Arsenal lost their sixth away game in the Premier League with such a lack of gumption that it is hard to remember how it is that Arsène Wenger’s team had recently claimed their place in the first cup final of the season. That, though, is what defines Arsenal. They undo their best efforts with alarming regularity. They are the game’s Jekyll and Hyde team, one day mesmeric and classy, the next, stuttering and shaky and prone to mishaps.
Wenger is either the man concocting, still, a solution or he is the root cause, but he was at a loss to explain this performance, stating there was “no rational explanation” for the many “big mistakes” made by his players.
It was not all about Arsenal’s lack of backbone. This was a spirited Swansea City display that hauled them out of the relegation zone. Carlos Carvalhal has lost only one of his eight games with the Welsh club. He has forged the impossible by giving a floundering side the energy and self-belief to pass their way out of despair, to forge understandings on the pitch. No wonder they played Daydream Believer at the final whistle.
He spoke of the team gaining self- belief and oxygen. He even dared to dream that victories in quick succession over Liverpool and now Arsenal might convince one or two players who might have balked at the idea of moving to a team at the foot of the table to rethink their reticence and sign for the club today.
Olivier Giroud was last night an Arsenal player but this morning is expected to belong to Chelsea. The striker began the evening on the bench alongside Henrikh Mkhitaryan in an obvious “in with the new and out with the old” exposition. Transfers are rarely this poignant. Given how finely poised were the deals revolving around Giroud, it was something of a shock to see him come off the bench.
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But there was nothing Machiavellian going on; Wenger simply needed to freshen up a limp attacking force and the Arsenal manager was almost poetic in his tribute to the striker and how his commitment to the club was so deep that he could trust him to give his all, even when on the cusp of leaving.
Wenger might not have been able to rationalise the defeat but he saved his visible ire for a telling moment in the match. Swansea were able to take the lead thanks to a slapstick error from Petr Cech, who suffered in the slippery conditions, but Wenger was angry with Nacho Monreal’s decision to allow the ball to go for a throw-in, which he then took to give the ball to Shkodran Mustafi, whose back pass Cech mis-controlled.
“I was angry because there was no need to let the ball go out,” Wenger explained. “When you have a throw-in for you and you are nine v ten on the pitch why should we put a handicap like that on our own team? We can play the ball and attack straightaway.”
That may have been the most glaring error but the mistakes were myriad before that as the home side created most of the early chances. Jordan Ayew’s strike looked as though it might bounce over the head of Petr Cech and in, and then Aaron Ramsey came to rescue with an alert tackle as Nathan Dyer’s cross caused havoc with Sam Clucas ready to pounce.
It was, shortly afterwards, Mohamed Elneny’s turn to conjure a last-ditch tackle as Dyer’s through ball to Clucas would almost certainly have resulted in a goal had he not timed his stretched interception so well.
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Aggrieved not to have won a penalty, the Swansea players kept on pushing and Ki Sung-yueng came close with a long-range strike that he hoped the wet conditions would take beyond the Arsenal goalkeeper.
A shot on the turn from Alfie Mawson after a short corner came closer still to beating Cech as Carvalhal’s side continued to enjoy the slip-slide-away conditions — and no one enjoyed them more than Ayew, who embarked on a long elegant run that Arsenal did so little to try to stop that their manager was aghast.
Against the run of play, Monreal dashed nimbly into the area to give Arsenal the lead, latching almost casually on to a finely judged pass from Mesut Özil. The lead, though, lasted but one minute as Clucas, who had been clearly itching to make his mark, benefited from a lapse of judgment from Özil to equalise.
Clucas wasted an excellent cross with a weak header but the former Hull City midfielder was relentless in his willingness to either find space or make runs beyond an Arsenal defence still unsure of the conditions. It was so slippery that Cech found himself performing a backwards somersault after executing an awkward clearance.
Wenger stood in his technical area, as a Dyer cross was only just grasped by Cech, chatting in depth with Mkhitaryan before the former Manchester United player replaced Elneny.
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Within 50 seconds of his Arsenal debut, Mkhitaryan’s new team were behind thanks to Ayew. The Ghana international might never be so close to such a slapstick error again in his career and he was almost embarrassed to score his seventh goal of this campaign.
Leroy Fer, in so much space he must have become disorientated, missed a glaring chance to extend Swansea’s lead, and Mkhitaryan had a chance to equalise with a header. But the home team were not to be denied. Clucas was ready with another clever run to make it 3-1, this time linking up with Ayew. Clucas’s subsequent forward roll was celebratory but it also made for a neat contrast with the tumbles and stumbles of Arsenal that peppered their performance and illustrated how Wenger’s team never settled, never imposed, never made the side threatened with relegation feel insecure.
When, at the final whistle, Carvalhal approached Cech it was not to sympathise for the cruel mistake but to ask for the goalkeeper’s shirt as requested by Carvalhal’s son. The Swansea manager was embarrassed to ask but nowhere near as embarrassed as Arsenal’s players were last night.
Ratings
Swansea City (5-4-1): L Fabianski 6 — K Naughton 6, M van der Hoorn 6, F Fernández 5, A Mawson 7, M Olsson 6 — N Dyer 6 (sub: T Carroll 83min), L Fer 5, Ki Sung-yeung 6, S Clucas 8 (sub: W Routledge 90+2) — J Ayew 7 (sub: W Bony 88). Substitutes not used
K Nordfeldt, T Abraham, L Narsingh, K Bartley.
Arsenal (4-2-3-1): P Cech 4 — H Bellerín 5, L Koscielny 5, S Mustafi 4, N Monreal 6 — M Elneny 5 (sub: H Mkhitaryan 60), G Xhaka 5 — A Iwobi 5 (sub: O Giroud 76), A Ramsey 6, M Özil 6 — A Lacazette 4. Substitutes not used D Ospina, C Chambers, A Maitland-Niles, S Kolasinac, E Nketiah. Booked Elneny, Bellerín, Özil.