Arsenal make it through to the fourth round of the Carling Cup after a hard fought win over a strong Shrewsbury Town that at times gave us a run for our money. At half time I tried summing up our performance so far and I truly struggled to come up with a list of positives that could balance out this match report to prevent it from becoming a negative affair and a trend on how our season has started so far. However, the Arsenal came out fighting in the second half and gave us plenty to go home happy about.

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

As expected a host of changes were made to the Arsenal starting eleven, which looked to line up as 4-4-2.

Fabianski, Jenkinson Djourou Miquel Gibbs, Chamberlain Coquelin Frimpong Benayoun, Park Chamakh

Starting in chronological order I’ll start with the bad, the first half. After a bright start Arsenal failed to string passes together throughout the half and looked completely lacking in confidence. This allowed Shrewsbury to attack with purpose and quick frankly our defense was nothing short of woeful. At times Arsenal road their luck and were lucky not to go two or three down, a better opposition would have arguably put away the chances they created. Arsenal went down a well-taken cross that found their player at the heart of our defense, unchallenged, who coolly headed home.My culprit for the goal was 100% Djourou, our captain for the night, who stood there and watched the ball over his head. (Did he duck?) I felt it was important to get a goal back before half time to lift spirits and that was achieved by a surprise goal by Gibbs from a Jenkinson cross which Shrewsbury failed to clear completed and headed in low to the keepers right. A well-taken header by the youngster.

Mainly good points can be taken from the performances of Chamberlain, Coquelin, Benayoun and Chamakh. Chamberlain terrorized Shrewsbury’s back four constantly throughout the game and gave Arsenal a more direct approach which resulted in Arsenals second goal where Chamberlain let fly from about 30 yards to put it past the keeper to his bottom right. A strike hit with feel force and purpose, which showed that there is other ways to attack a team rather than playing it constantly to our full backs to cross in. Coquelin impressed me with his presence in the midfield and work rate at getting back and putting in a few vital tackles. He was never scared at going past players and looked confident and assured next to Frimpong in the center of midfield. Benayoun run like a real workhorse through the entire match;showed good skill and ball work, starting attacks and running at their defense and was rewarded with a fine taken goal after great work from Ozyakup. Chamakh looked sharp through the match, should great effort at meeting every header possible and almost put Arsenal into the lead in the opening minutes after a fine cross by Gibbs which resulted in a one handed save from Shrewsbury keeper to deny Arsenal a brilliant start.

Talking points – Same old Arsenal

Although we equalized from this type of play I have been growing impatient with Arsenal’s recent tactics while attacking. We continually pass the ball around the opposition’s area trying to find room to manoeuvre that then allow them to get all 11 players back behind the ball. Our tempo at times is slow and once we run out of ideas our final ball ends with either full back crossing into the area only to be cleared, finding ourselves in a 2 v 2 situation caught on the counter.  If our full backs could cross like David Beckham every game and we played Chamakh I’d encourage it, but unfortunately they don’t and we need to change to a more direct game that we saw from Chamberlain today. Not afraid to run at players and full of confidence of beating them.

Every time Djourou touched the ball I got that feeling I got from Almunia last season, don’t do anything wrong! A few passes went astray by him tonight and was clearly caught napping with Shrewsbury’s goal. That isn’t an individual problem, is a fault we have with our defense and we must surely get this fixed if we are to get anything from this season.

The Debutee’s

Arsenal’s debutee’s today were Park, Ozyakup, Ryo and Aneke. Aneke wasn’t on long enough to make an impression but Ozykup certainly was. Within minutes of being on the field he teed up Benayoun for Arsenal’s third to close up the match.

I actually felt the game passed Park by at times, clearly not up to match sharpness yet but when on the ball he looked good and had a cracking chance in the first half with a curled effort near the edge of the area. Ryo replaced him after about 70 minutes and he knew it, already walking up to the side of the pitch before the numbers were shown. Still more to come from him after match practice I’m sure.  Ryo showed glimpses of his pace and continually tried to run passed defenders, which we saw during pre-season. Coming back from an injury therefore in the same boat as Park and it’ll only be a matter of time we’ll see the quality Wenger has brought in.

Ratings

Fabianski – 6 Jenkinson – 6 Djourou – 5 Miquel – 6 Gibbs – 7 AOC – 8 Coquelin – 7 Frimpong – 6 Benayoun – 7 Park – 6 Chamakh - 7

Scott Richardson @Scrotchidson

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