Pain in the Arsenal
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Arsenal’s Laurent Koscielny Ruined Diego Costa’s Season

By Josh Sippie

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Chelsea was supposed to put up a major title defense this year, but they sit 16th. Meanwhile Arsenal is tied at the top. Excuse me while I wipe this smile off my face. One of Chelsea’s main problems has been Diego Costa. A team cannot win if they cannot score. Chelsea rely on Costa to score. He isn’t. Seems pretty simple. But what went wrong?

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Well, call it crazy and/or optimistic, but it could be that Laurent Koscielny went wrong (from Diego Costa’s perspective).

In the six matches prior to facing Arsenal, the brutish former-Brazilian had two goals and an assist. Nothing to write home about, but still not the worst of returns. And then Arsenal happened.

For those who don’t remember, or for those who wan to be reminded, that was the day that Diego Costa turned into a Kodak Bear. He mauled Laurent Koscielny, attempted to rip his face off, and when Koscielny took the high road of simply staring at the disgraceful man in front of him, Gabriel stepped up. Arsenal’s rambunctious new defender squared up Diego Costa and was eventually handed a red card from

Emperor Palpatine

referee Mike Dean.

The match swung heavily in Chelsea’s favor following that and the good guys lost. However, the red card was later rescinded and handed to Diego Costa instead. In the following eight matches, Costa has amassed just one goal.

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Diego Costa had always been a guy that drew his power from getting under a defender’s skin. He would drive them to making mistakes and capitalize on their frothing anger. He tried to do the same thing against Arsenal and Laurent Koscielny. Not getting a reaction was bad enough, but the post-match ban for his pathetic antics being discovered may have debilitated his primary weapon – his barbarism.

Now that he has been figured out, the Spanish forward has more yellow cards on the year than goals.

Fox Sports points at Diego Costa’s flop against Dynamo Kyiv as a sign of his demise. Flopping is a telltale sign that a guy does not think he can do anything in his current scenario. Feeling weak and helpless, he goes to ground hoping the referee will bail him out. That is a side tactic of Diego Costa’s game and that too, has all started to unravel.

Laurent Koscielny, meanwhile, has been receiving texts far and wide from guys congratulating him on not hitting the Spanish marauder.

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“I received a lot of messages telling me: ‘Well done, because I, I would have hit him.’ Sure, I could have had a reaction, but I managed to keep my nerves. He wants to blow a defender’s fuse but you have to stay calm” the Frenchman said, as quoted by the Daily Mail.

Laurent Koscielny is by no means the first guy to thwart Diego Costa’s shameful tactics, but he and Arsenal are the first to thwart them and then exploit his antics to the world. The post-match ban alerted everyone that what Costa does would not be tolerated. Since that time, the Spaniard has been worthless.

Most of this is psychological. Maybe Diego Costa does not have the same confidence in his barbarism as he used to. But a lot of it is on the pitch as well. Defenders are not having to deal with an overly confident pirate like Costa used to be. Not only that, but they aren’t catering to his needs. Take for instance Micah Richards:

Granted, that kind of thing has happened before, the point is guys are not letting Costa evolve into the barbaric forward that he needs to be in order to be effective.

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Even when the events unfolded against Arsenal, Chelsea players were standing up for Costa, saying that what he did is a part of his game. They like him that way. Well, he is still that way, and that way is ineffective. I wonder if they still like him.

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