Arsenal: Hector Bellerin Rage Fest Completely Misses Point

Arsenal’s loss to Chelsea is being hyper analyzed as usual, and Arsene Wenger has had his say to, drawing attention to the missed foul on Bellerin.

Arsenal nation has had every single image of Hector Bellerin getting elbowed in the face analyzed. Marcos Alonso came in on the first goal and knocked our Spaniard unconscious, but the ref didn’t see it as anything that terrible.

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It was a 50/50. There was nothing malicious in Alonso’s play. Perhaps he should have kept his arms down and, to be fair, I do subscribe to the school of thought that if that had been Granit Xhaka flying in, he’d have gotten three red cards and would be suspended until 2025.

But that’s not the point, and I don’t like Arsene Wenger drawing attention to it either. In the long run, that one foul did not change the outcome of the game.

Sure it might have started the ball rolling for Chelsea, but what we had seen from the Gunners that far had been disorganized, loose and sloppy. It was not a team that was out there to win, it was a team that was out there to not lose, which is always bound to fail.

By drawing attention to the would-be foul, Wenger is pulling the blame away from the players that actually deserve it. Namely, all of them, save Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain.

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What about Petr Cech convincing Arsenal nation that he was a double-agent in the span of 15 seconds? What about Walcott not helping Bellerin out when Alonso came belting in. What about the two center backs getting pulled way too wide and leaving Bellerin stranded?

What about Ozil and Monreal’s stroll behind Hazard as he picked apart our defense like soft bread? What about Alexis not being an effective striker? What about Danny Welbeck not starting?

All of these things had a much bigger part to play on the game than a 50/50 foul call that wasn’t had. You don’t blame the refs when your team comes up flat as a piece of paper. There was very little life in this team until it was far too late and that late life came from substitutions.

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Jose Mourinho is the kind of guy that would blame such a lopsided match on the refs. We don’t have to follow in his mold. This was a colossal collapse by an entire unit, it was not the result of a missed call.