering how bad the team looked, but Chambers was removed for a reason.

We saw Theo Walcott, but if you blinked, you missed him. Sarcastic cheers rained down when he finally touched the ball after twenty minutes of being on the pitch.

This was an absolute nightmare for Arsenal to start the New Year on. But we have to do our best to leave it behind us.

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