AZ Alkmaar vs Arsenal, 1-1: Full time thoughts, analysis and player ratings
The Game
This will go down as our worst performance of the season. You just can’t hang on and on and on like that, waiting for the final whistle, as when you do, you get punished. We concede, again, from a set piece, and again Abou Diaby having no idea how to defend in our own penalty area, meaning we lose two precious points against a very weak AZ side.
Had he won, we would be on 9 points and almost sure of first place. Instead, we only have a point advantage.
Big shame.
Match Video Highlights
A link to match video highlights will be available here, when published.
Player Ratings
Mannone: 6 – Virtual spectator. Absolutely nothing to do for the Italian and not at fault in the goal.
Gallas and Vermaelen: 6,5 – Also had very little to do but I believe they did pretty well when called into action, especially Billy.
Sagna: 6 – Again, very disappointing with his crosses with many attacks coming to a dead end because of that.
Clichy: 5,5 – Caught on the wrong foot a good number of times, shocking defending which led to a yellow card.
Eboue: 6 – Produced some nice runs and some good crosses, but disappeared in the second half.
Diaby: 5 – Manchester’s own goal was not a stroke of bad luck. I counted five headers in the game by Abou, four of them were shocking. What sort of stat is that for a 6ft2 man? And completely lost it in the dying minutes when failing to challenge AZ’s player in the move which led to the equaliser.
Song: 6,5 – Fought hard throughout the game but failed to close Mendes down who went on to volley AZ’s equaliser.
Fabregas: 6 – Way too many passes given away cheaply and an uninterested look throughout the whole game.
Arshavin: 6,5 – Very slow start, but recovered well, the only one, besides Vela, still running and fighting in the final fifteen minutes of the game.
Van Persie: 6,5 – The only one who seemed to care from start to finish. Deserved to score but was twice denied by the keeper.
(Subs)
Vela: 6 – Silly yellow, won a penalty but not given and produced some good runs although you can’t expect miracles in 15 minutes.
Ramsey: No Vote – Like Vela, came on very late into the game, should have been involved earlier.
![[Video] Blackburn vs Arsenal highlights: Big win as we go second in the table!](http://www.thegunninghawk.com/wp-content/themes/arthemia-premium/scripts/timthumb.php?src=/wp-content/uploads/video.jpg&w=80&h=80&zc=1)
Yes it seemed to be a very tired performance. I think Arshavin cared but Fabregas didn’t seem to interested. That may have something to do with the personal reasons he had to pull out of the spanish squad. We realy missed the ability to rotate more today. The kids will give some of our players a rest against liverpool next week but first we have to play West Ham. Our away form except for Everton hasn’t been crash hot this year. When Eduardo, Bendtner, Nasri, Rosicky and Walcott are back it should help. The full backs didn’t perform it may just be fatigue. I would rather get the poor performance out the way before West Ham because even though we only have a 1 point lead in our group we have two home games and our greek opposition have two away games. This result may help in the long run giving AZ something to fight for making a potentialy tough trip for Panathanikos.
your ratings are shocking mate not diabys performance you give vela a 6 and eboue a 6 aswell knowing that vela had only 15 minutes to show while eboue had 75. Your the clown here Eboue was by far our best player today thats including robin, cesc, andrei, EBOUES RUNS WERE EXCEPTIONAL NOW YOU KNOW WHY BARCA WERE AFTER HIM OR STILL ARE.
if you dont know hot to rate our players why even bother.
His runs may have been good but he dissappeared in the second half. Leave the ratings alone why bother we ratings if you are going to give 7+ all the time. It’s his individual perception of what makes a good performance. You have to rate players on how they perform not what might have happened if we found Eboue on those runs.
You think Barcelona are/were after Eboue because The Sun reported it? Is that what you base your facts on, The Sun?
koeman admitted watching the blackburn game and gaining tips from them being dominated and how little they created (4 chances) but scored 2 goals. So what happens. Big striker on, 1 long ball into the box, wins the header, 1 goal scored. That was a week and a half ago and we still cant defend it. Diaby is a good player but really must learn to ATTACK THE BALL for a man of 6ft 3, this is why he is brought back by wenger to defend at set pieces. Its not just him though, if we had kept possesion on the ground instead of allowing an offside to get called then no free kick. We must learn quickly, can you imagine if that was the semi-final and that was how we got knocked out!
Your ratings are not fair, IMO. I’m sure they’d have been a lot higher for each player had we won the game rather than concede with 15 seconds to the final whistle. I feel it was just a sucker punch to have conceded so late esp considering that AZ had one shot on goal the whole game. It seemed as if they were afraid to attack us. But a point away from home in the CL is not bad. I’d quickly erase this one from the books and look forward to West Ham. After all, Barcelona lost, but yes I know we’re not Barcelona, but still sh*t happens and this was it.
I don’t think Diaby had a bad game at all.
your ratings and your comments are terrible, its like you dont know anything about football, and song was the best player along with galls and vermaelen and you gave them ratings of 6. you shoould go watch rugby or something you are an idiot
You should not drink before posting comments, enes, else you may end up posting in the wrong blog. In fact I gave those three players a 6.5, not a 6.
Little harsh on some of the players imo
Diaby had a good game overall, but i agree he has to work on his heading – it’s dreadful and can be costly at set pieces. 6-6.5 for me
eboue was excellent throughout, his attacking moves didnt work so well in the 2nd half but he was spectacular in the 1st half and ran his socks off the entire game. 7-8 imo. Probably our best player along with arshavin
I didnt think fabregas was so poor either. His final ball wasnt quite to the standard of the recent games, but still did a good job. Didnt think he looked disinterested tbh. 6.5
I really thought gallas and vermaelen did a good job again. That AZ side has some talented players and those 2 kept them pretty quiet. They were excellent in retaining possession as well. both 7
I agree that clichy had a poor game but would like to mention he was up against a Very good young forward in dembele. He didnt deserve his booking as well, gael tripped and brushed against the forward (i think dembele) who lost control of the ball and then clearly dived. Maybe clichy impeded him a little so i wouldnt argue with the free kick, but it wasnt intentional in the slightest, so a booking is very harsh.
I saw very little difference between this performance and recent games where we’ve gone on to win comfortably except we didnt take our chances/ let ourselves down a bit on the final ball, plus the fact the opposition were quite good in attack. On another day we would have won this easily.
Clichy’s ability to recover after losing headers – Dembele is very good in the air and AZ tried to pick him out as often as possible, but it rarely led to anything – meant he had a good game in my book today. Perhaps Traore and Gibbs wouldn’t have had as much trouble but its not like arsenal was constantly under assault from the left today.
You might be right on with Diaby, but i’m beginning to think he is a horrible partner for Cesc. Diaby does not create space for Cesc and does not look to pass once he’s made a run past a defender or two. Cesc obviously is not a worldclass dribbler and today he never really could find himself in a position, with space, to make the killer passes he’s known for. Put Nasri or Rosicky out there and they’ll find ways to set Cesc free; thats just not Diaby’s game.
and lastly i’ll echo the positive sentiment on the CBs. For the most part a very organized performance that caught AZ forwards offside all day long. Not great, but certainly good.
The team was a bit lazy, it was my impression. Totally uninspired. Arshavin and RVP tried but Fabregas had his head somewhere else. Diaby had a good performance against Birmingham but then he failed again. He needs to give his best game after game, not only one game. But I can’t believe he will succeed that’s why I’m still missing Nasri so bad I now he can help Arsenal more than Diaby. I couldn’t agree more this match was our worst performance of the season so far.
Heartbreaking if u ask me but i think there is no big deal cos i think its a good thing it will make our boys more alert in d premier league thank God its not a particularly important tie come on gunners and pound the hammers…..
When Arsenal doesn’t win, it is Diaby’s fault.
Pffft.
From all the comments it looks like Diaby is the only player on the pitch for arsenal. Are you serious? Arsenal has 11 players on the pitch. They are all at fault for a bad performance.
BTW, this game wasn’t so important. I personally don’t care for the result. I wouldn’t even care if we lost the game! In the end we will finish 1st in our group.
your rite m8
who gives we will quailify only bad thing is the confidence of the team
and the diaby comment in correct even through he does need to be a bit more consistent wouldn not mind to see a bit of ramsey against west ham since nasri will most likely be left out or a sub
Would have to call this a fatigue infested game. Everyone looked lethargic and uninterested. But would rather get this weak display out of the way before its time to play some real football.
And damn it man! Can’t we go a week w/o a player getting injured? Hell make it 5 days and someones injured, too ill, or on long term rehabilitation! I cannot wait to see a TOTALLY FIT Arsenal squad. Ughh waiting for that beautiful day…
Gooner4lyf
How is Diaby just so crap in the air when he has so much height? Again, his defending from a set piece led to their goal, and he almost had an own goal from a corner earlier on. And what the hell was with todays performance? It was just…terrible. Arshavin, song and eboue were the only ones doing things right. I hope fabregas steps up, because despite his goal, he did jack all. Alot of misplaced passes and through balls that never reached the target.
Let us all calm down here and desist from launching personal attacks to each other, the game didnt go as well as we wanted it to go but it’s a learning curve and trust that perhaps Nasri, B52 and Rosicky can be back for the West Ham clash on Sunday and we will put this performance behind us. GO GUNNERS!
“against a very weak AZ side” I dont think so….they had possession for long periods in game….i guess thats the only way to beat arsenal…becoz our boys mess up when we dont hav enough ball………very tough game….song played great in my opinion…..i just lost count how many times he won the ball …….Nice result considering its an away fixture…..now need to focus on next game…….
I WILL ALWAZ HATE DIABY.
Diaby almost scored an own goal. At least he didn’t. But obviously, he cost us the win on the final ball.
maybe you should sleep on it before deciding on player ratings?
result is not a catastrophe, far from it. fatigue had a lot to do with it.
i thought song was our best player.
To be honest, after a good night sleep, I would only change Robin’s rating, from 6.5 to 7.
that was the worst game of football that i’ve watched this season. i dont give a stuff about the player ratings… if i was rating them, they would have been worse. from kick off we didn’t have, and when we did, couldn’t keep possession.
we scored a great goal, but only because of a shocking mistake by their defender, but for the rest, we were piss poor.
we did not deserve to win that game. having said that, we should not have given it away like we did.
The way we played today reminded me a lot of how we started last season, and after being on such a high this season (even after the manchester games) last night brought me back down to earth. i really hope that i dont have to watch another performance like that too soon.
if any of you were manager of arsenal i guess we’d be fighting relegation. first it was eboue is shit and need to be sold. somewhere along the line it was we need a dm. song is shit. then it became rvp cant play cf oh but b4 that bendtnar was so shit we should buy a striker. but way back i heard some rumours about gallas not being good enough. and now all the talk is about diaby being shit. wenger’s appraoch to football is a lesson for all which we can even apply to our personal lives. yes thats how highly i rate the man. patience, dedication, persistence,hard work, principled, calculated, ive run out of adjectives for the man. my point is if the great man plays diaby week in week out. there must be a reason why. why dont we support him and stop slagging diaby off. i thought apart from the header he failed to win, he had one of his better games for afc. he hardly put a pass wrong. slowly slowly he is getting there. and when he is finally there we would have a beast of a player on out hands. long live arsene wenger. happy sixtieth birthday.
Yes Tony, I agree Diaby was quite solid before the last three minutes of the game but it’s in those three minutes that you realise how poor he can be for us, not to mention the attempted own goal a la Manchester United which he got away with.
The reason why Wenger plays him week in, week out, is because Diaby is his gamble for this season, just as Denilson was last year, and even if he scores own goals in every game, he would still start.
It’s when you say that Diaby “is getting there” that you are automatically admitting that he’s not there yet, meaning that we’re playing Champions League games with a player who still needs to improve. And when you do so, you are only waiting to be punished, just as we were yesterday.
And by the way, if a certain Philippe Senderos was on the bench, one who knows how to head a ball, he would have been a huge asset in those dying minutes.
same old story…if arsenal not conceded the last gasp goal then u give all player 8 rating..4 yrs ago i believe arsene current crop of player can win the BPL..they nearly did it 2 yrs ago only stumble late because of inexperience and mentally still not strong enough..now they are 4 year olders..4 yrs ago persie still 21..but now he 25…so no inexperience anymore..so believe me..(JD>>) arsenal will win again this season…
“if arsenal not conceded the last gasp goal then u give all player 8″
That’s the biggest insult you can throw at me mate
I rated players low even after wins last season. I rate by what I see, not the score.
If you fail to watch a match, then stop rating players for that match…If you need to blame anybody for that goal,then blame Arshavin, Vermalen and Song. Arshavin for conceeding a needless offside, Vermalen for not closing down the knock down and Song for not closing down the scorer. So where does Diaby comes into all this?
Overall, it wasnt a bad result as all teams must definitely go through this kind of patches, even, Barcelona lost at HOME yesterday despite playing so well (Would you rather want that result?)
Wow Gbenga, I hope you edit your message if you’re still in time.
You accuse me of not watching the game and then you ask why is Diaby at fault in the conceded goal.
And please, stop using Barcelona’s home defeat as an excuse to make people believe we should be happy with our performance. Were you comparing us with Barcelona at the end of last season as well?
Cameron,
I don’t know about AZ having a potentially tough trip to Panathanikos, but it will certainly be a wasted one as it is Olympiakos and not them who are in our group.
Panathinaikos
The ratings are more or less spot on, Chris.
I won’t bother repeating what everybody’s already said so I’ll point out a few things I noticed during the game.
Gaël Clichy – Our former ‘Mr Consistent’ may not be what he used to but he’s slowly gaining momentum. At least, that is, defensively. Sound and alert as always, he makes sure to backtrack and recover any mistakes (and they occur) as quickly as possible. Still, the feature that I find myself missing the most is his surges down the wing and close control, which he used to display at a very clinical and utilizing rate before his dip in form. You could always trust him to either pass the ball sensibly or else leave a few opponents in his wake, thus igniting a sudden attack. For all his hard work and apparent rediscovery of confidence, this feature still seems preciously subdued, rendering him primarily defensive-minded and leaving our attacking options on the left flank with the ‘left striker’ (who, imo, should stay goalmouth a lot more). (again!) Last night he tended to halt and pass the ball to Billy/Tommy all the time, seemingly ‘for safety measures’ rather than try to penetrate or else spot a clever pass, which he so optimistically used to.
I sure do hope he’ll rediscover his attacking self again any time soon.
Abo Diaby – No repeats. He seriously needs to find himself a permanent position, so people won’t expect a host of different abilities from him. And winkety-wink-wink: let it be an attacking one – he’s not a natural defender.
Andrei Ar-SHAA-vin (not ARR-shavin like a lot of commentators pronounce it) – Our go-to-guy this season, simple as that. I was a bit annoyed with him initially last night because he seemed little interested in making up for misplaced passes or runs, opting instead to hang his head and trudge homefield (Alex had to rush to assistance many times). In fact, this has become his distinctive style of attitude for Arsenal as well as in national colours. But (!) that is just how he plays. He showed that (as Chris has pointed out) by being one of the few who still cared the last 15 minutes or so, and indeed our only attacking player to actually take matters in his own hands and have a go at goal on more than one occasion. I actually noticed him at one point – with just about 84-85 minutes of the game gone – predatorily chasing an AZ’er all the way home with the sole purpose of closing down their potential counter, when ‘Vermallas’ were still backtracking from a corner of ours. So his occasional lack of urgency when losing possession should by no means go down as a sign of laziness.
Apart from that: what an unbelievably boring game to watch. I’ve seldom found myself suspecting the majority of the playing eleven for just wanting to tread waters more or less from halftime.
I think what also took us off of our game was our not having the ball as much as we normally do. AZ did a good job of keeping the ball (though they weren’t going anywhere with it) which I think caused our concentration to drop throughout the match and also to make us give it back away more quickly than we normally do. Their having strong possession also allowed them to keep numbers behind the ball so when we did win it back usually didn’t have much space to attack into (except for our goal of course which was a ball we won higher up the field and caught them out of shape in the back).
That is what is so great of the Champions League, you run into so many different styles of teams. Look what happened to Liverpool and Barcelona at home yesterday, both lost to teams you would think they could beat easily at home.
Dont worry chris, i think you’ve got all the ratings spot on, our players couldnt keep the ball for more than 5 touches yesterday, and we’re meant to be one of the best passing football side in the world. Diaby nearly did another own goal he deserved to be shot if he scored that, and Abou always takes 1 or 2 extra touches before he passes, imo he is not ready, we’ll be better off with ramsey starting. Arshavin yesterday i thought was a bit selfish, maybe hes digging in for some glory cuz no one was looking to score. Clichy was a pain to watch along with diaby, all our troubles came from the right flank, he fail to mark his man, and let in a couple of crosses. He really needs to improve his consistency if not gibbs/troare will replace him.
Firstly I would like to say that this site is amazing. One of my favorites when it comes to arsenal-sites. You’ve done a great job Chris!
Now when that’s said….
I have to say that Arsenalfans may blame diaby a bit too much sometimes, but in this game its pretty clear that Diaby made a very poor effort when AZ equalised.
Diaby isn’t a favorite of mine, and it seems like he’s not a favorite of ofther arsenalfans aswell. That’s why the the Arsenal fans who doesn’t like him, including me, might spot the negative parts of his game instead of the positive ones.
When it comes to the game, Arsenal preformed pretty well defensively, but the offensive-Arsenal we’ve seen this season was nowhere to be seen last night. I won’t worry about the result though because I think that Arsenal will end up at first place in their group at the end of this groupstage.
Greetings from Sweden btw
(therefor sorry for the misspelling and shiznit haha)
Cheers for the kind words mate
we should just assume diaby is off form, to aviod abuses, when nasri will be back then diaby will need some rest.