If you do some careful thinking Plan B is something very simple to implement for this great Arsenal team. Now picture this. The recent liverpool match was in my opinion a battle of ?grit vs flair? and grit won 2-1. Pool knew that man for man they don?t have the natural ability to cope with us and their list of injuries didn?t make anything better. So they went in for some grit. And what grit they showed! If you noticed in the 1st half, they stopped Pires effectively and not one of his passes reached an Arsenal player. Even one of this throws was intercepted neatly by a pool player.
I remember a few years ago when the flowing football superlatives from papers were not coming in as thick & fast as it came until a few weeks ago, Arsenal were considered quite a gritty team. We used to grind results when we were not playing well and the same was expected on Sunday. However when you have a team made of Pires (who jumps when tackled, clearly doesn?t have the guts to go into a 50-50 tackle after his critical injury three years ago), Reyes (who is easily muscled out and of late loves mother earth more than running at oppositions or making simple dribbles or pass when you can?t get past), Vieira (the most grittiest player until the madrid saga, who now can?t defensively head balls, goes missing at times, though the second half performance was the best I have seen for some time now), Fabregas, Lauren, Henry (I still don?t understand why every goal kick is aimed at him as he is always out jumped by opposition defense), one can?t expect much of grit.