Gunned to Smithereens

Sunday 18th September: Premier League: Gtech Community Stadium: Brentford vs Arsenal

Over the bank holiday weekend I was able to head down to London and finally take advantage of my Brentford season ticket, but shortly after kick-off it became clear that I should not have bothered. Particularly as my place of work was open non the evening of Her Majesty’s funeral day so I had to be on a train back north to attend a work shift in the evening, rendering me unable to partake in the mourning of our beloved late Sovereign Queen Elizabeth II. Rest In Peace Ma’am

With Manchester City and Tottenham Hotspur went above Arsenal at the top of the table after commanding victories over Wolves and Leicester City, thanks in part to abysmal performances from their opposition from the Midlands, Arsenal had pride, bragging rights and so much more riding on this result. The Gunners would have their chance to spring back to the top of the table as they take on fellow Londoners in the shape of my beloved Brentford. They had to win to return to the summit and they were away from home in the bee’s nest. Bees who had shown no sign of the ailment known as second season syndrome that tends to afflict teams in the aftermath of their opening Premier League seasons, impressive home wins over both Leeds and Manchester Uniteds (5-2 and 4-0 respectively) had already shown they could wield quite the sting at home this season. Not Today.

This was a hugely nostalgic match for me as it was against today’s opponents that Bees marked their return to the Premier League last season. I was lucky enough to get a ticket to that game and the 2-0 win that Brentford took on their return to the top table was the inspiration for me to start writing this blog. To travel the English Football landscape in search of more underdog winning stories to immortalise for prosperity. With that in mind, Arsenal starting the day 3rd and Bees in 9th with the chance to go 5th with a win, not to mention my own ingrained biases as a Brentford season ticket holder. I went into the match hoping for another brilliant Bees win to celebrate not knowing the obliteration that was to come.

However, before I get to the match itself I wish to take a second to acknowledge the commemorations to the late Queen’s life and service to the nation that took place throughout the match. The big screen showed the picture I have included throughout the match build up and during the minutes applause that rung around every corner of the ground in the 70th minute, chosen to mark the length of Her Glorious Reign.

This round of applause and the 2 minutes silence before kick-off were immaculately observed by all fans as well as every member of the playing, coaching and backroom staff of both teams. If such a display of unity at a London Derby fails to illustrate the high regard in which Her Majesty was held in Her nation’s capital, then nothing will. As an unabashed royalist myself such an outpouring of respect for Her Majesty’s selfless service to our nation over 7 decades was emotional and I’m not too proud to say that I shed tears during the minute’s applause.

Nothing in the team sheets gave any hints to the one-sided destruction I was about to witness. Sure this was a strong Arsenal team, even without Martin the injured Oleksandr Zinchenko in the squad. There was no denying the brilliant results Arsenal had managed to achieve so far this season only losing once, to an industrious Manchester United at Old Trafford. A United team that Bees had smashed 4-0 mere weeks beforehand, but this was a strong Bees team with home advantage on their side able to call on the services of newly capped England man Ivan Toney, so what was there to fear. Surely the Bees could handle the Gunners.

Shortly after kick-off it became abundantly clear that the Bees could not handle the Gunners at all and that this was about to be one extremely long afternoon for home fans like me. Arsenal took the ball into their possession and just played keep ball with it for the next 90 minutes. The worst part of this was that they weren’t even being made to try hard to keep up this dominance of possession either; with the hosts playing like a group of blokes plucked from the local pubs who had never played football before, let alone played as a team at the top level for over a year.

Brentford’s players appeared to be scared of putting in even the tiniest bit of effort to get the ball back off their tormentors, as though any attempt at challenging for the ball would cause them and everyone they’d ever met to spontaneously combust. Official sources of statistics for the match have Arsenal’s share of possession at a measly 64% and I’ve no idea how they have worked it out to be so hilariously low as, from watching the match live in the stadium, it feels like closer to 95% would be more accurate.

The visitors were able to take a nap on the ball if they wanted too and none of the Brentford players would have dared take the ball off him, that’s just how dreadful Brentford’s performance was. I have seen the interview that Thomas Frank gave to Match of the Day after the match and his assertion that ‘The performance was not a 10 out of 10’ is an extremely kind reading of the match I witnessed. If I was being extremely kind to the players, I might rate it as 0.5 out of 10, but truthfully a score of anything over 0.1 is a bit much. As for his idea that ‘The performance… would have caused a lot of teams in the premier league trouble and we would have got a draw or a win out of what we did today’, that may be true in some alternative universe but in this one many League 2 could have taken all 3 points against this team performance.

Not once throughout the whole 90 minutes did the hosts look likely to lay a glove on the ball, let alone threaten the Arsenal goalmouth. Though in the first 15 minutes Arsenal, for all their possession, didn’t look like they were able to threaten their victim’s goalmouth either. For all their command of the ball and their ability to pin the hosts back into their own half, with no hope of escape, the quality of their play took a nosedive off a cliff when they made it inside the box. The first 15 minutes had simply been Arsenal keeping the ball for themselves and knocking it too each other like they were just having a kickabout in their local park.

The few fleeting attempts that Brentford did make to pretend they wanted the ball back from the visitors were snuffed out by a referee who was intent on breaking up the flow of the game by gifting Arsenal freekicks whenever an opponent got within 5 yards. That may be a slight over exaggeration, but only by the width of a single human hair.

With such dominance of the ball and the feeling that they can waltz past the Bees players whenever they fancy it was perhaps unsurprising that Arsenal had been so lacking in threat in the final third up to this point in the match. They had lulled me into such a false sense of security that when they won a corner on the right side of the box I even said in my audio notes “they’ve got a corner right now, but they won’t do anything with it”, so obviously it was from this corner that the Gunners shot their first hole in the Bee’s net. A simple inswinger to the near post was nodded onward and into the net by an unmarked Saliba, who had the freedom of west London to pick his spot. From my vantage point it appeared to have been cleared off the line, but evidently this was a false viewing as the ref signalled the opening Arsenal goal and soon the Bees players were trudging back to kick-off positions looking like men resigned to the gallows.

The instant karma that befell me after my previous musing over Arsenal’s goalmouth profligacy failed to teach me the required lesson though as, after another long period of Arsenal tormenting Brentford with glimpses of a ball they would never posses, I mused that “Arsenal are pissing around with the ball and doing nothing with it” and seconds later they doubled their lead. A cross from deep on the left held up perfectly in the box for Gabriel Jesus to meet it with a bullet header past a stranded Raya between the Bee’s sticks.

At this point in the match and with Brentford having had only 3 instances of possession, by which I mean spells of more than a few seconds on the ball, I spoke into my notes that “this could get embarrassing for the Bees” and that what I was seeing on the pitch “has the feeling of a 4 or 5-0 loss about it right now”. That was me trying to be optimistic about my team’s chances too as I looked to find any positives from the dire performance I had travelled so far to be subjected too.

A prime example of just how awful the host’s first half performance was came at their first corner of the match, in the 33rd minute. With everyone forward and lining up in the box to get on the end of the ball in the corner was played short instead, then before the cross could come in Arsenal had pilfered possession back anyway. That nothing came of the resultant break and the lacklustre hosts were able to limp to half time with just a 2-goal deficit to endure was in no small part down to the excellent goalkeeping of David Raya, who kept the ball from rippling the net on multiple occasions throughout the half. That the fact that, goals excepted, Arsenal’s aim in the final third was just as abysmal as their opposition’s performances all over the pitch and that the ref’s team only managed to find 2 minutes of added time at the end of the half, despite Arsenal’s timewasting all half that felt like it lasted at least 5 times longer than that.

Having seen just how easily his team had been gunned to smithereens in the first 45 minutes, and with thousands of loyal home supporters to placate, I hoped that Thomas Frank would make changes at half-time to turn things around. My feelings at the time were that large chunks of the problems Brentford were facing came down to the 5-3-2 formation being employed, the lack of midfield presence it afforded us and the utter lack of an available out ball when Arsenal attacks broke down. However, these feelings were clearly not shared by Mr. Frank as he sent his charges out for the second half without a single change to the personnel or formation that had led us to being exceedingly fortunate to only trail 2-0 at the break.

In the first half the hosts had played like a group of blokes that had been found strewn local park and asked if they fancied playing a game of football over lunch. There had been nothing in the first half to indicate that they had met before, let alone that this was largely the same team who had beaten their current opponents 2-0 last season and weeks later had played out a thrilling 3-3 draw with a team that would go on to come 2 games short of the quadruple that season.

As they got underway for the second 45 minutes there was little hint that anything had changed, and it was no surprise at all when they slipped further behind their visitors within 5 minutes of the restart. Having strolled past the Brentford outfield the ball was chopped out to the edge of the box where it was met by Fabio Viera and with all the time in the universe, he dinked it over Raya with a delicious amount of curl. With more that 40 minutes to go in the match, Arsenal free to do as they please and no sign of movement from the home dugout it was looking scary for the hosts.

The frustration in the home stands with the state of both scoreboard and performance finally flowed down to pitch level in the 54th minute and resulted in Arsenal getting their first deserved freekick of the whole match. Jensen flew into a tackle on Thomas Partey, engaging in some party pieces on the edge of the centre circle, ripped his legs out from under him and finally one of the home team was showing just a little willingness to try and haul his team back into the match. It certainly wasn’t the greatest tackle ever on a football field and would certainly be termed ‘agricultural’ but despite this Jensen walked away with just a reprimand in tow.

It took till the 58th minute for anyone to notch up the first (and only) card of the match when Granit Xhaka blocked Raya taking a goal kick and went into the ref’s book for his troubles. He needn’t have bothered at all as when the kick was finally taken it went straight to a visiting player anyway.

Perhaps this was the straw that broke the camel’s back as Mr. Frank finally decided to dip into the resources available to him off the bench. Having avoided making changes for so much of the match, despite the clear and obvious need for them, he then proceeded to run through 4 of the 5 available to him within the next 20 minutes of play. The first to be rescued from the pitch was Josh DaSilva, so astonishing in his previous appearances this season yet so utterly anonymous this time out. Vitaly Janelt was the other man saved the humiliation of the final 25 minutes as Frank Onyeka joined summer signing Mikkel Damsgaard in being unleashed into the centre of this maelstrom of humiliation that the hosts were enduring.

Next up for rescue was Mathias Jensen; He has stepped up incredibly well into the hole left by Christian Erkisen’s summer departure, but today was certainly not his day. In his place was sent on Shandon Baptiste as the game careened towards it’s final 20. This one was not even made out of tactical choice by the Brentford manager, Jensen was instead forced off with an injury after going down clutching his knee on halfway seconds before the change. The last thing Brentford need is for Jensen to be injured long-term as Christan Noorgaard and Ethan Pinnock are already side lined and Sergi Canos still on the road back to full fitness after injury problems of his own.

The final substitution for the hosts (yes Mr. Frank used just 4 of his allotted 5 changes despite the abysmal state of affairs all over the pitch), saw Bryan Mbuemo removed for Yoane Wissa to see out the game’s final 15 minutes. This one was made for tactical reasons, but had vanishingly little effect on how the game progressed.

As to why Brentford failed to take advantage of their full quota of substitutions or use any of them to save themselves from a formation that was seeing them overrun in midfield and unable to clear the ball for more than the time it takes Usain Bolt to run the 100m, I have no answer that can stand up to the onslaught of logical arguments that could be hurled at it. All I can say with any certainty is that Bees left one substitution on the table and that none of those they did make had even the slightest effect on the momentum of the match.

Whilst Brentford were making all these changes Arsenal had not agreed to a ceasefire and continued to attack the hosts goal with a view to breaking through the defensive line and furthering their lead. The closest they came to doing so during this time was from a pot shot off the boot of Gabriel Maghalhaes from the edge of the box that cleared the bar by a maximum of 6 inches.

Arsenal’s lead was still just 3-0 by the time that Mikel Arteta chose to make his first substitution of the match, in the 78th minute, when Brentford had already completed all of theirs for the match. Arteta chose to make his first change a double as Albert Sambi Lokonga and Eddie Nketiah were sent on to fill their boots, with Thomas Partey and Gabriel Martinelli making way.

Theses substitutions did nothing to disrupt the rhythm of the Gunners firing the ball to wherever they so chose across the pitch, they were being given the freedom to try whatever passes, shots and tricks they wanted. What they really wanted was another goal but Raya stood in their way. He got down smartly to palm away a cross goal effort from Jesus as the ball broke to him on the left of the area, after a teammate had picked a Bees player’s pocket on the edge of the box. Without David Raya acting as a marble wall in his role as the last line of defence the scoreline could have truly reflected Arsenal’s dominance of the match.

As it was they would have to settle for just a 3-0 win that immensely flattered their abysmal hosts and shows nothing of just how much they battered the bees without letting them lay a glove on the Arsenal half, the ball or the penalty area in response. They did have one last humiliation to pile on their hosts though and it came in added time with their final substitution of the match.

Arteta had already swapped Ben White out for Takehiro Tomiyasu with 5 minutes of regulation play remaining, but it was with his final double substitution in added time that he really twisted the knife of humiliation into the Bee’s wounded thorax. To bring on Marquinhhos on to replace Bukayo Sako was nothing too surprising or hurtful to the hosts pride but making history by bringing on the youngest player in Premier League history as a replacement for Fabio Viera (one of the main architects of the hosts obliteration) was a huge blow to the host’s pride.

At just 15years and 182 days old Ethan Nwaneri became the first player ever to take to a Premier League pitch whilst being too young to live in his own house or join up for the army. His name wasn’t even on the programme squad list and as I missed his name on the substitution announcement, I took down one of the away fan’s chants “he’s got school in the morning” down as his name till I could look it up properly after the match. Just from that chant and its accompanying “how s*** must you be, he’s only 15” it was clear that he was being given his debut for the final few minutes of this match.

To be able to send on a 15-yearold for any amount of a Premier League match is such a flashing neon sign in 50ft high letters that you own the game and your opposition are useless that you can afford to take a huge risk. The magnitude of Arsenal’s domination of this match was such that they could have sent on a duo of 15-yearolds with 10 or 15 minutes to go without having to worry about it affecting the result.

At least Brentford now have the Nations League international break to work on becoming a team able of putting up a fight at this level and I hope that they are able to scoop up what should be a gimmee 3 points down at Bournemouth on October 1st. I will see how their rebuild is coming along when I see them in action at St. James Park the week after they visit the south coast and I can only hope that things are better for my beloved Bees on that day on Tyneside.

Before I make that trip to Tyneside I will be back on the road at the start of October, popping across the peak district to take in a championship match at a newly promoted Rotherham currently sitting on the edge of the playoff places. They are only outside those places by a single point and with a game in hand over all teams above them, it’s fair to say that they are doing well so far in their first season in this new division. Add to that my glorious experiences in the town during this Summer’s Womens Euro tournament and I am looking forward to returning to see the Men’s team take on mid table Wigan Athletic.

See you next month for that one and in the meantime, fix up Bees!