The final battle of the 19th round of the English Premier League started in the early morning of December 29, Beijing time, West Ham overturned Arsenal 2-0 as a guest, surpassed Manchester United to rise to sixth after three consecutive wins, and also let Liverpool, who won this round with 42 points, take the advantage of the fisherman to take the top spot in the standings. At this point, Arsenal is in second place with a difference of two points, and Villa, Manchester City and Tottenham Hotspur are three, four or five respectively.
With Liverpool beating Burnley in the lead, Arsenal were already two points behind their title rivals before the start of this round, and they would need to take all three points to regain the top spot. However, West Ham has been in excellent form recently, winning Wolves and Manchester United in the last two rounds, scoring 5 goals and conceding 0 goals, and the record in the last 6 rounds is 4 wins, 1 draw and 1 loss, which is the same as Arsenal. In this campaign, the team used good defensive counter-attacking tactics to deal with the Gunners, which was very difficult.
However, Arsenal are superior after all, and the possession rate in this game is 742% to 258%, the shots were 30 to 6, the shots were exactly 8 to 3, and the home team had an absolute advantage. So why did Arsenal still lose by two goals?
The objective reason is that West Ham goalkeeper Areola has played extraordinarily, made many saves to resolve the danger, and finally tried to keep the goal intact;The subjective reason was that the Gunners squandered too many chances to open the scoring, with Ben White's header, Martinelli's low shot, Bukayo Saka's volley at the post from a tight angle, Leandro Trossard's follow-up shot still wide, and Rice's high-quality long-range shot from outside the area slightly higher.
This is also the reason why Jesus' unguarded header at the back post in the 66th minute was deflected, making Arsenal manager Arteta on the sidelines jump to his feet.
Arsenal's defeat was also related to the controversial decision of the referee on duty, Oliver. In the 13th minute, West Ham's cross from the left was disrupted, Bowen saved the ball to the limit and then crossed, and Soucek outflanked the goal. From the VAR replay to give a long shot, it is difficult to tell whether the ball went out of the baseline first;The close-up shot is blocked by Bowen's body, and it is impossible to determine the relationship between the ball and the baseline.
However, Oliver still confirmed the goal after the VAR was confirmed. The decision was clearly in favour of the visitors, who were at a disadvantage to have a goal in their hands and boost morale and confidenceArsenal conceded the first goal under the advantage, and inevitably felt impatient, and as they repeatedly missed good chances to score, they became more and more anxious, and fell into a vicious circle.
After Arsenal abandoned Mavropanos to extend the lead to 2-0 for West Ham in the 55th minute, Arsenal had a good chance to close the score in the 82nd minute, West Ham defender Ogbonna in his own penalty area with a near-takedown movement, but could not prevent Jesus from passing the ball, and when Saka broke through with the ball, Ogbonna clearly kicked his supporting foot, causing the opponent to fall to the ground. However, in the face of this obvious foul, Oliver did not act, and even after VAR intervened, he did not award a foul, allowing West Ham to escape a penalty.
Speaking after the game, Arteta had something to say: 'I think we deserve more. His answer to the question of whether the first goal was out of bounds was yes;"I don't know!In this regard, the famous former Premier League referee Clattenburg said after the game: "We can't be 100% sure that the ball is out of bounds, there is no conclusive evidence, the ball is blocked by Bowen. ”
Text: Reporter Xu Yangyang, Reporter Visual China.