Too Predictable: 3 Things We Learnt About Arsenal, vs. Tottenham

Let’s be honest, we all knew what happened yesterday, so I’ll skip over the introduction where I lay it on a plate in detail.

Now it’s never easy writing these posts after an Arsenal loss, but when that loss comes against Tottenham, it’s harder than ever. 2-1 to the North London rivals means Arsenal slip to sixth position, but as we hit the half stage mark in the season, there are still some lessons to be learnt.

Somehow though we have to pick out the points that Arsenal must pick up on, and whilst it’s all well and good when we’re winning, we must concentrate just as much on what goes wrong in games like this.

1. Players Went Missing

Now sometimes in these bigger games, it is easy for players to hide just as much as it is to shine, but when it comes to a North London derby, there is no escaping the pressure put on from both sides.

Hector Bellerin is my first example, after gaining the pundits attention against Villa last week, he was a sure-fire starting figure, but he crumbled. During the first half, everything was being sent down the left hand side for Tottenham, with the pace of Danny Rose helping out the opposition to press. However, Bellerin was sucked into the middle of the park too easily, after making up for the mistakes left in the holes opened up by Ramsey and Cazorla (which I’ll get to in a minute). Bellerin will have learnt an important lesson today, and that’s to stick to your own job no matter how play is going.

Two players who you probably didn’t think would be getting a telling off now, both Ramsey and Cazorla were nowhere to be seen today. Firstly, Cazorla didn’t really know where he was playing today, and that seemed to stop Arsenal counter attacking. Whenever a ball was cleared, Giroud had nobody there to feed off of, he was sat too far back which purely invited the pressure from Spurs.

Ramsey on the other hand was just not at the races, his first touch was poor nine times out of ten and there was no drive to play football on the break. It was clumsy and he let the crowd get to him, something he is more than capable of shutting out usually. His silly mistakes made him frustrated, which in turn resulted in a needless challenge towards the end of the game, earning himself a yellow card. Press the page numbers below in order to see the rest of this article.