Arsenal's failings are all too familiar - yet club psychiatrist was meant to help overcome mental fragility

[Dani ♡]

 

Petr Cech has admitted that Arsenal’s first-half performance was so bad against Watford that they deserved to lose and did not warrant any “luck”. The 2-1 home defeat left Arsenal nine points behind Premier League leaders Chelsea – who they face at Stamford Bridge on Saturday – and left their own title hopes in tatters. It is not over, not yet, but there is an enveloping sense of de ja vu, with familiar failings, about Arsenal yet again this season. A home fixture against struggling Watford, with Chelsea away to Liverpool, was an opportunity to put some pressure on Antonio Conte’s side.

Instead, as ever, it was Arsenal who felt the pressure with manager Arsene Wenger afterwards strangely talking about how his players were not “mentally” up to the challenge of facing Watford. Given Arsenal are employing Dr Ceri Evans, the psychiatrist who worked with the New Zealand All Blacks rugby union team, to overcome the mental barriers they have faced in the past it is even more disappointing that fragility has emerged yet again at a key stage of the campaign.

Evans is being used by Wenger because he has identified mental weaknesses in the players when it comes to performing well over the course of a campaign and specifically in pressure situations. Cech alluded to this in his assessment. “We had a very bad start,” he told Arsenal’s club website. “I think we didn’t play well at all. “We were second best in the first-half. We made so many bad passes, we lost every challenge, we were simply second best. “I always say that at this level you cannot play 80 minutes, or 85. You have to play 90 minutes with full concentration and everybody on top of their game.

“In the second-half we improved, we had a lot of chances. I thought we were brilliant second half, but obviously we only scored one goal. “We had chances but the keeper made some very good saves, we hit the bar and we could say we were unlucky in that way. But for the first-half performance, we actually didn’t deserve a little bit of luck.” Early goals from Younes Kaboul, which took a deflection off the hapless Aaron Ramsey, and Troy Deeney gave Watford a two-goal advantage which they fought hard to protect and they could have been further ahead before Arsenal rallied after half-time.

Ramsey was recalled into the line-up, with Wenger making wholesale changes from the team that trounced Southampton in the FA Cup last weekend, but suffered yet another injury – a calf – and endured a difficult, brief evening before limping off. Wenger did not include Danny Welbeck in his squad, and explained he was nursing the striker back from long-term injury while Theo Walcott, who was out for a number of weeks before scoring a hat-trick against Southampton, was on the bench and came on at half-time. Wenger will have to assess where his team goes from here with Cech admitting there is a significant problem. “This was a huge setback because this was the game we wanted to win and we wanted to put ourselves in a better position going into the weekend,” the goalkeeper said.