On Arsene Wenger

A win for Passion and Intelligence

In what should have been a hotly contested fixture, it resulted in a no contest at all, though still an important fixture. It was supposed to be a total football show, with teams fighting it out for fourth place with pretty pretty football. Unfortunately, for the Neutrals, Everton steam rolled Arsenal, keeping a clean sheet and scoring three. Steven Naismith continued his impressive goal scoring form and got the opener and Lukaku got the second goal in the first half. It wasn’t a welcoming home coming for Mikel Arteta as the Arsenal man scored in his own net to put Everton 3-0 up in the second half and then having a spat with Ross Barkley.
It wasn’t a game of two halves as Everton played the better stuff from start to finish. Stronger defensively, Clinical offensively. Surprisingly, the stats might say a bit different to what people observed at Merseyside. Arsenal had 57% of the possession in the match with Everton having 43%. It doesn’t look good for a team like Everton who like to play possession based football. But the truth is that most of the Possession with Arsenal was dead, passing the ball between the center backs while on the other hand Everton was imaginative, adventurous and alive with what they did with the ball, repeatedly exposing the Arsenal backline suffering the injury of Laurent Koscielny. Arsenal had more than 100 passes more than that of Everton’s but again those passes were unimaginative and didn’t really help much while some of Everton’s passes like that by Leighton Baines were exquisite and created goal scoring opportunities. Shots stats favor Arsenal too with their 16 shots as compared to Everton’s 15. Everton were Clinical with their shots, scoring three goals while most of Arsenal’s shots were from range. Apart from maybe a Podolski volley and a shot on the crossbar from Oxlade Chamberlain, most were pretty comfortable for Tim Howard.
Tactically, Roberto Martinez nailed it while the rigidity shown...