Arsenal 1-2 Swansea

by Kadeem Simmonds

at Ashburton Grove

When Danny Welbeck headed in a last minute winner against Leicester two weeks ago, Arsenal were two points off the top. Were the Gunners to lose to Tottenham on Saturday and Leicester win over the weekend, the gap opens up to nine points.

This 2-1 defeat to Swansea in front of 59,000 fans was such an Arsenal performance it was beyond a joke. It has become all too familiar for the supporters at Ashburton Grove and so has the manager’s excuses.

“I think it was a very unlucky defeat,” said Arsene Wenger after. And he was half right. Arsenal hit the woodwork three times and Swansea scored from their only two shots on target.

But it is the team’s inability to capitalise on the mistakes of the clubs around them which saw those inside the stadium loudly boo the team off the pitch.

Going into what was a must-win game for Arsenal if they were to stake a serious claim in the title race, they had watched the Foxes drop points at home to West Brom the night before.

So when Arsenal kicked off against Swansea 24 hours later, it was encouraging to see the the home side start brightly. And there were loud cheers from the crowd when news filtered through that Spurs had gone a goal behind to West Ham after just seven minutes.

Just under 10 minutes later, Joel Campbell put Arsenal 1-0 up after reaching an Alexis Sanchez dinked through ball.

Everything was going to plan. But in north London, this usually signals Arsenal to do what they are becoming famous for, doing an Arsenal.

Fifteen minutes later, Mesut Ozil was manhandled to the floor in something resembling a judo hold on the halfway line but the referee waved play on. Jack Cork slipped Wayne Routledge through and while the rest of the Arsenal team hesitated waiting for the whistle, the former Spurs winger had calmly passed the ball past Petr Cech in the Arsenal goal to level the scores.

Wenger said that his players stopped as they thought it was a foul but you are taught from a young age to play to the whistle. It is that level of naivety that costs Arsenal every season.

At the break, Swansea introduced Gylfi Sigurdsson who turned the game on its head. He rounded Cech midway through the second half only to see his shot flash across the open goal. This should have set off the alarm bells in Wenger’s head.

What it did set off, however, was the trigger to bring off Campbell, who was by far Arsenal’s brightest spark in the game, when they were 2-1 down.

Sigurdsson’s free-kick from just outside the box somehow managed to go past Cech, who flapped at the ball, and hit Ashley Williams’s thigh to put the visitors ahead.

After that, it was as if Arsenal were running through the motions and just hoping to end the match without making things worse.

But given the Gunners’ luck over recent years, the match ended in the most Arsenal way possible. Cech was sent up for a corner in the dying embers of the game. But when it broke down and Swansea launched a counter, the former Chelsea keeper was forced to sprint back.

In doing so, he aggravated a groin injury which Wenger revealed after that Cech carried into the match, ruling him out for North London derby.

No wonder the Arsenal fans booed the team off the pitch, they have had enough.