Mikel Arteta’s substitutions exacerbate disaster as Arsenal fall to damaging defeat at Fulham

LONDON — With a quarter of this disastrous defeat left to play, Arsenal hardly looked like the title challengers the Premier League table says they are. Still, there was cause for hope that Mikel Arteta might be able to mastermind a Craven Cottage heist. He might have got his initial selection wrong but that at least afforded him the chance to bring high-grade talent on from the bench.

Out came the man who had forced the opener, Gabriel Martinelli, and perhaps even more perplexingly, Ben White. Arsenal’s right back had hardly set the contest alight; for some time now he has been running with the heavy legs of someone playing through a knock. Into the fray went Leandro Trossard and Gabriel Jesus; Arsenal resorting to the 3-1-desperation formation that propelled such dramatic fight backs against Bournemouth and Southampton last season.

Before the game was out the pressure was remorseless. Fulham simply could not be quelled. They might have added deserved luster to their 2-1 win. Tom Cairney drew a fine save from David Raya while William Saliba flirted with a red card challenge when he hurled Harry Wilson to the deck. From the moment Arteta shuffled his pack Fulham had more shots, more expected goals, more penalty box touches. Arsenal’s defeat was comprehensive and deserved.

Arteta will have to shoulder a fair wedge of the blame. Switching to a three-man defense robbed his wide players of any threat on the overlap and before long Arsenal had devolved into a dreary rhythm. Get ball, give ball away three times, eventually force it to Bukayo Saka and sit back, waiting for him to conjure up something. On the one occasion he did, Joao Palhinha delivered a heroic block. That and a Trossard cross that just evaded Gabriel were the sum total of the visitor’s late siege.

“How did they work?” said Arteta. “When you don’t change the result, they didn’t, that’s for sure. It didn’t work in the first half. It didn’t work in the second half. Throughout 100 minutes we were never at the level to win the game.” 

One might question why the Arsenal manager could not have changed the trajectory of this game. It is not the first time that has been a fair charge to level at him; there is of course Reiss Nelson’s dramatic intervention off the bench against Bournemouth last season, perhaps Fabio Vieira’s sparky display off but few others spring to mind. It is rarer still that the game seems to have changed to Arsenal’s betterment because of something the coach has changed in game: a system, pattern of play or approach to chance creation. Perhaps it is one of the few aspects where the 41-year-old betrays his relative inexperience in the dugout.

Though it is hard to shake the sense that he made Arsenal’s task harder with his changes, Arteta might challenge his squad as to why so few of them were showing for the ball or drifting into space in central areas. Fulham certainly did their best to plug every spot but too often Trossard and Jesus instead opted to stand 15 or more yards ahead. Dropping into those spaces, turning and driving at defenses is just what Emile Smith Rowe offers. Not for the first time in recent years, he did not get the chance to prove he could change a contest.

Ball progression was agonizing. This was nothing like Thursday’s defeat at West Ham when all that was missing was the final touch. Arsenal could scarcely get in position to make the pass before the pass. After the substitutions that changed nothing, the visitors would not complete a pass into the penalty area until the 95th minute.

It had started with so much more vigor. Arteta has tended to blame Arsenal’s relative struggles in front of goal this season on game state; without the fast starts of a year ago his side are facing more low blocks and having to wait for their reward. This time they exploited a rather unset defense, Raya and Havertz swiftly moving the ball upfield off a Fulham attack. Martinelli isolated Palhinha, who should not have allowed him to check onto his right foot and bend a shot at the far post. Bernd Leno saved well but was powerless to stop Saka on the rebound.

That ought to have been that, a chance for Arsenal to dictate the terms of a contest and pick off the gaps left by a Fulham side who would have to chase parity. That never came, at least in part because the likes of Calvin Bassey, Antonee Robinson and Palhinha were so assertive that there were fewer spaces to exploit. “Calvin Bassey? What a performance,” said Marco Silva. “It’s his birthday, a nice way to celebrate it.”

Equally a side that includes the Gunners’ two most off-ball players — Havertz and the struggling Eddie Nketiah — is going to struggle to carry out the death sentence by “300,000 passes” that Arteta so memorably expects of his team when they are in the ascendancy.

As soon as they scored they weren’t. Willian and Robinson exploited the space vacated by White with Saka rarely swift enough in getting back to support. There had been enough shots across the bow before Raul Jimenez slipped in behind Jakub Kiwior, who lasted just a half as the inverted left back, offering a helpful reminder that for all Oleksandr Zinchenko’s defensive difficulties, there are challenging positional questions for anyone asked to step into midfield in possession before quickly scurrying back.

Arsenal tried to shuttle Fulham into their own area but, with their tales up, the hosts played through the pressure with style. The Gunners scrabbled to concede a string of corners, one cannoning off four defenders before Bobby De Cordova-Reid turned it in.

That was when Arsenal had 10 of their starters on the field. It got no better from there on. 

“What happened today cannot happen again because if you do that we will never have the chance to be where we want to be,” warned Arteta. “Today could have been a beautiful day to end the year that’s for sure. But these are the margins and you have to try and find the bar. We have to look at ourselves in the mirror because today’s performance is the worst we have played all season, that’s for sure.”

Much of the blame for that, perhaps the bulk of it, should fall on players who frittered away such an advantageous position. So poor were they, some external force had to change the tide. Arteta was not that man today.