To borrow a line from Catch-22: just because you’re trailed around the continent by a frothing cloud of online paranoia over questionable refereeing decisions, doesn’t mean the game isn’t also out to get you.
Arsenal were undoubtedly a little unlucky in the divvying up of competing penalty claims during the first half of this 1-0 defeat by Inter at the San Siro. But bad luck does also tend to look for a space to loiter, a ledge on which to perch. The continent-wide Masonic refereeing conspiracies may eventually get you in the end. But you can also make it difficult for them.
Shall we do the penalties first? And then move on to why the penalties, while unfortunate, aren’t really the thing? Because Arsenal did have every right in this instance to grumble a little about at least one of the key first-half calls that really could have gone the other way.
First came the one that wasn’t given but might have been. This featured the Inter goalkeeper Yann Sommer coming out to clear a cross and instead punching Mikel Merino in the head. It was, to be fair, a really sweet, clean shot that clipped Merino flush on the side of the head and put him down. The referee waved play on sternly. VAR had a look but Sommer was cleared of committing any kind of foul and thereby conceding a penalty because, well, goalkeeping.
A few minutes later, with the game still goalless, Inter were awarded the penalty that would ultimately decide the game. Correctly as it happens, but under a silly rule that should be changed. This time it came from a free-kick struck into the Arsenal wall, where the ball deflected haphazardly off the unfortunate Merino’s raised foot, travelling 18 inches or so on to his arm, which was just up there, where arms go, being an arm.
The penalty was awarded after another check. The offence, basically, the possession of arms. No cheating or unfair advantage was involved. Under Premier League guidance it probably wouldn’t have been given, as some degree of common sense has been introduced to these situations. Here it was correct under the rules. Change them. If even the Premier League’s perpetually baffled refereeing brains trust has managed to make better sense of this scenario, life may be trying to tell you something. The kick was duly buried. And from there Arsenal always seemed to be losing this game, even when they also seemed, on pressure, territory, shots and the spectacle of Inter’s players spread across the turf like a civil war battle scene re-enactment, to be forcing their way back into it.
They are running through heavy ground right now. Defeat here made it two wins in the last six. Away from home they haven’t scored against anyone other than Preston since Gabriel’s header at the Etihad in late September.
Is this bad luck? Is it a case of dark forces? The fact is, this Arsenal team still has so many of its best qualities, from defensive power to spirit and heart, to ease on the ball. But they have also very obviously plateaued and indeed regressed as an attacking entity. There is a major problem with Saka-dependence. No other significant team of the last few years has put such a load on a single very effective attacker.
And while Bukayo Saka is a wonderful right winger his range of movement is concentrated and narrow-gauge rather than a meandering pitch-wide creativity. Shut down one narrow channel and you basically shut down this team from open play. This is a failure of attacking imagination, and of recruitment too.
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They still played well here. There was a rev up through the gears at the start of the second half. They might easily have equalised. Kai Havertz missed a poacher’s chance. Is this bad luck? Havertz is not a poacher. He will miss these. The squad lacks that specific spare part, the quick-fix merchant, the player to win an ugly game.
Arsenal have been accused recently of evolving ever closer towards a José Mourinho style, an observation most notable for being taken as a massive insult, which is quite funny in itself. But the fact is they don’t want to play like this. They have simply lost an element of fluency, disproportionately depleted by the absence of a single player.
Without Martin Ødegaard Arsenal don’t even have a vaguely Ødegaard-shaped senior footballer to call on, no conduit, no free-floating element. Meanwhile on the other flank from Saka, Gabriel Martinelli is basically a runner, spending the game here speeding up and down his touchline in a dogged straight line, a man doing shuttle sprints quite close to a game of football.
There is a referred pain from this lack of teeth. There was a weird kind of textural paradox to Arsenal’s second-half possession. Somehow they managed to be both urgent and meandering at the same time. They will probably still make it to the next phase, albeit perhaps not with a bye to the last-16 stage. But there are structural issues here that the return of the lone missing part, and indeed some mild bad luck on the night, should not be allowed to disguise.
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