Bournemouth 2 - Arsenal 0: suboptimal

Today at 04:09 PM

A tough night for the Gunners.

Arsenal stumbled to their first loss of the season at Bournemouth, losing 2-0 after William Saliba was sent off 30 minutes into the match. The Gunners only have themselves to blame for the loss. Well, mostly. We'll get to that later.

Arsenal looked disjointed and sluggish from the opening whistle. The Gunners have been able to cobble together a semblance of an attack without Martin Ødegaard in the lineup mostly because Bukayo Saka has been magnificent this season. Take Bukayo out of the lineup and you get *gestures at whatever the opening 30 minutes of attacking was* instead. As it turns out, not having two of your three best attacking players, both of whom are world-class footballers, makes generating an attacking threat difficult.

It doesn't help that the pitch appeared to be heavily watered. Several Arsenal passes essentially stopped in transit early in the match and were much easier to cut out because they were moving with the usual zip. I've got an axe to grind about clubs being permitted to use poor pitch quality to, for lack of a better phrase, level the playing field, but that's a gripe for a different day.

Arsenal didn't lose because of a wet pitch, although the attacking combinations at 11 v 11 might have looked better if the ball was moving normally. But they also might have looked better if Mikel Arteta had chosen to deploy a bit more on-ball creativity instead of three battlers in midfield in Declan Rice, Mikel Merino, and Thomas Partey.

I could understand deploying such a stout, combative midfield against a big, physical team or a more difficult opponent that was going to force you to defend more, but against Bournemouth, it wasn't a great call. The Cherries press hard and high, so if anything, you want more technicians on the pitch to pass around and through the press.

To be fair, that midfield trio did fine against the press, but with Jorginho, Oleksandr Zinchenko, Gabriel Jesus, and Ethan Nwaneri all on the bench, the Gunners didn't have anybody dynamic in the center of the park to make things happen once the ball progressed up the pitch. Leandro Trossard had been that player, but with Gabriel Martinelli only fit enough to be a substitute, the Belgian was moved out to left wing, where he was ineffective, and honestly, rather poor.

It was Leandro Trossard's ill-advised volley-pass back towards the Arsenal goal and to nobody in particular that turned the game. Bournemouth striker Evanilson had a step on William Saliba, who pulled back the Brazilian ever so slightly and clipped his heels as he cut across the back of him to take him down. The referee initially gave Saliba a yellow card for the foul, but it was upgraded to a red card by VAR.

And that's where I have my issue. VAR shouldn't be getting involved. At the start of the season, the Premier League made it quite clear that there would be an even higher bar for VAR intervention this season. There is no clear and obvious error here. That far from goal and with Ben White in position to make a recovery run you cannot make a definitive determination whether it was or was not DOGSO. It's not a question of whether what William Saliba did was or wasn't DOGSO. It's that once the call is made on the field, there isn't enough in this instance to change that call. You cannot clearly say that it was DOGSO. You might be able to say it was possibly, perhaps even probably, DOGSO. But that's still not enough to overturn the call made on the field.

It was a silly thing for William Saliba to do, too. Probably an instinctual move as a defender, honestly. You see a guy starting to break away and you grab him a bit to slow him down. It's probably also an instinct to commit the foul a few steps inside midfield because experience tells you that it's way too far from goal for it to be a red card but that if you commit the foul closer to goal, you're much more likely to be sent off.

There's also a decent chance that Saliba is able to make a play defensively from that position even if Evanilson beats him to the ball initially. With his speed and strength, he's probably able to chase him down and influence whatever chance may have developed. The ball was curling and bouncing towards the middle of the pitch. Evanilson would have had to bring it under control, which would have slowed him down, allowing either Saliba himself time to get back and / or Ben White time to get across. Saliba made the wrong call (after Trossard's horrible attempt at a back pass) and Arsenal were maximally punished for it.

After going down to 10-men, Arsenal looked incredibly exposed, by Antoine Semenyo in particular, down the right side. Mikel Arteta's response was to take off Raheem Sterling and bring on Jakub Kiwior to play out-of-position at right back, in part because all the other right back options are injured, and slide Ben White to RCB.

It's easy to critique Mikel Arteta's decisions from the sidelines and with the benefit of hindsight. So I will. Bringing a defender on was a perfectly fine call to make in response to losing a centerback. But it seems foolish to take off the pacey player who can hit an opponent on the counter (Sterling) in favor of Trossard, who wasn't having a good game to begin with. The danger created by Gabriel Martinelli when he came on in the second half only reinforces that point. Attacking with speed into the space left by an 11-man team pushing forward to score against a 10-man opponent seemed the best way to steal a win from a tough spot.

And what could have been for Arsenal. Midway through the second half, Kepa Arrizabalaga played a pass directly to the Gunners on the edge of the area, Kai Havertz and Declan Rice combined to create a great opportunity for Martinelli, but his shot flew too close to Kepa, who was able to get a shoulder to it. Less than two minutes later, Bournemouth scored from an excellent corner routine.

About ten minutes later, Arsenal were undone by another atrocious back pass. This time, Jakub Kiwior didn't get nearly enough on a ball back to David Raya, which allowed Evanilson to run onto the ball. The Bournemouth attacker tried to go around David Raya, who dove to his left to make a play for the ball. Raya didn't get the ball, Evanilson, who looked to already be slightly off-balance, ran into him, and the referee awarded a penalty. Justin Kluivert converted and that was all she wrote.

I don't have much issue with the penalty, although it does sting a bit because it was quite similar to the move on which Bukayo Saka was not given a penalty against Bayern Munich at the Emirates last season. I do wonder how referees decide who caused the contact because in both instances you have an attacker moving forward into a goalkeeper moving laterally. Comparing the two instances (from different competitions, I grant), it seems like the initial call on the pitch determines the ultimate decision. It stings a good bit to type that given the other events in this match.

On the one hand, it's a bit more difficult to feel hard done by today because Arsenal weren't playing particularly well leading up to the red card and we've got questions about Mikel Arteta's decisions afterwards. On the other, Bournemouth didn't do anything of note until going up a man, either. If I were a betting man, I'd wager Arsenal the more likely team to turn around a bad performance with some second half adjustments to get a result at 11s.

Gabriel Martinelli, Gabriel Jesus, and Ethan Nwaneri all looked lively when they came on. At least one of the latter pair probably should have been on from the start, assuming Martinelli was on a pitch count. Let's be real - Mikel Arteta isn't starting Ethan Nwaneri away at this point, so it should have been Gabriel Jesus.

Arsenal really miss Martin Ødegaard and Bukayo Saka and need to have one or both back for the Liverpool match, particularly because Arsenal may need to score 2 or 3 goals with William Saliba suspended. If they aren't, hopefully Mikel Arteta realizes that he's been too conservative in his approach and throws caution to the wind. Ethan Nwaneri looks ready to step up and break through. I want Mikel Arteta to give him that chance. But I don't see that happening - I think this is who Arteta is.

But I digress. William Saliba made an extremely rare bad decision. David Raya had an uncharacteristically poor game. Arsenal made two horrific back-passes. Perhaps it's better that the side got a bunch of bozo moments out of their system in the same match rather than spreading the stupidity across multiple and costing the team even more points.

Dropping points is never good, but every team, even champions, have the occasional bad game. Manchester City's results are much better than their underlying numbers right now. If they keep playing like that, they're not going to keep picking up points at the same rate. Liverpool lost to Nottingham Forest and have barely played a tough match yet. It's a long season. Unexpected things happen.

Arsenal just lost their first match of the season, their first Premier League away match of the calendar year and just their second in the PL in 2024. The important thing is to regroup and go next. Last season, Arsenal's wobble around Christmas covered a few matches, which you could point to as the stretch that "cost" Arsenal the title. It's imperative that this one bad result, something that every club will have, doesn't turn into two or three bad results.

Arsenal are home to Shakhtar Donetsk midweek before hosting Liverpool next weekend. It's nice to have that midweek match as an opportunity to cleanse the palate, right the ship, and reset before a massive contest at the weekend. Hopefully the Gunners take advantage and handle their business in the Champions League and beyond.