Pathetic Arsenal Fail Miserably Against PSV

By Joel Martin

Today’s game was so bad, I still can’t get the awful taste out of my mouth.

We had everything going in our favor at the beginning of the game. Jefferson Farfan, their leading scorer, was out injured, and we created all of the good first half chances. Rosicky should have scored after a brilliant (and lucky) one-two with Henry in the 12^th minute. Henry tried to curl the ball into the far post numerous times, and he scared the Brazilian keeper Gomes a few times. Rosicky and Cesc were dominating the game going into the break, and Arsenal looked like they were on the verge of opening PSV up for a couple goals in the second half.

I’ve never seen us play worse than we did after the break.

Henry was terrible. Even his touch deserted him. His flops and dives are starting to get aggravating, too. When we need him, he looks to the ref to bail us out. We needed Thierry Henry in the second half, not the ref, but, quite simply, Thierry did not deliver. I don’t know what the problem is, but he still isn’t playing up to his standard, and he needs to quickly, for his own sake. The longer he takes to hit his stride the more pressure will be put on him by both himself and the pundits.

I hope Hleb was not fit, because that was easily the worst I’ve ever seen him play. He took too many touches, was bullied around, and never even threatened Salcido, their makeshift left back.

Gilberto was also the worst he’s been this season. His touch was atrocious and he could not make a pass the whole second half. He couldn’t close quickly enough on Edison Mendez, who took advantage of the space and drilled in the winner in the 61^st minute. It wasn’t the first time Gilberto has halfheartedly closed on the ball this season (the Denny Landzaat goal comes to mind), which is a flaw that needs to be addressed.

Gallas still is no where close to fit. He looked terrible and also took too many touches on the ball. We missed Eboue’s attacking mind, even if it is a bit reckless at times. We needed someone other than Rosicky to take the game to the opposition.

Adebayor was out-muscled by Alex the whole game, but Alex really played like a star. If he plays like that at the Emirates we’re screwed.

Baptista came on and did absolutely nothing other than hitting Henry’s free kick straight to Gomes. He is horrible.

If there is anything good to take from the game it’s that we only lost 1-0. For how horribly we played, we should consider ourselves lucky that we even have a shot at advancing. The chances of everyone playing that bad again are very slim, and if we can take our chances well, we should not have a problem scoring at home. Believe it or not, we aren’t out of this thing yet.