Wenger shocked by surrender

Arsenal 0 Aston Villa 2

By Jason Burt

Monday, 17 November 2008

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Arsene Wenger has seen his side go through such highs and lows this season that he has deemed them 'unbelievable'

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Maybe that victory over Manchester United was a raging against the dying of the light after all. Certainly there was barely a flicker as Aston Villa comprehensively defeated Arsenal with their midfielder Steve Sidwell even venturing to declare what has been thought by opponents – but left largely unspoken – this season.

"You look at the top four and you come to Arsenal thinking you can pick up points," Sidwell, who started his career under Arsène Wenger, spending four years at Arsenal before moving on to Reading, Chelsea and now Villa, said. "You think you can get a result," he added. "When I was at Chelsea the thing I learned is you need to be consistent at the top of the table. With Chelsea they always looked at United because they knew United never really dropped points whereas the other teams in the league did."

Arsenal have now lost four league games, drawing two others. This time last season they were undefeated and yet still did not win the Premier League. It is starting to appear this campaign may be one in which the target is simply to cling on to a top four finish. In truth, it has been like that for some time but rarely, under Wenger, have Arsenal appeared so vulnerable, so inconsistent.

Everyone was using the word consistent after this game. Wenger and Martin O'Neill; Sidwell and Gareth Barry. No Arsenal player spoke, so their feelings cannot be relayed but the forlorn way they trudged from the pitch at the end told volumes. By then the stadium was almost half-empty anyway, a mix of frustration and low boos mingling with the cacophony of jeers wrongly directed at referee Mike Riley. But then it's always easiest to find a scapegoat rather than own up to the harsh reality that Arsenal were shockingly poor.

Wenger (right) struggled to comprehend what he had witnessed. Not just on Saturday but the roller-coaster ride this season is turning into – the highs of beating United and watching his young players demolish Wigan Athletic to add to the lows of losing to Villa, Hull City, Stoke, Fulham and drawing against Tottenham Hotspur. "It's been unbelievable," Wenger admitted. "We won Saturday, Tuesday and were on a high. You feel there's no energy left in the side. I think we were not, as a team, sharp enough to dictate the pace and be dominant in the fight."

As ever at such junctures Wenger was – not unreasonably – asked about the need to recruit experienced reinforcements. Did he regret not doing this in the summer? "Not really, we had no player we really wanted and for now we have no regrets," he said. "You cannot explain the own goal of [Gaël] Clichy by the fact we haven't an experienced player in midfield."

Which is undoubtedly true. But Arsenal didn't lose because their left-back headed Ashley Young's cross into his own net. They lost because they were out-played, largely in that midfield area where Sidwell, in particular, was dominant and both Cesc Fabregas – who looked jaded and will now have a one-match ban after picking up a fifth booking of the season – and Denilson were lightweight. They also lost because, with William Gallas and Mikaël Silvestre, they had a central defensive pairing lacking in aggression and pace while Kolo Tour�'s star is on the wane. And because in Nicklas Bendtner they had a striker who appeared incapable of providing the kind of focus to the attack that the impressive Gabriel Agbonlahor carved out for Villa.

All these issues have been around for some time – the need for an experienced centre-half, for more power in midfield, for greater strength in attack – and they all came back to haunt Wenger on Saturday. Quite why he feels so strongly that recruiting would inhibit the development of his young players is only something he can explain. Buying one or two surely wouldn't stop the cream from rising?

It could have been a lot worse against Villa, who shrugged off the disappointment of Ashley Young's penalty miss, after he was fouled by Theo Walcott, and wasted opportunities by Barry and Sidwell. Substitute Emmanuel Adebayor had a header pushed onto a post by Brad Friedel but then Agbonlahor embarrassed Gallas with his speed and finished crisply past Manuel Almunia to send Wenger into what he admitted would be 48 hours of misery as he tried to come to terms with defeat and the loss for "several weeks", through injury, of Bacary Sagna.

"The top teams have been there for so long," O'Neill said when asked about the chances of Villa breaking their Champions League monopoly. "They can recover from disappointment more quickly, as has been proved over the years." That may be so and it will still take a great concerted effort to dislodge them. But, as Sidwell declared, the feeling is growing that maybe it's not such a monumental task as was once feared.

Goals: Clichy (70, og) 0-1; Agbonlahor (80) 0-2.

Arsenal (4-4-1-1): Almunia; Sagna (Toure, 71), Gallas, Silvestre, Clichy; Walcott, Fabregas, Denilson, Nasri; Diaby (Adebayor, 61); Bendtner (Vela, 68). Substitutes not used: Fabianski (gk), Ramsey, Song, Djourou.

Aston Villa (4-1-4-1): Friedel; Cuellar, Laursen, Davies, L Young; Petrov; Milner, Sidwell, Barry, A Young; Agbonlahor. Substitutes not used: Guzan (gk), Harewood, Carew, Knight, Salifou, Reo-Coker, Gardner.

Referee: M Riley (Leeds).

Booked: Arsenal Fabregas, Denilson; Aston Villa Barry, Friedel, Agbonlahor, Sidwell.

Man of the match: Agbonlahor

Attendance: 60,047.