Bournemouth vs Arsenal: Notebook
I love misery, so I watched the game again and picked out some clips to go along with my notes of the game.
The clips here are not going to be as good as normal; I had to rewatch this on Peacock and the bottom section on the video selector is slow to go away. It shouldn’t make a difference; it just annoys me.
Let’s get into it.
First Half:
So it is looking like Merino right midfield, Rice left midfield. Out of possession it is Havertz and Merino the front two. It is fluid but this seems like the base formation.
5 – This is a nice bit of ball winning here from Partey, it doesn’t really lead to much with Merino going backwards when it does come to him.
6 – White gives away a freekick that I am not sure he needed to, a little bit of a needless push in the back when he can just ride with him. Daivd Raya looks unsure on trying to claim the ball and it is just over hit enough to not give Bournemouth a shot.
10 – Arsenal have a chance to break from a Bournemouth corner but Trossard just doesn’t have the speed to get clear. This is a bit of a bummer with Trossard wide. He has things to offer but being able to break away into space isn’t one of them. Maybe Sterling could do better to play it more in front of him but it doesn’t really make a difference.
16 – Raya gets away with one here, there is just not nearly enough speed on the ball and it is easily picked off. Thankfully the way that the Bournemouth player is facing takes them away from being able to shoot quickly.
19 – I wish Partey had been a bit braver trying to find the Havertz run here. You can hear Arteta also wanting him to play that ball.
21 – Arsenal have a decent little attacking move but Trossard doesn’t finish his run for some reason. Sterling put in a nice pass here that would have been potentially dangerous if he doesn’t pull up.
25 – Arsenal got fortunate on this break. Partey was left for dead here but it runs into his own player to save from real danger.
27 – Arsenal are pressing and they win the ball, it falls to Trossard and he plays it blind backwards. Saliba pulls back Evanilson and is shown a yellow.
It goes to VAR and it is upgraded to a red card.
I said at the time and still agree now, I think that this is can be a red card, maybe even more often than not is a red card, I would rate it like 65% for when I do the rating of the call tracking. I don’t think that it is a clear wrong decision to call it a yellow card, the referee seemed to take his time on that call too.
I am sure we will get some justification for why it was correct to call this a clear error that rose to the bar of being worthy of review.
35 – Partey plays an excellent ball to set Trossard free with a chance to attack in transition. His speed makes it so he can’t break free but smartly finds Sterling out wide to keep the attack moving. The ball eventually falls to Merino and he has a very good look at goal that he pulls wide.