Like their right-ended, more deliberate brethren, own goals come in all shapes and sizes. Some are simple, unfortunate deflections; a defender gets turned round, a leg gets poked out, oh dear. Some are funnier; inexplicable brainfades, unlikely slices, catastrophic pinball. And occasionally, very occasionally, we are delivered of an own goal that acts as a kind of fractal encapsulation of the wider team’s struggles. An own goal that doesn’t just speak for itself, but speaks for everything else.
Kieran Gibbs and the most Arsenal own goal possible
Manchester United’s first goal against Arsenal was scored by Kieran Gibbs. It was also scored by the entire concept of Arsenal.
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Enter, stage left-back, Kieran Gibbs. One of the few Arsenal players not to have drawn any particular ire so far this season, he charged his way into the limelight Saturday evening, opening the scoring at the wrong end and setting up Arsenal's sixth defeat of the season. No ordinary own goal this one: first, as a deep cross came in from the opposite flank, he burst past Marouane Fellaini and leapt to win the ball, yet succeeded only in crashing into his own goalkeeper. Then, sat on the floor, with poor Wojciech Szczesny winged and the defence scattered, he stuck out a leg at Antonio Valencia's misdirected cross-shot, poking the ball back on target and into the net. Then he had a bit of a lie down. He'd earned it.
Six seconds — helpfully, these days, one Vine — to entirely encapsulate life at the Emirates, in these strange late days of Arsene Wenger. A lack of defensive communication and organisation? Check. A bizarre and thoroughly avoidable injury? Check. The perfect blending of bad luck and bad football, muddled and served over ice? Check. A spell of goalless dominance ending with a self-inflicted wound, again? Arsenal spending the rest of the game hilariously open on the break, again? Manchester United beating Arsenal, again? Check, check, checkity-check. The only thing missing was Gunnersaurus kicking lumps out of a water bottle.
But then, properly strange things don’t seem to happen to Arsenal. When Arsenal are good, they’re good in the Arsenal way; when they’re bad, as they seem to be a lot on television these days, they’re bad in the same way, it’s just the goals go in at the wrong end. The song remains the same, even if the singing goes in and out of tune. And as a result, they’ve ended up in the peculiar position of being able to score an own goal like this one — a deflected cross-shot bouncing off the shins of a prone defender who has just wiped out his own goalkeeper — to nobody’s great surprise.
Which is odd in itself: an own goal as freakish as they come, that felt so right. So neat. So ... appropriate. It’s no longer a surprise when Sergio Aguero cuts inside a defender, finds a yard nobody had seen, and whips the ball into the opposite side netting; that’s what he does, that’s who he is. That’s his thing. Similarly, it’s no longer surprising when Arsenal do what they do; that’s what they do, that’s who they are. That’s their thing. They’ve become tautologous. Arsenal gonna Arsenal, and everybody knows it. Particularly the opposition. Admittedly, they can’t always be relied upon to smash themselves in the face with quite this delicacy, but at the same time, it’s predictably, remarkably unshocking when they do.
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