What Arsenal can’t be faulted for in Crystal Palace disaster

It is what it is, as they say. The milk has been spilled and the inquest has begun, none of which will alter a scoreline that reflects dreadfully on Arsenal.

Jean-Philippe Mateta, Jordan Ayew and Wilfried Zaha did the damage for Crystal Palace on Monday in a result and performance that will undoubtedly ask serious questions of this Arsenal team’s top four credentials.

Losing two integral players to injuries, one of whom looks set to miss the season, compounded a disastrous night in south London where the players and the manager came under the spotlight.

Whenever a game is lost that heavily the knee-jerk reaction is to question the effort of the players. If they had simply ‘tried more’ then this wouldn’t have been the outcome, or something of that ilk. So often a legitimate criticism of the team in the past, that does not have its roots in this display.

Arsenal can’t be faulted for their effort in 3-0 Crystal Palace defeat with the technical quality of the team hopelessly lacking on the night

Arsenal can’t be faulted for their effort. That’s an imprecise complaint. Even Thomas Partey, who was comfortably one of the worst players on the pitch, was flying in to press the ball, tracking back to cover and switched on mentally.

The issue was simply an abandonment of technical quality. Not one player on that pitch found their usual level. Martin Odegaard’s touch was uncharacteristically heavy, attempts to be physical in the tackle were loose, and the whole team couldn’t string one pass together, let alone two.

Crystal Palace were outstanding in their aggression from the first minute, planting the seeds of nervousness and capitalising on the resulting germination. From the very early stage the technical level across the whole team sunk, plummeting Arsenal into an error-strewn hole so deep it brought them back to 2020.

Pinpointing exactly why this happened isn’t easy. The loss of Tierney didn’t help, nor did the strength of Palace’s start, and fingers will point towards the most recent international break where Arsenal had multiple players away all across the world.

None of which warrants a group of players to be so collectively detached from the levels they had been sustaining for most of the year. Dissecting every individual performance gets us no closer to an explanation.

The team did improve after the break. Two fine chances were spurned at 2-0. On another day, who knows?

Which is exactly the point: another day. That day is penciled in for Saturday where this calibre of football individually and collectively will see the Gunners’ top four aspirations dented further. They face a hopelessly out of form Brighton in the Premier League and it’s the chance to prove to everyone what the meaning of a blip is.