After a sunny few days in Spain I'm back and annoyingly we've not hit the International break although that may be a blessing in disguise. On Sunday we played out a 1-1 draw with Leicester away on what proved to a thoroughly frustrating afternoon.
After just 20 minutes we took the lead through Alexis Sanchez with his first Premier League goal and his second Arsenal goal following his crucial finish against Besiktas. Cazorla picked the ball up on the edge of the box and scooped it over the defence to Sanogo who through a complete fluke somehow found Sanchez who smashed it past the keeper and defenders. As we looked to build on out lead Koscielny clashed heads and was rushed back on sporting a rather interesting piece of headgear. This decision proved costly bearing in mind it was a head injury. Leicester broke and the defence was at sixes and sevens allowing a simple header past SZCZ.
The rest of the game was utterly frustrating with Arsenal struggling to get any fluidity going. There were some particularly poor performances from Sanogo who I'll come to in a bit and Ramsey who was definitely off. Chambers who replaced Koscielny almost instantly after the equaliser played well in general but showed a moment of inexperience as instead of standing his man up went sliding in and allowed the player to simply drag it back across him only to shoot into the side netting. SZCZ made a huge save in the second half one on one and we simply failed to create anything.
The frustration on social media was clear to see as people called upon the manager to buy a striker after Sanogo's poor showing. I hate to put a young player down but he's clearly not ready for the step up to lead the line and I can't help but feel he needs to clear his head and get some game time in the so called "lesser" competitions.
As deadline day began fans were horrified to learn that Arsene Wenger had flown to Rome to referee a charity match. As the day wore on, news of Arsenal moves was non-existant until out of the blue Danny Welbeck was having a medical with us and the move was confirmed for around £16m. I'm not sure what to make of him as a player but United fans were particularly disappointed with the move. His work rate is evident and I do think with the right service when we get going that he could bang a few in for us.
However much more worrying was our lack of movement for a centre half. We are currently just one injury away from being worse than bare bones. Quite how we can go into a season with 6 fit first team defenders is beyond mind boggling. Chambers is the only senior (at age 19) stand in we have. Following that we have nobody. Arguably the player who was most likely to make the step up Ignasi Miquel has been sold, leaving us from either a) a makeshift back four with possibly the likes of Flamini in there or b) promoting a youngster.
I refuse to believe there was nobody available for the manager to sign and we are taking a huge gamble from now until January banking out our defence staying fit which let's face it we don't have the best track record of doing. However it's done now and this is our team so we may as well get behind them and see where we end up. I'll be back next week with a preview of the City game. Until then.
