Arsenal Vs Olympiakos: You cannot switch commitment on

Arsenal fell to Olympiakos on Thursday night in one of their more humiliating European evenings. Their primary issue was a lack of commitment, something that cannot be switched on and off.

In a recent history stocked with humiliating European nights, Arsenal’s 2-1 defeat to Olympiakos and subsequent elimination from the Europa League on Thursday night is up there with the worst of them.

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Carrying a one-goal lead from the first leg, the Gunners proceeded to produce one of their lost lacklustre, absent-minded, lacksadaisacal performances of the season, one that has seen many a performance of this ilk already. It was an insipid, lazy, utterly lacking display from a team that looked as though they expected to win and grew complacent as a result.

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What was frustrating about the extra-time heartbreaker was the inevitability of it all. Olympiakos arrived at the Emirates with a plan: defend deep, slow down the game at every possibility, make Arsenal slip into a false sense of security, lull them to sleep, and then snatch a goal — or two — to win the tie. And Mikel Arteta’s side fell for the trap. After the match, Arteta made it quite clear that he and his players wanted to win the match and are very upset by the result:

"“It hurts, big time. We had a lot of hope in this competition. It was a great way for us to be able to go to Europe and it is a very beautiful competition to try to win <…> I’ve seen all the boys and I know how much they wanted this competition. I’ve seen today the way they fight and the way we try to play and it’s a difficult one to digest as a team and as a club.”"

However, while the Spaniard may protest that his players cared about the result and their sunken body language upon the final whistle certainly indicated as much, the performance they produced painted a very different picture, one that reflects a lot more pejoratively on the players’ commitment and application,

Questioning their desire to win is a little shortsighted, so I would not quite extend the criticism that far — they are professional footballers, after all. You do not get to this level of the sport without being intensely competitive, desperate to win every match you play in. But there is a step before desire that could be questioned: concentration, focus, and application.

It was as if Arsenal thought they could meander through a match they had utter control in, not extending themselves out of second gear, and simply see out the victory without much trouble. And if they did get into trouble, they would have the quality and intensity to ‘turn it on’, allowing their quality to win out.

But playing with purpose, passion, fight, commitment cannot be turned on like a light switch. You cannot be absent-minded for the first half and then simply switch into a motivated, concentrated unit in the second. At elite-level sport, you must be at your sharpest at all times, always fully committed to the task at hand. Arsenal were not.

This was a humiliating defeat. It is a disastrous exit from a competition that the team could — and perhaps even should — have won, and it now placed immense pressure on their Premier League results. And it all comes down to a lack of application, commitment and focus, and lacking those characteristics, sadly, has become Arsenal’s speciality.