Mikel Arteta won in Prague and still left angry. Arsenal beat Slavia Prague 2-1 on Wednesday night to make it ten points from twelve in the Champions League, but their manager branded the second half "very sloppy" and admitted his side were "extremely far from our standards" after the break.
First-half goals from Noni Madueke and Viktor Gyokeres had Arsenal cruising at the Fortuna Arena. Madueke slid home Gyokeres' hooked pass after nine minutes, and the Swede curled in the second himself seven minutes before half-time — the story of our match report on the night. It should have been the platform for a rout. Instead, Arsenal spent the second half hanging on.
"We gave so many balls away"
Arteta did not hide behind the result when he faced the media. "Two very different halves," he said, in quotes published by Arsenal's official site. "The first one, where we played at a really high level, in terms of tempo, intensity, quality and clarity in what we had to do. We were very efficient. Scored two goals; it should have been three, four or five."
The warning he gave at half-time went unheeded. "Right from the beginning, we were extremely far from our standards in everything that we have to do," he added. "We didn't control that at all. Right from the beginning of the second half, we were on the back foot, very sloppy. We gave so many balls away, so many bad clearances. We didn't keep the ball or the structure at all."
The numbers backed him up: Slavia finished with 17 shots to Arsenal's 12. Gabriel twice cleared headers off the line, David Raya produced a stunning save from Oskar Kubiak, and when Wiktor Nowak turned in David Jurasek's cross in the final minute, Arsenal were left sweating through stoppage time to protect a lead that had looked unassailable.
Gyokeres gives Arteta the other headline
If the second half was the concern, Gyokeres was the encouragement. The striker claimed a goal and an assist, took UEFA's player of the match award, and earned the strongest praise of Arteta's night — notable on an evening when six changes had been made to the side, as the pre-match team news had trailed.
"I thought he was really good," Arteta said. "It was a game we believed would be really good for him, for the demands the opponent puts in and the spaces he could use. He's done it really well, not just for the assist and the goal, but he was really connected to the team. It's really great news for him, because he really needed that performance."
Gyokeres himself kept it simple, as Arseblog's quotes round-up recorded: "It's fun to score goals and fun to make assists." For a striker whose link play Arteta singled out — "he understood really well when to appear, when to threaten" — Prague may come to look like the night his Arsenal career properly clicked into gear.
So what does this change?
Arsenal sit third in the league-phase table with ten points and remain firmly on course for the top eight and a direct route to the last 16. But Arteta's frustration points at the season's real question: not whether this squad can produce a brilliant half, but whether it can control the other one. Against Slavia's man-to-man press, Arsenal's structure dissolved the moment the tempo dropped — and better teams than Slavia will not let a two-goal gift go to waste in the knockout rounds.
The immediate test is domestic: the Gunners return to Premier League duty this weekend with their manager demanding the standards of the first 45 minutes in Prague, not the second.
Beyond the Final Whistle: Arteta is right to be furious, and Arsenal fans should be glad he is. A manager who celebrates a sloppy 2-1 in Prague is managing the result; a manager who tears into it is managing a title race. This Arsenal side has the first half of a European champion — the winter will tell us whether it has the second half of one too.
Was Arteta right to slam the performance, or should a win in Prague be enough? Let us know in the comments.
