Fulham 1-1 Arsenal: A lack of threat sees more points dropped

Match report – Player ratings – Arteta reaction – Video

In isolation, a draw against a good team in decent form away from home, isn’t necessarily a bad result. However, in the context of this season, where yesterday was an opportunity to make up some ground on the leaders, and based on how we dominated, it’s impossible not to be frustrated. The 1-1 draw with Fulham yesterday isn’t 100% a title race fatality, but it made it very clear that without doing something in the January transfer window, it’s going to be nigh on impossible.

It was a game of inches. If Declan Rice had just managed to get on the end of that brilliant Bukayo Saka ball. If Gabriel Martinelli had just held his line before delivering that inch perfect cross for Saka’s disallowed goal. If Thomas Partey had put his header the right side of the post with the goal at his mercy. Arsenal weren’t good enough in the final third, and there are serious questions to be asked, but there was probably enough there for us to have taken all three points.

Going behind early on wasn’t ideal. Raul Jimenez ran off the back of Jakub Kiwior and his finish was excellent. At the same time, I wondered if William Saliba might have done a bit more, just a hesitant step as he came across to cover – perhaps anticipating the Fulham man chopping it back inside him when he was running at full pelt. I don’t think you can really put much blame on David Raya either, as it was hit really well, but it’s one of those that just makes you think about the keeper too.

But that was the 11th minute. Their goal was against the run of play, and it remained so as we more or less dominated the game throughout the 90 minutes. What we didn’t do enough of with that domination was create chances. I think you have to give Fulham credit for sticking to their plan, they stayed deep and really compact, making it tough for us to find a way through, but one shot on target in the first 45 minutes tells you how much we struggled.

Scoring early in the second half would have been part of the half-time conversation, I’m sure, and it was good that we did that. A Declan Rice corner was met by a well-time Kai Havertz header and Saliba was there to poke home from close range – his second goal in successive games. VAR checked, the inches were in our favour as the full-back played him onside and it was 1-1 with loads of time to score again.

Again, we dominated but failed to really trouble Bernd Leno. Martinelli came on for Trossard, Partey put that header wide when he should have hit the target at the very least, but it was pretty pedestrian. On days like this, when you’re frustrated by the opposition and your own performance, your bench becomes so important. I like Mikel Merino but does he really provide goal threat or attacking impetus? Set-pieces, I suppose, so I can see the logic, but he didn’t add much.

As for Gabriel Jesus, I’ve been hoping he might find a way to contribute again, but for me yesterday was a bit of a line in the sand cameo from him. It’s now 21 Premier League appearances without a goal, and I wanted to see a player desperate to put an end to that drought. Instead, he chickened out of a challenge with the keeper after a lovely ball from Rice gave him the opportunity to find the net; he completed just 1 of 6 passes, and had just 8 touches of the ball in 20+ minutes. He played without any kind of drive or effort and if that’s what we have to turn to when we need a goal in a tight game, we’re going to drop more points. It was utterly dismal from the Brazilian.

Of course the frustration of dropping points was exacerbated by the disallowed goal. The delivery from Martinelli was actually very good, but there was no need for him to be offside when receiving the ball. It’s a half-step, a fraction of a second, but these are the margins at this level. There’s been so much talk about him, and I understand why, but he’s not in Jesus territory by any means. I do think the way Mikel Arteta flips between him and Trossard for the left-hand side is less about rotation than both of these players’ inability to produce a consistent run of form. They both give you something, but not with the frequency you’d like. As the Man from East Lower said to me on WhatsApp yesterday afterwards, ‘Imagine having a left flank like our right flank’. Imagine.

The elation of feeling you’ve won it only for the goal be chalked off compounded the sense that this was a damaging result in the title race. With the amount of possession and territory we enjoyed, we should have caused Fulham more problems, and a chance to make up ground on Liverpool was missed. The door opened slightly, we closed the door on our own foot.

Afterwards, Arteta said:

Gutted that we didn’t win it, because I think we deserved to win from the beginning to the end. We did almost everything that we had to do to win it. But this is the quality of the opposition, with one chance they score a goal. And then the margins of the league as well. For millimetres we could have been sitting here with three points after a really strong and dominant performance against a really good team.

Which is true enough but doesn’t address the issues we have in the final third. And perhaps something he said later is instructive:

We cannot feel sorry for ourselves. We have to stand up for ourselves. We had a really good performance against a really good side. Normally you don’t see these kind of games here. Now we have to continue to improve and look at what we can do better so that the opposition have zero chances to win the game. That’s the objective.

I don’t think a manager saying one thing in a post-game press conference means he isn’t considering other things, but the first idea that we have to defend better rather than score more goals does feel very Arteta. I’m sure he wants us to have more attacking threat but that defensive solidity he cherishes is obvious.

People can talk about the players we had out yesterday. You could make a very decent back four from Ben White, Takehiro Tomiyasu, Gabriel and Riccardo Calafiori – while a few minutes of football seems to have banjaxed Oleksandr Zinchenko again (another player we need to move on from at this point). The deployment of Partey at right-back and Timber on the left was obviously informed by those absences, but I do think there are knock-on effects, particularly down our right hand side when the Ghanaian plays in that position. However, the key problem for Arsenal yesterday was turning that final third dominance into clear cut chances.

Martin Odegaard seemed a bit quiet, I felt he wasn’t quite the same after that first half knock. Less mobile, less able to drift into pockets where might be able to hurt the opposition. Saka had flashes, Rice’s dead ball delivery varied too much, Havertz was quiet despite the assist, Trossard and Martinelli didn’t have it, and I’ve said enough about Jesus already. The other attacking option at our disposal, Raheem Sterling, didn’t even get a sniff – and it’s not the first time we’ve been desperate for a goal in the final stages of a game and he hasn’t got off the bench. That tells you a lot about his place in the pecking order.

I would be very surprised if conversations about bolstering the attack haven’t already happened internally, but someone now needs to draw a big red line under it and make it a priority. There are always going to be days when your starting XI doesn’t quite deliver what we want – those options from the bench are the difference between one point and three, between a sustained title challenge and not, and yesterday we were found wanting there.

Right, I’ll leave it there for this morning. We will have an Arsecast Extra for you in a little while too. We’ve put out the call for questions on BlueSky @gunnerblog.bsky.social and @arseblog.com with the hashtag #arsecastextra – or if you’re an Arseblog Member on Patreon, leave your question in the #arsecast-extra-questions channel on our Discord server.

Pod should be out around noon. For now, have a good one.

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