Arsenal: Season Review

Hi fellow Gooners, this is my first try at blogging. I hope that you all will like the piece which I have made.

Hope, the word that every Arsenal fan actually regrets to have in their life. The start of the 2019-20 season should have given hopes to every Arsenal fan to believe that they can challenge for something more valuable but little did they know what they are gonna get. The matchday 5 extensively showed what Arsenal are about, they conceded twice to throw away a 2-0 lead against a Watford side who got annihilated by Manchester City 8-0 in Ethiad the following week. Arsenal from that match started to concede more shots than they take, they lacked in creativity going forward and defended like they don't know what defending is. A sequence of drawn games at home and throwing away the lead after scoring two goals, relying on set-pieces to score goals is something that we were never used to see from Arsenal before. Things got more heated when the then club captain Xhaka exchanged some fiery words with the fans when he got substituted around half-time against the Eagles in Emirates. Then came the imminent decision that most Arsenal fans wanted the sacking of Unai Emery. Emery got sacked after the loss to Frankfurt in the Europa League group stage match at Emirates which saw one of the record low attendance in the club's history. Emery made some questionable decisions by playing Torriera in a more advanced position with Ozil being completely frozen out from the starting XI. The match against Southampton where Lacazette equalized at arguably the last kick of the match and with celebration indicated that they have lost faith in their then Head coach Emery. With club legend, Freddie appointed as interim head coach, the Gunners won their first away match by defeating West Ham United 3-1 but they got tarnished by some of the bad performances that followed like the 2-1 loss to Brighton and embarrassing 3-0 defeat against Manchester City. Arsenal were at their lowest position in the 25 years after 13 games played. 

In came the previous Arsenal player who served as an assistant to Pep Guardiola in Manchester City for three spells after he left the Gunners in 2016. He was given the head coach role to much criticism to most of the fans and pundits around the globe. Some even said that he just lays cones for Pep. But his arrival at the club changed a lot in how the club is run. Arsenal slowly gained momentum in the first few games when they started defending properly and organized. They started looking like the Arsenal the world once has seen but as heart to knife came their loss to Olympiacos when they lost the match 2-1 which ultimately ended their campaign in Europa League. So they had only the League and FA Cup to play for but came as a piece of bad news was the COVID-19 pandemic when it caught Mikel Arteta the head coach himself. The Premier League got suspended due to the contagious spread of the pandemic and the world has to wait for football action till the situation got better. Football came back into action in England by the mid of June when Arsenal had away match trip to Ethiad where the pupil went one on one against the master. Everything collapsed when key players like Xhaka and Mari got injured, with Ceballos and Luiz came on to replace the injured players. Those 30 minutes of David Luiz's career is one for him and Arsenal fans to forget as he gave away the ball for the first goal and a penalty for the second one. More insult was added to Arsenal when they lost both Leno to injury and match to Brighton in the very last minute of the next match. Then came a string of good performances where they won away to Wolves and Southampton. Some positive points that Arteta can take from this inconsistent Arsenal's results are the way the team performed, they didn't look complacent, played more organized football, and became tougher to beat. The only bad result that they can look into the following games after the loss to Brighton was the loss to Spurs where they didn't take their chances and made silly errors. The performances against Liverpool in the league and Sheffield United in the FA Cup Quarterfinals are the ones that Arteta can take up and replicate. Following the deserved victory against Manchester City in the FA Cup semi-finals Arteta fielded a relatively weaker side against Villa which proved to be costly as their hopes of top4 finish was also gone with that defeat. This defeat indicates that Arsenal lack squad depth and need to add quality players if they are gonna achieve something in the next season. So came the final test for Arteta in the form of FA Cup final where he had to face an in-form Chelsea side who came on back of a home win against Wolves. Unsurprisingly Chelsea went in front with a good link-up play between Pulisic and Giroud when they dominated the first 20 minutes of the first half. After the water break of the first half, Aubameyang converted a penalty to goal after a foul on him by Azplicueta. Injuries to Pulisic and Azplicueta made Chelsea weak and Arsenal were able to handle the threat from Mount and Giroud well in the second half. Aubameyang scored a world-class goal which will be remembered for long in the FA Cup history for the Gunners to get them a record 14th FA Cup. A season that started with a lot of hopes could have gone worse than expected had not for Arteta to unite the team and make them believe in them. Once a Gooner always a Gooner

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