Sheffield United 1-0 Arsenal: Five things we learned as Blades cut Emery and Gunners down to size
That Arsenal come unstuck against opponents they would expect to beat, particularly away from home, should no longer be a surprise; it is as predictable as their pedestrian build-up play.
Following this defeat at Sheffield United, they have taken just two points from their last four Premier League games – a sequence that has dragged Unai Emery’s team back out of the top four.
Emery received the benefit of the doubt in his first season, despite a dismal end to the campaign which saw them surrender Champions League qualification on two fronts.
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The question for the Arsenal hierarchy now is how long they are prepared to give the Spaniard to show he can get the best out of this squad, when there is such scant evidence to suggest he will.
Blades go toe to toe
For all that losing at Bramall Lane ought to be of grave concern for the visitors, the hosts were excellent value for only their third league win of the season.
As they showed in last month’s narrow defeat to leaders Liverpool, they are not content to sit back even against more decorated opponents, as Arsenal discovered in a lively opening spell.
Summer signing Lys Mousset scored the only goal after half an hour, stabbing home from three yards out after Jack O’Connell had arrived at the back post to head down a corner.
While Arsenal probed for openings they struggled to penetrate a defence that has now kept four clean sheets, is the joint meanest in the top flight and has helped the Blades climb to ninth in the table.
Eccentric selections
Emery has never shied from eccentric team selections in his 16 months at Arsenal but they have become increasingly difficult to justify in the absence of good form or even a clear style of play.
But even by those standards not starting with Kieran Tierney and Hector Bellerin as full-backs now that both have returned to action following injuries defies logic.
There are only two plausible explanations: that they are carrying hitherto unreported niggles, or that Emery does not want to drop the manifestly inferior Sead Kolasinac and Calum Chambers unceremoniously.
If it is the latter, it is a damning indictment of a manager who has had no such problems alienating one of the world’s elite No10s in Mesut Ozil while his team struggle to link midfield and attack.
Pepe shows promise
A faint silver lining to Arsenal’s cloudy evening in Yorkshire was that at times it looked as though this might prove to be Nicolas Pepe’s breakthrough.
The club’s £72m record signing has shown only fleeting glimpses of his talent since arriving from Lille in the summer, but inside the first half an hour laid on a perfect early cross for Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang that the striker did not anticipate and then failed to connect cleanly with a similar, even easier chance of his own.
In the second hald Pepe tested United goalkeeper Dean Henderson with a free-kick and then bent another shot a yard or two wide of the angle of post and bar before being substituted.
Aubameyang was also quiet, but the reality is Arsenal’s forwards are starved of decent service by a midfield full of players who want to drop deep to collect the ball – leaving a chasm to the frontmen.
Mousset makes mark
Mousset had looked lively on his first league start since a £10m close-season transfer from Bournemouth so it was no surprise that he was alert to the chance that fell virtually at his feet.
The entire Blades line-up buzzed with industry, but the French striker was not the only one to carry an attacking threat, too. John Fleck, in particular, got forward incisively and judiciously.
Coincidentally, Mousset had scored on his previous league start, which also came against Arsenal in February. Although that may as much about the state the Gunners now find themselves in.
Main image credit: Getty