Arsenal: There are so many excuses, none of which matter

Arsenal had another awful performance, scraping a point against relegation-zone Southampton. There are tons of excuses we could turn to. But don’t.

Going down 1-0 to Southampton after 8 minutes ended up being just as bad as it sounded. But even from that opening goal, Arsenal had every right to feel hard done. The quickly taken free kick that turned into the goal was still moving, but according to VAR rules, restarts are no reviewable.

To compile on that, the foul by Chambers, while some have called it conclusive, hasn’t convinced me. Townsend tried to run through him. Was he supposed to crumble and let him? He just stood his ground.

Regardless, the goal stands.

Fast forward to the penalty called against Kieran Tierney. Not only was it incredibly soft and still given, VAR checked to see if there was an offside call. There absolutely was. It was clear as day, they put the lines up and everything. No call. Penalty stood.

To compile on that, Bernd Leno made a fantastic save to deny the penalty, only for the ball to deflect perfectly to Ward-Prowse, who didn’t miss the follow-up.

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The goal stands.

There are so many excuses we could turn to, and if I was Mauricio Pochettino, I would be singing the flaws of the match. Neither goal should have stood for Southampton, but they did. And the bigger message here is that this team is terrible.

On the restart, sure the ball was moving, but bigger picture was that the entirety of the Gunners around the ball shut down and complained. Southampton took advantage and scored. It’s a pisser that it shouldn’t have stood, but Arsenal were far more at fault than the referee for missing the call or VAR policy for not being able to review.

And on the second goal? Poor defending. Poor, poor defending. Sure, Tierney was hard done, but he was left isolated, which is a specialty of this defense.

We deserved nothing more than this. Nothing more. The defense is terrible. Sokratis is a complete shamble, David Luiz is not the guy to inspire change and the only guy who I have faith in, Calum Chambers, was taken off at half while yellow-carded and floppy fish Sokratis was left on.

This was awful. And there are a lot of contributing factors that referees and VAR contributed to, but the fault is the club’s, and to hide from that is to diminish just how dire things have become.