Arsenal 0-1 Newcastle: Do I have to do this?

When a team plays like Arsenal did Sunday, it makes it really hard to go back and look at the game dispassionately. That's why this took me so long to write - every time I sat down to start, I had a Vietnamesque flashback to Cesc Fabregas lobbing a long pass into the box and had to find something else to do. I think I'm finally ready to get some thoughts out now.

The first thing, and most important thing about Sunday's monstrosity, is that this is a team game, and Arsenal played horribly as a team. Something just seemed off from the start of the game - there was no chemistry or communication; it seemed like nobody had any idea what anyone else on the pitch was thinking. They looked a bit like a pick-up squad, a bunch of guys who know each other so they think they know what people are going to do, but haven't played together enough to actually know. Players weren't finishing runs, passes were going awry seemingly on every possession, defensive responsibilities were abandoned expecting help where none was coming. It just seemed like the rhythm and pace of Arsenal players were unsynchronized and wrong all game, and that was reflected in the scoreline.

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I want to talk a bit about Łukasz Fabiański, because it's related to what I just said about winning and losing as a team. I'll preface this by saying that I think we should have bought a keeper this summer, not necessarily because I think the current crop Arsenal have are bad, but because once it came out that Wenger was looking for a keeper, we needed to get one. You can't publicly say that you are looking for a player's replacement, fail to do so, then ask that player to perform well. Honestly I've been impressed with Fabiański and Almunia this year for that reason - instead of losing confidence, both seemed to have set out to disprove the idea that they were useless.

Yesterday, Fabiański cost Arsenal a goal. That much is for certain. But he wasn't the only one who had a hand in the matter. There was a chain of events that occurred causing the goal; there were many points in that chain in which an Arsenal player could have done something to prevent the goal, and at each opportunity, he failed. As Tim from 7amkickoff said,

Cesc gave the ball away, Sagna fouled, and 3 Arsenal players couldn't stop Carroll

Fabiański could have stopped the goal from scoring, and should have. But the same could be said for Fabregas, Sagna, and others. The "Flappyhandski" meme does not need to make a return, and honestly it can only hurt the team. He made an error that I've seen plenty of goalkeepers make (like, for example, Tim Howard against Spurs a few weeks ago), and he got no help from his midfield or defense on that particular play. This loss is not his fault, it's the team's fault.

So why did this happen? I wrote yesterday about the Wenger controversy, and how it might affect the team. I don't know if it did or not - not being in the locker room, I don't really have any way of knowing, as nobody would admit that publicly - but it's possible. There's a chance that the team wasn't properly prepared due to the manager's preoccupation, but Wenger has never been anything but professional in my eyes, so I find that to be an unlikely scenario. Whatever effect that had, there had to be something else. I really hope that they didn't take the opponent for granted, as one would think the West Brom and Shakhtar games had taught them a lesson. If not, this is extremely worrying.

Arsenal is best when Cesc Fabregas is at his best. That should be pretty obvious to a knowledgeable observer (or even the ignorant observer, sometimes). Yesterday he very clearly was not at his best. He missed the mid-week Champions League game ostensibly due to injury - the hamstring was tight, I believe the story was - but played all 90 minutes yesterday. He was very clearly not himself. It's possible that he just had a bad game, but there's a distinct possibility that the injury is still bothering him. If that's the case, he needs to sit until he's fit. Wilshere can play Fabregas' role - not as well as Cesc, but well enough - and it's clear from Newcastle that an injured Fabregas (if that's the issue) cannot win a game on his own, and honestly is a drag for the rest of the squad. Orbinho on Fabregas' performance:

Cesc completed 67% of passes so far, the lowest of any Arsenal player.

That rate continued to the end of the game. According to Orbinho, that was his worst passing performance since 2006. That's not going to get it done. As I said above, this is a team game, and I am not trying to say that Fabregas single-handedly lost Arsenal the game. What I am saying is that a team can't win if its captain and on-field maestro can't play his game, and resorts to a Blackburn-esque strategy of lobbing balls into the box over and over again, hoping for magic.

I think we sent players onto the pitch who weren't ready to play, due to injury or lack of match fitness. I think we were tactically monolithic, and didn't play Arsenal football (to our detriment). I think this was a flat, uninspired performance from a team that was just wrong from the start. I don't know if Wenger is to blame or not, but if so, he needs to step his game up. I can say for certain that the players on the pitch - all of them - need to.

Man of the match: All of us, for actually watching this crap.