That’s back-to-back defeats for Mikel Arteta’s Arsenal.
Previously, it was West Ham United denting Arsenal’s Premier League title hopes, now it’s Fulham after a 2-1 loss at Craven Cottage.
Even though the Gunners opened the scoring through Bukayo Saka, their lead only lasted 24 minutes when Raul Jimenez equalised, before Fulham took the lead just before the hour mark.
Many Arsenal players left Ian Wright annoyed, including Bukayo Saka, Declan Rice, Martin Odegaard and Gabriel Magalhaes, as he expressed on Premier League Productions (31/12/23 at 4:30 pm).
For Fulham’s opening goal, the former striker slammed Bukayo Saka for losing the ball in the opposition’s half, with Fulham then hitting their neighbours on the counter.
There was a lot of open space on the left-hand side, with Ian Wright putting that down to the poor positional play of Declan Rice and Martin Odegaard as their teammate lost the ball.
You would think that would have been a wake-up call for the Premier League title chasers, but clearly not.
Things went from bad to worse when they failed to deal with a cross into the box, with Ian Wright firmly pointing the blame at Gabriel Magalhaes and how he allowed such a ‘smaller’ player in De Cordova-Reid to get the better of him.
On Fulham’s first goal: “Saka can’t lose the ball there,” said Wright. “Martin Odegaard can’t go beyond him. Declan Rice shouldn’t be level with Saka in that position, so when he holds it, he has more than one option.
“Robinson did very well against him. He gave him no breathing space. If he does win it (Robinson), then we say ‘okay, they have possession, but they can’t break on us’. There is something that has happened where we have checked out with the marginal differences, in this league, which makes such a difference.”
On Gabriel’s defending for Fulham’s second goal: “You know what I am thinking, because Gabriel Magalhaes is such a big guy. De Cordova-Reid is a smaller guy. I thought he should be more dominant in the situation.
“Once the ball comes over, it’s over his head, he has to be moving to attack it. Go towards to attack the ball instead of waiting. You look at the space he is in, he doesn’t move out of that space in the whole time and that can’t be right. You have got to defend. You have got to be on the move, ready to head something and react to it. Those margins of getting something wrong have cost them.”
Arsenal’s bad form
You could view this a number of ways.
The first is that all of this was coming because of how Arsenal just haven’t been at the races of late and it’s worrying signs in their title push.
But, on the other hand, rather than putting in these poor performances in March. They are getting it out of their system before the New Year.
And if this period so happens to be Arsenal’s worst run of the season, then it does bode well for them because they are still two points off the top.
Their only issue is that leaders Liverpool have a game in hand and so do third-placed Manchester City, who are on the same number of points as them.
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