Albert Sambi Lokonga seems to be the new target of the Arsenal boo boys.
There is a huge gulf in class between him and Thomas Partey – but there is also a huge gulf in class between Thomas Partey and almost every other defensive midfielder in world football.
Partey is a truly world class player, and only Rodri and Declan Rice get close to him in the Premier League. The Ghanaian is better than both.
Just because Lokonga is not close to Partey, does not mean he is a bad player.
Lokonga arrived in England 18 months ago as an exciting young talent whose form in Belgium had seen him captain Anderlecht at just 19-years-old.
He is perhaps a victim of being “big and black”.
Fans look at “big, black central midfielders” and immediately associate them with being defensive beasts. They think Patrick Vieira, Thomas Partey.
We saw it with Abou Diaby. Labelled “the next Patrick Vieira” due to being over 6ft and of Senegalese heritage. But anyone that saw Diaby play wild agree he was far more attacking than Vieira, and his defending was his weakest element.
Likewise with Yaya Toure.
Whilst in his early days he did play more defensive, at his peak for Manchester City he was more attacking. Driving the side forward from the middle of the park.
At his best, he always had someone (such as Fernandinho) behind him. Yet fans still labelled him a defensive midfielder.
Vieira as well often gets miss-labelled.
Yes, he was defensive-minded, but was never really the deepest midfielder for club or country.
At Arsenal, he played alongside Emmanuel Petit and Gilberto Silva, for France it was Didier Deschamps.
Their defensive discipline allowed Vieira to pick up the ball and drive forward with it.
And it that sense, Lokonga is more of a Vieira or Toure type midfielder rather than a Partey, N’Golo Kante or Gilberto Silva.
To get the best out of Lokonga, he needs to be given the freedom to drive forward. But to do that, he can not be the deepest midfielders.
He needs to be playing where Granit Xhaka is – but the Swiss man is undroppable right now.
I am sure the plan would have been to have Mohamed Elneny as the Thomas Partey cover, then Lokonga playing further forward alongside Fabio Vieira on the Europa League.
Elneny then does the disciplined dirty work whilst the other two use their differing talents to break down opponents.
Considering his injury record, or it important to rest Partey in the Europa League.
With Elneny out, Mikel Arteta has had to play Lokonga out of his natural position in the Europa League.
I would expect us in January to go out and sign a naturally defensive midfield – Danilo or Douglas Luiz are the two names currently being floated about. And this will allow Lokonga to played in a more advanced position.
My final thoughts:
Lokonga has only just turned 23-years-old.
At 23, Thomas Partey was only just breaking through at Atletico.
At 23, Kante west at Caen in Ligue 2.
At 23, Fernandinho was at Shakhtar Donetsk.
At 23, Yaya Toure was at Olympiakos.
At 23, Claude Makelele was at Nantes.
At 23, Gilberto Silva was at Atletico Mineiro.
At 23, Emmanuel Petit was playing CB for Monaco.
Tomorrow it is PSV away where we will guarantee topping the group if we avoid defeat.
Before the season begun, officials were instructed to adopt a higher threshold for penalising contact in challenges.
I am sure we can all agree that as every passing season goes by, our game is getting softer and softer and we were hurtling towards “any contact is a foul”.
That being said, Robert Jones took the instruction to another level in our game against Southampton and made the decision that all wrestling and all grapling would not consitute a foul.
The referee set his stool out very early on – in the opening few minutes Gabriel Jesus was clearly shoved in the back by serial offender Duje Ćaleta-Car and Jones awarded a free kick to Southampton.
No too long later, Lyanco swung his elbow not once, but twice into the back of Jesus. Again, no free kick to Arsenal despite the clear violent conduct.
Then Mohammed Salisu bundles over Bukayo Saka right in-front of the linesman. It is becoming clear and obvious that the officials agreed pre-game to allow a higher level of contact than is reasonable and Southampton were now taking full advantage of the incompoetent refereeing.
Ćaleta-Car and Jesus then come together under a high ball. The Croatian central defender with an arm around Jesus’s neck. No freekick. Moments later a near identical incident results in the same outcome.
We then have the penalties.
Firstly we had Jesus who had turned Ćaleta-Car who in turn pulled back the Brazilian.
Not only should it have been a penalty, it should have been a red card.
On speaking to the referee after the game, Jesus said “I spoke with him straight after and he said ‘if you go down before maybe I can give a penalty’.
And with that statement, we can now see why players go down when fouled, even when the contact was mpt enough to send them to the ground – not ever foul is enough to send a player tumbling, but it seems unless a player hits the deck referees are reluctant to give a penalty.
So we have Ćaleta-Car wrestling or going through the back of Jesus on 4 occasions. Each occasion the ref did not penalise the defender. I guess at least he was consistent!
Shortly before half time, Ben White was shoved in the back, 2 handed, in the area. once again the referee waved it away, despite the Southampton player impeding his opponent whilst not playing the ball.
And finally we have Kieran Tierney.
The Scotsman was taken out at the far post by a leading arm whilst trying to head the ball back across. It was not too dissimilar to what happend with Son last season.
On that occasion, Cedric took Son out in the air whilst getting no-where near the ball. Just like Sunday.
Then towards the end of the game Lyanco attempts a head butt on Eddie Nketiah, and then later grabs him by the throat.
The attempted headbutt was a red card in itself, but he only got a yellow. You then have to question why he did not get a second yellow for the throat grab – or did the “2 yellow cards” thing only happen that once for Gabriel Martinelli and has never been seen again?
I think it is clear to everyone watching that the referees made the pre-match decision to allow a physical game happen.
They were consistent in their decision making in allowing a lot of grappling and wrestling from Southampton during the game – but ultimately they got their decisions wrong.
To further highlight how poor the officials were, we have the Saka incident.
During the first half, Jones booked Bukayo Saka for “diving”.
Now it was one of those incidents that we have seen the likes of Jamie Vardy and Harry Kane do week in, week out.
Leave the leg dangling to initiate the contact. The aforementioned pair have won plenty of penalties using this method in the past.
An incident like that should never be a penalty – and VAR has cancelled out a few of them this season. But it is also never a booking.
Interesting that the ref then tells Jesus “you should have gone down”.
Both Mikel Arteta and Jesus responded to the poor decision making in the correct way. It was not the reason we failed to win the game.
“That is not the reason why we don’t win the game and we had a lot of chances” Jesus said during his post-game interview.
Whilst Arteta followed that with “This is football. We were really good in the first half and totally controlled the game. We created loads of big chances that we didn’t put away.”
And that is why I like this Arsenal under Arteta.
No excuses, no feeling sorry for ourselves, just dust yourself down and get on with the next game.
If it was Jurgen Klopp, he would probably still be ranting into next week!
So 12 wins from 14 games.
The media will paint this as “Arsenal have a weak squad” and try to make a mountain out of a mole hill. But we have had an increible start (and Manchester City did not gain similar criticism when they drew away to Aston Villa).
And meanwhile, Spurs will escape any sort of negative comments over losing 2 on the bounce.
Thursday we go again where I would expect a more rested XI having secured Europa League qualification.
St. Mary’s Stadium, Britannia Road, Southampton SO14 5FP
Sunday, 23rd October 2022. Kick-off time: 2.00pm
(4-2-3-1) Aaron Ramsdale; Ben White, William Saliba, Gabriel Magalhães, Takehiro Tomiyasu; Thomas Partey, Thomas Partey; Bukayo Saka, Martin Ødegaard (c), Gabriel Martinelli; Gabriel Jesus.
Substitutes: Kieran Tierney, Eddie Nketiah, Rob Holding, Cédric Soares, Fabio Vieira, Albert Sambi Lokonga, Reiss Nelson, (Marcus Vinicius Oliveira Alencar) Marquinhos, Matt Turner.
Scorers: Granit Xhaka (11 mins)
Yellow Cards: Nicolas Jover (set-piece coach), Bukayo Saka
Arsenal Possession Percentage: 60%
Referee: Robert Jones
Assistant Referees: Lee Betts, Ian Hussin
Fourth Official: Thomas Bramall
VAR Team at Stockley Park: VAR Peter Bankes; AVAR Derek Eaton
Attendance: 32,384
After Thursday night’s victory against PSV Eindhoven at the Emirates in the Europa League, we return to our bread-and-butter matches in the Premiership; today we are the guests of Southampton on the south coast. We go into this afternoon’s match having the best defensive away record in the Premiership this season, conceding just three goals and keeping four clean sheets; Arsenal are also the only side to have scored in every Premier League game this campaign, and amazingly, we have equalled our best ever record of nine wins from our opening ten Premiership matches in a season, a statistic which was set way back in 1903-04, when were playing in the old Second Division.
Within a minute of the kick-off, we had a fantastic chance to open the scoring, but Gabriel Jesus was deemed to be offside as he forced a save from goalkeeper Gavin Bazunu, and a minute or so later, a deceiving Bukayo Saka cross flew just wide of the far post. The home side came back at us, and as an Amad Diallo shot went straight into the arms of Aaron Ramsdale, it was still an early warning sign for us not to be complacent today. Granit Xhaka found club captain Martin Ødegaard, but his shot went wide from outside the box; however, on the eleventh minute, Ben White crossed from the right wing and Granit Xhaka, near the penalty spot, hit it perfectly with a first-time volley which absolutely flew into the back of the net, certainly a contender for goal of the month, no doubt about that. After the goal was scored, we were in complete comannd of the match, opening up the Southampton defence at will; with regards to the personal little battles that always appear in a game, Granit Xhaka was brushing away James Ward-Prowse, whilst Gabriel Martinelli was pinning back Romain Perraud along with Mohamed Elyounoussi as well, so there was plenty of space for Granit Xhaka to dominate proceedings in the midfield. Gabriel Jesus’ left-footed shot from the left hand side of the Southampton penalty area was close, but sadly, his effort narrowly missed the goal. Unjustly, Bukayo Saka was booked for diving on the edge of the penalty area; Duje Caleta-Car stuck a leg out and the referee decided there was not enough contact for him to go down, so he was booked for simulation, unfortunately with no right of appeal. Despite the home side attempting to come back at us, we were comfortable both on and off of the ball. Referee Robert Jones then got in the way of a Saints’ attack and had to give them a drop ball; Gabriel Jesus wanted to go in for it and Martin Ødegaard had to push him away, which was comical, really. With four minutes of the first half remaining, Thomas Partey tried a through ball, but Gabriel Martinelli was caught offside by the referee, and then a superb shot by Gabriel Jesus was blocked by Mohammed Salisu and although there was some good play in the injury time period of the first half, we went into the break one goal ahead.
The second half started with much anticipation from both sides, and although Romain Perraud had a shot on Aaron Ramsdale’s goal, it flew wide of his post, and all things considered, it was a minor threat. The match went a wee bit flat, with lots of good passing movements by both sides, but no real attempts on either goal, although it has to be said that our defenders were playing exceptionally well this afternoon, clearing their lines and neutralising some dangerous situations, which was heartening to see. Then suddenly, a long ball went into deep into the Saints’ half and their defender Duje Caleta-Car took a big risk on the edge of his own penalty area when he put his arms around Gabriel Jesus, and as they both went down to the ground together, amazingly referee Robert Jones appeared to ignore the challenge, which ultimately was a clear free-kick to us. A couple of minutes’ later, Gabriel Jesus ran on to a clever through ball from the halfway line, and advanced ointo the Saints goal, but just as he took a shot, Mohamed Elyounoussi literally came out of nowhere and blocked the goal-bound shot. After sixty-five minutes, the home side equalised when Mohamed Elyounoussi ran at our defence, slotted the ball to Stuart Armstrong, who merely guided the ball past Aaron Ramsdale and into the net to level the scores here at St. Mary’s this afternoon. The home side certainly felt more confident now, with more and more attempts on our goal, and with twenty minutes of the match remaining, Ben White and Gabriel Martinelli were replaced by Kieran Tierney and Eddie Nketiah by Mikel Arteta in order to try to score. Unbelievably, our set-piece coach Nicolas Jover was booked for kicking a plastic bottle near the touchline. Really? We have looked like we have taken our foot off the gas at this point in the game, and simply allowed the home side to get back into the match; having said that, Martin Ødegaard did get the ball into the Saints’ net with fourteen minutes of the match remaining, but unfortunately it was adjudged (correctly, it has to be said), that Kieran Tierney’s cross was over the line when he crossed it, sadly. With eight minutes of the game remaining, a fatigued Martin Ødegaard (who handed the captain’s armband to Granit Xhaka via Eddie Nketiah) was replaced by Fabio Vieira, to try to inject more spark into the midfield, but as the game ebbed away, things were not looking like we were going to score a second goal today, as the players of both sides started to cancel each other out. In the five minutes’ injury time, Lyanco received a yellow card after reacting to a foul by Eddie Nketiah, and although we had one or two chances, the match finished in a very disappointing draw.
Although we are still top of the league, it is now only two points between Manchester City and ourselves, which is too close for comfort, really. With eleven shots against Southampton (three actually on goal), along with sixty per cent possession, we have to learn to kill the game off when we are dominating matches. The first half was so one-sided, that we should have put the match completely out of reach for the Saints, but we dithered and dallied, went to sleep at times, and lost the moment completely. Still, the positives are that we came away with a point, and as our greatest ever manager Herbert Chapman used to say “every team goes onto the field with a point, and what we have we hold. Why give it away carelessly?” That may well be the case, but this was a clear issue of an opportunity lost here at St. Mary’s Stadium this afternoon.
Remember everyone, keep the faith, get behind the team and the manager, as this season is going to be crucial for our future success in all competitions. Stick with the winners. Our next match: PSV Eindhoven at Philipsstadion, Eindhoven, Netherlands on Thursday, 27th October at 5.45pm(Premier League). Be there, if you can. Victoria Concordia Crescit.
Steve
Too Dearly Loved To Be Forgotten: Arsenal v Racing Club de Paris 1930-1962 by Steve Ingless (Rangemore Publications, ISBN 978-1-5272-0135-4) is now available on Amazon
She Wore A Yellow Ribbon 