5 talking points from Arsenal v Hull: Ozil’s brilliance is hard to replace
|Second string players fail to take their chance
This always felt like the right game to make sweeping changes. Hull’s desire to maintain their promotion hopes meant that Bruce made 10 changes to his side. Beating a second string Championship team should have been relatively easy for our bench players.
Nine changes saw returning players and first team hopefuls get a start, and for the most part, no one did enough to stake a claim at more first team action. There were no individual performances that were dreadful, but few players shone either.
It is disappointing, since the fixture pile-up in the coming weeks – now with an unwanted replay thrown in – means that we need our squad players to step up more than ever. Hopefully getting these minutes will mean they are less rusty when given another chance.
Elneny impresses in midfield
It is hard to pick out any stand-out performances from an Arsenal perspective. The man of the match was undoubtedly Hull’s keeper, which is as much a criticism of our attacking players as it is praise for Jakupovic.
Despite our attacking shortcomings, Elneny was quietly efficient at the center of the park. His passing was accurate and he found himself in the right positions more often than not. He covered a lot of ground and was constantly on the move, with and without the ball.
There were a few instances where he read the game very well and dropped into defensive positions to cover for players who had pushed further up the pitch. This is something only Coquelin does well in the team, so it was pleasing to see.
I can see us using both Elneny and Coquelin in bigger games as a midfield double-pivot to protect our back four and create a platform for counter-attacks. Either way, I would like to see more of the promising Egyptian this season.
Ozil’s brilliance is hard to replace
Our lack of options in midfield is fairly well documented, and injuries have played a part in limiting our ability to rotate in this area for most of the season. At times, Ozil’s contribution goes unnoticed, but he was sorely missed in this game.
His pin-point passes and through balls usually create opportunities for our attacking players, and there were plenty of times during the game where it seemed we were one killer pass away from a genuine goal-scoring chance.
Campbell, Welbeck and Walcott buzzed around Hull’s penalty box, but no one was on hand to feed them the ball. Iwobi couldn’t carry this burden on his own, and without the likes of Cazorla, Wilshere, creativity did not come easy.
Unwelcome result for both teams
Both Wenger and Bruce were pretty open about the fact that fixture congestion and other competitions were taken into account when picking the teams. Not to take anything away from the FA Cup, but Wenger would probably rather win the league, while Bruce would take an automatic promotion place over further cup progress.
For me, a draw was the least desired outcome. As much as I hate to admit it, I would have much rather taken a loss given the circumstances. Cup competitions are a distraction when you are trying to win the league. If Leicester win the league this season, it may be in part due to the fact they had no cup competitions to worry about in the run-in.
A draining replay, combined with a potentially morale-sapping defeat to the greatest team in the world right now, could further dent our title hopes this season.
Another referee having an off-day
It is almost becoming a weekly moan, but we did not get much luck with the referee today. While his yellow cards were justified and he generally did well throughout the game, he made some poor decisions with regards to penalties.
Arsenal had three pretty legitimate potential penalties turned down, and on a different day, if even one of these went out way, it would have completely changed the course of this encounter.
Good freeze frame. Penalty. Unless it's for Arsenal and you're Mike Dean. pic.twitter.com/impxlXagQc
— Tick Tock (@BlackScarfAFC) February 20, 2016
It would be unfair to place the blame solely on the referee, and our finishing, as is often pointed out, could have been significantly better. We need to ensure that it does not come down to refereeing – bad or otherwise – to decide our games.
We are going for a historical 3 FA cups on the trot so why not play your strongest team it’s not as if we have a realistic chance of knocking Barca out and I understand the need to see fringe players but in this case and in view of what we can achieve as above I think Wenger got this wrong
This is a very accurate critique of the game. I agree that the draw made things more difficult for us but I have to agree for once with Wenger. Hull ( whether they wanted it or not ) deserved a replay. It is a confirmation of life in general these days that the rich 1% own 90% of the wealth. The problems for the premiership clubs created by a glut of fixtures has led to many of these clubs and their supporters wanting to meddle with the oldest football trophy in the world. Wenger does not agree and he has said openly that he would not support abolishing replays. I applaud him for that. Gus Hiddink says that there is a prestige in winning the cup which is appreciated world wide and he is an ex-world class player.
The Non League clubs and those from the lower divisions are delighted to earn replays particularly against the big clubs and for them it is their Cup Final. They depend upon the extra revenue that replays bring and a snapshot of their grounds would show that they are populated by grassroots supporters of the game, the descendants of the original flat-capped working class. If we dispose of replays for the sake of convenience, we stand to lose a part of our history because many of the small clubs will lose their incentive to struggle on in the hope of killing a giant. It would be an inevitable erosion of the fabric of football in our country and a further decline in the prestige of the FA Cup. In case we forget, it used to be the highlight of the season for supporters to see their team walk out at Wembley and the bragging rights lasted for weeks.
We all love the underdog and consequently we enjoy seeing the heroic efforts of lesser clubs. Abolishing replays would favour the big clubs. They have more resources to cope with extra time. Their players are generally fitter and their subs are better quality so the odds are slanted against them. They deserve the reward of a clean slate to compete on even terms.
In regard to your assessment of the players, I too thought that Elneny was deserving of recognition and your assessment of him was spot on. I think he faded a bit in the second half but that is probably part of his acclimatisation to the Premiership. Even Ozil struggled with that. The three players taken off were exactly the three I would have picked. Danny was flagging, as was Iwobi and Campbell I`m afraid was unproductive from the outset. He did himself no favours with his game. Theo was at least, the busiest of the forwardline and Sanchez has still not retrieved his pre-injury form.
Gunnervic1946